Author: NBTC

SharpLink Gaming (SBET), the ether (ETH) treasury company led by Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, continued its buying spree bringing total holdings above $1.3 billion. The firm said in a Tuesday press release that it acquired 79,949 ETH over the last week at an average price of $3,238, its largest weekly purchase ever. With the latest acquisition, the firm held 360,807 ETH as of July 20, worth roughly $1.33 billion at current prices. The company still has $96.6 million of funds raised by selling shares through its at-the-market equity for more ETH purchases, the company said. SBET shares were 6% up…

The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, wrote a letter to the G20 yesterday stating that the Financial Stability Board (FSB) — the forum’s financial overseer, which Bailey was appointed to head in April — is assessing the role of stablecoins in payments and settlements as a top priority. To the point: an analyst at Standard Chartered says that, once stablecoins hit the $750 billion mark, they may begin to influence the structure of U.S. Treasury markets. (Their market cap is currently at roughly $258 billion according to DefiLlama.) We also have Deribit making it possible for USDC…

Plasma, the EVM-compatible Bitcoin sidechain geared toward stablecoins, opened the doors to its token sale today for users who staked stablecoins in the Plasma vault in June. The chain is selling 10% of the XPL token supply at a $500 million valuation, utilizing the Sonar ICO platform to facilitate Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements. The token sale will be open to eligible participants for roughly ten days, with the XPL token slated to officially launch alongside the Plasma mainnet beta. Plasma is backed by USDT issuer Tether’s sister company, Bitfinex, as well as Framework Ventures and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.…

Crypto regulations remain unclear in India, but platforms must register with FIU-IND under anti-money laundering rules. Traders face 30% tax on profits, 1% TDS on every trade, and no loss offsets. The Indian government have stirred up fresh confusion for crypto users and traders. Currently, global crypto exchanges in India exist in a grey area, as they are neither legal nor illegal, and crypto assets remain unregulated under Indian law. Regulation Unclear, But Compliance Mandatory “At present, crypto or virtual assets are not regulated in India. Consequently, the question of the legality or illegality of specific crypto platforms does not…

Has Russia turned Kyrgyzstan’s booming crypto market into a backdoor for moving funds? A new report sheds light on how Kyrgyz-registered exchanges are helping Russian networks evade sanctions. Summary TRM Labs says Kyrgyzstan-based crypto exchanges are helping Russian networks to reroute funds. Kyrgyzstan’s crypto industry is thriving with billions in transactions, but weak oversight leaves it vulnerable to misuse. The Russian ruble-backed stablecoin A7A5 and shell VASPs tied to sanctioned groups are at the center of this growing sanctions evasion network. According to TRM Labs, Kyrgyzstan’s crypto industry has exploded from near-zero to billions in activity since passing its “On…

Bitcoin Core developers have been trying to squash a cockroach of a bug that has bothered full node operators since 2020. This month, it seems like they might have finally exterminated the pesky disk fill attack once and for all. The disk fill attack physically annoys the machines that operate full nodes. Attackers use commands like LogPrintf, LogInfo, LogWarning, or LogError to force the hard drives of victims to excessively write superfluous data to disk. Especially for cheap or older nodes that use non-flash storage with a spinning disk, this excessive logging overwhelms their hard drives, filling it with pointless…

A total of $1.7 billion worth of Ethereum (ETH) withdrawals from decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Aave in the past week have caused significant market volatility. This move by giant investors significantly reduced liquidity on the platform, briefly pushing borrowing rates above 10%. While this increase meant short-term gains for users who deposited their Ethereum to lend on Aave, it turned into a full-blown crisis for investors who implemented strategies to increase their Ethereum staking returns, called “looping.” Looping investors were earning profits by reinvesting Ethereum they had borrowed at low interest rates. However, a sudden increase in interest rates made…

Ethereum validators are experiencing the longest wait times in over a year to withdraw their staked ETH, as growing demand for staking collides with the network’s built-in exit limitations. According to data from ValidatorQueue.com, validators seeking to exit the Ethereum network must now wait approximately 8 days and 6 hours to complete the process, marking the highest delay since early 2023. At the same time, the queue to join the network as a new validator has also surged, with a wait time of around 6 days and 10 hours, the longest since April 2024. The widening gap between entry and…

The U.K. government on Tuesday said it intends to enable the wholesale market to identify the best distributed ledger technology (DLT) use cases as well as roll out tokenization solutions. The country wants DLT – the blockchain technology that underpins crypto – to be utilized across different sectors in wholesale financial markets and create cross market groups “to take forward live activity,” the country’s Treasury said in a policy paper. A part of the plan includes creating a regulatory framework for crypto technology, something which is already underway as the nation sets out to be a crypto hub. The U.K.…

Bitcoin reserve advocate Sen. Cynthia Lummis provided critical comments on Jerome Powell’s role in Operation Chokepoint 2.0. Additionally, she echoed Rep. Anna Luna’s allegations concerning Powell’s perjury. Is that a new turn in Donald Trump’s war on Powell? Summary Sen. Cynthia Lummis stated the Fed Chairman Jerome Powell mismanaged Operation Chokepoint 2.0 Lummis supported Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s perjury allegations, which some see as lawfare against the Fed Chair Pressure on Powell continues as President Trump threatens to fire him for not cutting interest rates Table of Contents Sen. Lummis’ criticism of Powell Operation Chokepoint 2.0 and Powell’s role in…