Author: NBTC

South Korea, a nation long revered by the digital asset industry as the “El Dorado of liquidity,” is seeing a change in investment trends. The country’s famously tech-savvy and highly active retail traders are pivoting their capital away from digital assets and pouring it into the domestic stock market. They are being lured by the explosive, momentum-driven returns of the artificial intelligence and semiconductor sectors. South Korea has historically been a major hub and a boon for cryptocurrency trading due a highly enthusiastic population of retail investors, technological infrastructure as well as appetite for volatility. Many cryptocurrency projects have historically…

SWIFT Tackles the “Last Mile” as Ripple Pushes Instant Settlement on the $XRP Ledger Market analyst Diana notes that the gap between traditional cross-border payments and blockchain settlement is becoming increasingly difficult to overlook. While SWIFT works to refine the long-standing “last mile” issue, Ripple is already focused on enabling near-instant settlement through the $XRP Ledger. SWIFT may move messages between banks in seconds, but that doesn’t translate into instant settlement. The real delay sits in the “last mile,” where roughly 80% of cross-border payment time is lost after funds reach the beneficiary bank. At this stage, local compliance checks,…

Australia’s High Court has unanimously ruled 7-0 in favor of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, finding that Block Earner’s former fixed-yield crypto product required a financial services licence under existing law. According to a June 17 court document, the High Court determined that the product offered by Web3 Ventures Pty Ltd, which operates as Block Earner, functioned as a facility for financial investment and also met the legal definition of a derivative. The court found that investor returns depended on movements in underlying digital asset values and exchange rates. As a result of the ruling, the case will return…

Tether launched version 1.4 of its wallet with Lightning Network support, including BOLT11 invoices and LNURL functionality. The update allows sending and receiving Bitcoin over Lightning with improved fee estimation, within a self-custodial framework based on the WDK. The integration anticipates the migration of $USDT to Lightning through the Taproot Assets protocol, announced in January 2025 alongside Lightning Labs. Tether expanded the capabilities of its mobile wallet with the launch of version 1.4, which incorporates native support for the Lightning Network. The update includes compatibility with BOLT11 invoices and LNURL functionality, two standards that enable sending and receiving Bitcoin at…

Many experts share Bilotta’s AI agent outlook, including Charles Hoskinson, founder and CEO of Cardano’s Input Output, who said that by 2035 they will become more relevant than humans. The macro numbers support his stance. Data from the U.S. International Trade Administration via Trade.gov shows that business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce across the broader Asia-Pacific region is expanding at a 15% annual clip, with market values projected to climb past $28.9 trillion by the end of this year. Yet, despite that explosive growth, the plumbing underneath remains broken. The problem is fundamentally an issue of legacy infrastructure and compliance, Bilotta noted. Global…

Girin Labs Brings $XRP Ledger to Everyday Payments Girin Labs is bringing the $XRP Ledger closer to everyday use by closing the gap between holding digital assets and actually spending them. Through the integration of its Girin Wallet with Doppler Finance’s institutional-grade yield layer, the focus shifts from passive storage to active, real-world utility. The aim is straightforward: make $XRP and $RLUSD secure, spendable, and productive in daily transactions without compromising user control. At the core of the rollout is a simple shift that the Girin Wallet enables real-world payments on the $XRP Ledger. Users can spend $XRP and $RLUSD…

The People’s Bank of China said stablecoins could play a larger role in cross-border payments and called for closer monitoring of their impact on the international monetary system and global payment networks. According to remarks delivered by Wang Xin, director-general of the Research Bureau of the People’s Bank of China, at the Lujiazui Forum on June 17, policymakers are paying close attention to how stablecoins could affect the international monetary system and cross-border payment networks. Addressing a session on global financial governance reform and cooperation, the central bank official said sustainable development depends on large volumes of cross-border investment and…

The line between traditional brokerage and crypto exchange is blurring fast, and platforms are competing for traders who want exposure across asset classes without leaving a single interface. Bybit is the latest exchange to push deeper into this convergence, unveiling its Global Assets Trading Fest with a $202,000 $USDT prize pool, according to the announcement. The competition spans crypto spot, derivatives, and a range of traditional market instruments, reflecting the exchange’s effort to capture broader trading volume. As the second-largest crypto exchange by trading volume, Bybit is defending its turf amid aggressive moves by Binance, OKX, and Coinbase, all of…

The massive surge in the Bitcoin price since April 2026 is still viewed as part of a broader bear market phase, according to on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant. While some market experts believe the rebound could signal a new bull run, CryptoQuant’s unrealized profit data show the numbers are nowhere near bull-market levels. Notably, as $BTC’s value increases, rising selling pressure could threaten the cryptocurrency’s ongoing rally, potentially triggering a price breakdown. Profit-Taking Hits Three-Month Highs After Bitcoin Price Surge Bitcoin’s rally to $82,000 on May 6 came as a shock to the broader digital asset market, as that was the…

For years, DeFi’s growth strategy was to pull users on-chain, and the next institutional wave is testing where users may never know they’re touching DeFi at all. Matt Fisher, CEO of Katana, shared with CryptoSlate how the front end owns the user. If a credit card, a fintech app, or an exchange routes deposits into Morpho or another lending protocol, the customer remembers the card. The credibility problem underneath the optimism Fortune reported that Morpho closed a $175 million raise on June 9, backed by Paradigm, a16z crypto, Ribbit Capital, VanEck, Apollo Global Management, and Circle Ventures, among others spanning…