Author: NBTC

In the wake of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission formally closing its legal dispute against Ripple Labs Inc., the XRP Army believes it is confirmation that the group is on the “right side of history”—a mantra that’s been repeated among the community since 2020. It stems from a blog post from Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who said at the time: “We are not only on the right side of the law, but we will be on the right side of history.” The SEC alleged that Ripple had participated in a $1.3 billion unregistered securities offering via the sale of…

Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Base stopped producing blocks for 33 minutes on Tuesday after switching to a backup sequencer that wasn’t set up properly to process transactions. The incident began at 6:07 am UTC when the active sequencer started falling behind on block production, prompting Conductor — Base’s system for managing sequencer availability and reliability — to switch sequencers. However, it switched to an “unhealthy mainnet sequencer” that was still being set up and thus wasn’t able to produce blocks, Base Build’s X account said in a post on Tuesday. Source: Base Build Base creator Jesse Pollak said the core…

The growth of decentralized finance (DeFi) and asset tokenization continues to underwhelm, JPMorgan’s Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said in a research report Wednesday, citing the stagnant recovery since the 2022 crypto winter. Total Value Locked (TVL) in DeFi remains below 2021 highs, with most activity still driven by crypto-native and retail users, the report noted. Institutional adoption has lagged despite the development of compliance-ready infrastructure, such as permissioned lending pools and KYC-enabled vaults, Panigirtzoglou wrote. Major barriers remain. Institutions face regulatory fragmentation, legal uncertainty around on-chain assets, and concerns about smart contract security, the analysts wrote. As a result, most institutional crypto…

Ethereum (ETH) has just bounced off the same ceiling for the fourth time, and while a lot of people are saying it is the end of the rally, Galaxy Digital’s Mike Novogratz is not convinced. In a rare price outlook, Novogratz suggested that ETH may not be ready to crash just yet. In fact, it might be setting up for a breakout that takes it firmly past $4,000 before the end of 2025. The commentary followed a chart that has been doing the rounds, and some are calling it a “quadruple top” — a bearish formation, as explained in textbooks,…

Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) reported a sharp drop in quarterly profit on Thursday, July 31, that sent shares tumbling, with the crypto exchange posting adjusted net income of $33 million, or 12 cents per share, compared to $294 million, or $1.10 per share, in the same quarter last year. Shares were trading at $320.93, down 15.04% at press time Friday. Why is Coinbase stock down? Coinbase’s troubles centered on weak trading activity as crypto market volatility dropped and retail investors held onto their digital assets rather than trading. Consumer spot trading volume was $43 billion, down 45%, while consumer trading revenue…

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe. Switchboard’s new “Surge” oracle network goes live on mainnet today. As Solana continues to reckon with competition from high-speed upstarts like Hyperliquid, one of the network’s biggest price oracles is getting much faster. The oracle will be free to integrate, and is claimed by the Switchboard team to be the fastest on Solana yet. How fast? Surge promises to deliver price feeds at a sub-100ms latency — a performance gain of about 8x faster and at roughly 1/100th the cost of existing oracle providers, according to the…

Bitcoin’s decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem is experiencing renewed venture capital (VC) interest, signaling more demand for the world’s first cryptocurrency as it gains utility as a yield-bearing asset. Bitcoin DeFi, or BTCFi, is a technological paradigm that seeks to bring decentralized finance capabilities to Bitcoin’s base layer. According to a new report from Bitcoin DeFi infrastructure provider Maestro, shared with Cointelegraph, the BTCFi ecosystem received $175 million worth of VC funding across 32 rounds in the first half of 2025, with increasingly more capital flowing into consumer apps and demand-driven products. Capital is pivoting toward “usability and demand-driven products, while…

Stable, Layer 1 blockchain network built for stablecoin transactions, has secured $28 million in seed funding. The round was led by Bitfinex and Hack VC, with participation from Franklin Templeton, Castle Island Ventures, eGirl Capital, Bybit-Mirana, and others. Angel investors include Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino and Anchorage co-founder Nathan McCauley. Bitfinex, an early backer, helped incubate the project. The funding will support network development, team expansion, and global USDT distribution. Stable operates as a “stablechain,” a blockchain optimized for instant stablecoin transactions. Its launch follows the U.S. passage of the GENIUS Act, a law providing regulatory clarity for stablecoin payments.…

Walrus, a popular decentralized data storage platform, has recently integrated with Pipe Network, a prominent decentralized content delivery network (CDN). The integration endeavors to enhance bandwidth as well as minimize latency across chains. Walrus’s official social announcement labels this integration as a remarkable merger of the strengths of both the entities. The collaboration will enable seamless storage, robust compute capabilities, and delivery infrastructure across several high-throughput blockchains. Walrus x @PipeNetworkWe’re partnering up to power the decentralized internet.🦭 Walrus will use Pipe’s 280K+ PoP nodes to supercharge content delivery at the edge. ⚡️ Pipe will leverage Walrus for scalable, programmable data…

HLP0, which offers depositors a tokenized representation of Hyperliquid’s HLP vault, is facing backlash for withdrawing user funds from the multi-sig and bridging them to Avalanche and Arbitrum DeFi protocols instead of contributing them to the HLP vault. HLP0 boasts a total-value locked (TVL) of $40 million, but $29 million of that capital has been bridged to Avalanche, and $11 million remains on Arbitrum. The funds are being used on two DeFi protocols, Aave, and Avalanche-based decentralized exchange (DEX), Blackhole, according to the multi-sig’s DeBank profile. HLP0 Multi-Sig DeBank Cain O’Sullivan of Hyperdrive flagged the activity on X where he…