Author: NBTC

Global commodities trading giant Trafigura is in early-stage discussions with Tether, the company behind the $USDT stablecoin, to launch a pilot program enabling digital payments at gas stations in El Salvador. According to a report from Bloomberg, the initiative would focus on stations operated by Puma Energy, a Trafigura subsidiary. Stablecoin Payments at the Pump The proposed pilot would allow customers at select Puma Energy stations in El Salvador to pay for fuel using $USDT, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. The move aligns with El Salvador’s broader push to integrate digital currencies into its economy, following the country’s…

In this article we will develop a trading system with a very simple logic, based on the use of the daily range as a measure of market volatility. As will be seen, even an extremely simple and linear rule can give rise to interesting trading ideas, especially when applied to markets characterized by directional moves and phases of volatility expansion such as Bitcoin ($BTC). The idea behind the strategy is to exploit the days when the market shows a certain compression of the move compared to its overall excursion. In particular, the system will compare the body of the bar,…

Ethereum’s [$ETH] RWA market is changing, with rivals taking a share of activity. But is it only about the competition? The Ethereum Foundation has been reducing its direct influence over the ecosystem in the recent times, raising eyebrows. Hence, one wonders – Is the network moving beyond both market dominance and centralized leadership? Ethereum’s RWA lead has dropped Ethereum’s active RWA market share has fallen from 93.4% at the start of 2025 to 61.1% by the end of Q1 2026. That is a big decline, but it does not mean Ethereum is losing relevance. Source: X Instead, the space itself…

EUR-denominated stablecoins processed at retail virtual asset service providers (VASPs) have grown 12-fold over 15 months to reach $777 million in transaction volume, according to Fireblocks’ State of Stablecoins 2025 report. European banks and fintechs are accelerating production deployments of Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA)-compliant stablecoins following the EU’s regulatory framework implementation. Banking Circle and SG-Forge have emerged as first movers in the MiCA-compliant stablecoin space. Banking Circle launched EURI, a euro-backed digital asset, while SG-Forge brought EURCV to market. Both issuers are now scaling production operations as regulatory clarity under MiCA has enabled institutional adoption. The growth reflects a…

More than half of $XRP Ledger nodes are still running outdated software, with just six days to go before a scheduled amendment activation. $XRP Ledger co-creator David Schwartz spent the weekend talking about a hard fork and downplaying, in his view, the probability of any contentious split in $XRP’s consensus due to their slow upgrades. The ledger’s so-called “fixCleanup3_1_3” amendment cleans up a series of issues affecting NFTs, permissioned domains, vaults, and a new lending protocol. It’s supposed to activate on May 27 but ideally should hold more than 80% support from trusted validating nodes for two weeks. The release…

China’s State Council, the country’s top executive body, has taken up a draft revision to the law governing the People’s Bank of China. The move is the clearest signal yet that Beijing is serious about restructuring how its financial system is supervised, regulated, and ultimately controlled. For crypto markets, the significance is indirect but real. Any rewrite of the PBoC’s legal foundation will almost certainly address digital currency authority, cross-border capital flows, and systemic risk tools, three areas where crypto and traditional finance increasingly collide. What Beijing is actually doing The draft revision to the PBoC Law sits inside a…

Nobitex, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has processed at least $2.3 billion through the Tron (TRX) and $BNB Chain networks since 2023, according to a Reuters investigation. The fund flows, which involve a nation subject to extensive U.S. economic sanctions, have drawn attention to potential conflicts between American foreign policy and the business interests of the Trump family. Fund Flows and Network Connections The Reuters report, published Thursday, details how Nobitex has moved significant value across two blockchain networks: Tron, founded by Justin Sun, and $BNB Chain, operated by Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Some of these Iran-related transactions are…

Strategy, the largest institutional Bitcoin ($BTC) investor, continues its $BTC buying strategy. Continuing its weekly purchases, Strategy maintains its belief that $BTC will rise. At this point, speaking to CNBC, Strategy founder Michael Saylor said that Bitcoin had fallen from a peak of around $125,000 to around $60,000, where it found solid support and bottomed out. Saylor has now added that Bitcoin has entered its spring warm-up phase. Saylor also stated that the current price level has strong support and predicted that the market would recover from this point. The well-known figure emphasized that the additional Bitcoin supply from miners…

A long-time Ethereum investor and community figure has pushed back against growing alarm over the string of departures from the Ethereum Foundation (EF), arguing that the organization’s commitment to the network is as firm as ever. Ryan Berckmans, who has worked full-time in the Ethereum space for eight years, offered one of the more detailed community-level defenses of the EF’s current direction since the exits started mounting this year. Departures Caused by Differences of Opinion According to Berckmans, people are misreading the situation. “The EF departures are not because the people departing feel differently about Ethereum and our trajectory vs.…

Fed hike odds have climbed to 52% while 30-year U.S. Treasury yields have pushed above 5%, tightening financial conditions and upping the pressure on risk assets from stocks to crypto. Market-based indicators show traders assigning a roughly 52% probability that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates again before year-end, reversing earlier consensus that the next move would be a cut. That marks the first time since the tightening cycle peaked that rate-hike odds have clearly outweighed expectations of cuts, according to futures-based tools that track implied probabilities from Fed funds contracts. Those shifting expectations are moving fast along the…