Author: NBTC

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe. At Permissionless last week, Empire co-host Jason Yanowitz sat down with World Liberty Financial’s Zak Folkman. As Yanowitz pointed out, World Liberty Financial has certainly garnered a fair bit of controversy, although, Folkman said, “we’re not really doing anything controversial.” Quick sidebar here: Folkman also went on to say that legacy media (meaning the New York Times and other larger news sources) are “corrupt” and try to create a narrative; he referred to the fact that they use unnamed sources and “unverified facts.” Given that Blockworks has…

Eigen Labs announced that the decision to lay off some employees was not motivated by financial status. a16z purchased $70 million of EigenLayer’s EIGEN tokens last month to help build the EigenCloud. EIGEN price gained over 9% on Tuesday following the announcement. Eigen Labs, the blockchain company behind the EigenLayer (EIGEN) protocol that pioneered the crypto restaking feature on the Ethereum (ETH) network, has sent home 29 employees, which represents 25 percent of its workforce. The company made the strategic move to reorient and shift its focus to the research and development of EigenCloud. According to Sreeram Kannan, CEO of…

In a significant development for the burgeoning world of digital identity and cryptocurrency, Worldcoin, the ambitious project co-founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, has recently put a temporary halt to its controversial iris scans service in Germany. This pause, reported by DL News, comes at a pivotal moment, as the company cites station upgrades while simultaneously navigating intense legal challenges centered around data privacy. For anyone tracking the intersection of technology, finance, and personal liberty, this situation presents a compelling case study on the complex realities of building a global digital identity network. What Exactly Happened with Worldcoin’s Iris Scans in…

With its 32nd Proof of Reserves report, Binance has revealed the asset composition of the exchange and the direction of investor capital migration. Binance’s reserves as of July 1 were 573,997 BTC, a 3.27% decrease from June’s 593,412 BTC. This decline of 19,400 BTC highlights ongoing withdrawals, which may be connected to profit-taking and more general accumulation tendencies. To put things in perspective, Binance’s Bitcoin holdings amount to about 2% of the entire available supply, which is an enormous sum by any measure. Ethereum is perhaps more noteworthy. In a single month, Binance’s ETH reserves dropped by 285,000 ETH, or…

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe. The race to make Bitcoin programmable without a soft fork has turned into one of the most creative arms races in crypto. At the center is BitVM, a framework for proving off-chain computation on Bitcoin via fraud proofs. Its first iteration, now known as BitVM1, used a multi-round interactive protocol. BitVM2 simplified this to a single-round fault proof using a split SNARK verifier, and is already proving practical for early adopters like Build on Bitcoin (BOB), Citrea and Bitlayer. Now, BitVM3 proposes to go even further by…

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recently saw one of the largest net positive flows year-to-date, and the market took notice. According to on-chain analytics firm Glassnode, 7,869 BTC flowed into U.S.-based spot Bitcoin ETFs last Friday, marking the largest single-day net positive inflow since April 29. Glassnode also noted that the seven-day SMA is trending higher, signaling a sustained uptick in institutional demand, which remains bullish for Bitcoin. Last Friday, US Spot #Bitcoin ETFs just recorded one of the largest net positive flows YTD – 7,869 $BTC – marking the biggest daily inflow since April 29. The 7-day SMA is also…

San Francisco-headquartered enterprise blockchain firm Ripple has just confirmed that its annual Swell conference will take place on Nov. 4 and 5. This time, the company’s flagship event will be held in New York, the financial capital of the world. The company has released the first wave of speakers. Notably, this year’s lineup will include Sandy Kaul, head of innovation at Franklin Templeton, and Ryan Rugg, Citibank’s head of digital assets. Ripple’s inaugural Swell event took place in Toronto back in 2017. In 2018, the company held what was arguably its most buzzed-about conference in San Francisco, with none other…

According to a Friday report by Reuters, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC), a Shanghai regulator, recently held a meeting with dozens of government officials in order to consider “strategic responses” to digital assets, including stablecoins. The report underscored the significance of such a “major” development, given that both crypto trading and mining are officially banned in China. The officials are reportedly open to showing “greater sensitivity” to bleeding-edge technology, which marks a significant change in tone. Shanghai, the country’s main financial hub with a nominal gross domestic product of $729 billion, could potentially…

Tokenstore’s integration with MyTonWallet Pay cuts out extra steps, letting users pay in TON or USDT directly at checkout, without conversions or delays. It’s the closest thing to digital cash the ecosystem has seen. According to a press release shared with crypto.news on July 9, MyTonWallet and Tokenstore have launched the first live integration of MyTonWallet Pay, enabling instant Toncoin (TON) and Tether (USDT) payments at checkout. The move eliminates the need for manual swaps or third-party gateways, effectively turning the self-custodial wallet into a seamless payment tool. For Tokenstore, a marketplace specializing in digital vouchers and gaming credits, the…

Akave, a decentralized storage network, has launched Akave Cloud, the first decentralized data layer built on a dedicated Avalanche Layer-1 blockchain. Designed for decentralized AI, DePIN, and compliance-focused SaaS applications, Akave Cloud provides encrypted, programmable, and verifiable storage for modern data infrastructure. The platform uses smart contracts to manage all storage operations, including uploads, reads, and permissions. Each interaction is recorded on-chain, creating tamper-proof audit trails and ensuring data sovereignty without sacrificing performance. Akave Cloud is already being used by organizations such as Intuizi, The Defiant, and Heurist.ai. It is also the first decentralized storage system to integrate with Snowflake,…