Author: NBTC

Speaking in an interview at EthCC 2026 in Cannes, France, Kunz said many traditional finance firms are still approaching DeFi in silos, often attempting to rebuild technology that already works well. 1inch is a DeFi aggregator that routes trades across multiple protocols to find the best possible execution. Its technology is integrated into major Web3 wallets and used by some institutional platforms, including Coinbase. Institutions working in silos Kunz described 1inch as a hybrid between a search engine for token swaps and a backend infrastructure provider for financial applications. The platform’s routing algorithms identify the most efficient paths for trading…

Ethereum held the $2,000 support level and extended its upward structure, reaching a local high of $2,147. Over the past four days, each pullback formed a higher low, showing buyers stepped in at elevated levels. At press time, $ETH traded at $2,136, up 4.81% on the daily chart and 3% over the week. Despite this strength, analyst Darkfost warned that rising speculation could introduce higher volatility. Speculators dominate Ethereum, with Futures outpacing Spot Ethereum’s structure shifted as derivatives activity expanded faster than Spot participation. According to Darkfost, Ethereum’s Open Interest [OI] recovered from 5 million in October to 6.4 million…

President Xi Jinping’s China is back out front telling foreign companies to come in, sell more, build more, and worry less. On Sunday at the China Development Forum in Beijing, Premier Li Qiang said China would push for more balanced trade with global partners after a year of tariff fights and trade tension, especially with the United States and the European Union. This of course comes just after China reported a record $1.2 trillion trade surplus for 2025, even as governments across the world have been complaining about the country’s trade model, specifically its industrial overcapacity, and how much they…

Russian residents will be required to report their offshore crypto wallets to the federal tax authority under new legislation regulating digital assets, now filed with the parliament in Moscow. Domestic wallets will be known to the state anyway, as Russia intends to channel all cryptocurrency flows through local intermediaries licensed as elements of a sovereign crypto infrastructure. Several bills proposed by the government are fundamentally changing the way Russian citizens and businesses interact with coins like Bitcoin and how platforms process such transactions. Moscow wants to know all about Russians’ crypto holdings Residents of the Russian Federation will be obligated…

In a significant move for digital asset security, cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex announced on March 15, 2025, the establishment of a substantial $100 million user protection fund. This initiative creates a dual asset protection system when combined with the platform’s existing proof-of-reserves framework. The decision arrives during a period of heightened regulatory scrutiny and follows the exchange’s strategic pivot towards more aggressive altcoin and memecoin listings earlier this year. Industry analysts immediately recognized the fund as a proactive measure to bolster user confidence and institutional trust. Poloniex’s $100 Million User Protection Fund Explained The newly established $100 million user protection fund…

Biconomy has proposed a new Ethereum standard, ERC-8211, that introduces “smart batching” so AI agents and smart accounts can execute complex, multi-step DeFi operations in a single transaction while resolving each step’s parameters at execution time rather than at signing. The standard, published on April 6, 2026, is designed as a contract-layer encoding that works with existing account-abstraction frameworks and does not require any Ethereum protocol fork. 🗞️ Biconomy introduces ERC-8211 “smart batching,” allowing multiple actions to execute together in one transaction while resolving values dynamically. The system enables AI agents to perform complex multi-step DeFi workflows without hard coding…

Ethereum just posted one of its worst quarters in years. The second-largest cryptocurrency fell more than 30% in the first three months of 2026 as Trump’s tariff war and rising geopolitical tensions hammered crypto markets alongside equities. $ETH now trades near $2,113. That’s down from nearly $5,000 at its August 2025 peak, a drawdown of roughly 57%. Some market participants are openly questioning whether ethereum can even hold its #2 ranking anymore. Polymarket Bettors Turn Against Ethereum Prediction market Polymarket now gives ethereum almost 60% chance of losing its #2 cryptocurrency ranking to Tether’s $USDT stablecoin in 2026. That’s a…

South Korea’s FSS has asked Dunamu, the operator of Upbit, to correct its disclosure regarding its merger with Naver Financial, claiming that important details were omitted. Meanwhile, Korea Investment & Securities has positioned itself as a potential buyer of Coinone, following its rival Mirae Asset Group’s acquisition of Korbit. Why did the FSS issue a correction order for Dunamu and Naver? South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) has officially ordered Dunamu, the operator of the largest Korean exchange, Upbit, to correct its disclosure of the comprehensive stock exchange with Naver Financial. According to the FSS, the report submitted by Dunamu…

South Korea’s Financial Services Commission has ordered all cryptocurrency exchanges to implement near real-time asset reconciliation and submit to monthly external audits. Singapore Summit: Meet the largest APAC brokers you know (and those you still don’t!). The directive follows a February operational failure at Bithumb that briefly sent $56 billion worth of bitcoin to hundreds of retail users. The Bithumb Incident On February 6, 2026, Bithumb mistakenly credited approximately 620,000 BTC (worth around $56 billion at the time) to hundreds of users during a promotional event. The intended payment was 620,000 Korean won, roughly $450. Some recipients sold the bitcoin…

December 2025 — The Total Value Locked on the decentralized exchange Aster has decisively fallen below the $900 million threshold, according to data from Unfolded. This significant drop represents a decline exceeding 60% from the platform’s all-time high of $2.46 billion, recorded just two months prior in October 2025. The rapid contraction of Aster TVL signals a pivotal moment for one of the sector’s prominent platforms and reflects broader currents within the decentralized finance landscape. Aster TVL Decline: Analyzing the $1.5 Billion Drop The descent of Aster’s TVL from its peak is both rapid and substantial. Consequently, analysts are scrutinizing…