Author: NBTC

BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund has been a gateway for new investors to enter the wider ETF market, according to Jay Jacobs, US head of equity ETFs at BlackRock. Around three-quarters of investors in BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF have never owned an ETF before, Jacobs told Cointelegraph on the Chain Reaction podcast Thursday. “IBIT was a way for traditional investors to now get into digital assets. But we have seen a lot of people really kind of enter into IBIT, starting with digital asset ETPs,” he said. Bitcoin ETFs were heralded as a way to bring traditional investors into…

Bitcoin miner IREN’s shares rose around 15.7% on Monday after the company raised its year-end AI cloud annualized run-rate revenue target to more than $4 billion following $2.8 billion in new multi-year cloud services contracts with AI developers. The company said about 85% of its revised annualized AI cloud revenue target is now under contract, with customers including Microsoft, Nvidia, Perplexity and Figure AI. CoinShares Bitcoin Mining ETF (WGMI) was up 9.61% as other miners also saw modest share gains, according to Yahoo Finance. IREN stock is the fourth-largest holding in that sector-tracking exchange-traded fund, at 10.05% of assets. Co-CEO…

In a recent tweet, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson warned that cutting funds for broader ecosystem development could have wider consequences than many assume. “The money isn’t going solely to IOG. It’s an entire ecosystem of third-party companies. If we got defunded, you’d see the collapse of dozens of companies,” Hoskinson said in response to an X user who shared his concerns about the Cardano ecosystem in a post. The money isn’t going solely to IOG. It’s an entire ecosystem of third-party companies. If we got defunded, you’d see the collapse of dozens of companies — Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) June 2,…

For years, crypto in Pakistan lived in a legal gray zone. Millions of people bought and sold Bitcoin and other coins, but no law clearly allowed it, and banks were told to stay away. That changed in 2025 and 2026. Pakistan now has a real crypto law and a regulator. But there’s a catch: as of writing, no exchange has a full operating license yet. The New Law: The Virtual Assets Act, 2026 Pakistan’s parliament passed the Virtual Assets Act, 2026, replacing an earlier temporary rule (the Virtual Assets Ordinance, 2025) with permanent law. It creates a dedicated regulator called…

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said Project Agorá completed real-value testing of tokenized wholesale cross-border payments, with 28 financial institutions and central banks settling about 800,000 Swiss francs (about $1 million) across 17 transaction scenarios. The BIS said Thursday that the tests used tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits to settle payments in Swiss francs, euros, pounds sterling, Japanese yen, South Korean won and US dollars, with an average settlement time of about 80 seconds. Participants included the Bank of England, Bank of France, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea and the Swiss National Bank, alongside commercial…

$LAB token ($LAB) collapsed 77% within two hours on June 2, sliding from a record $27.96 on MEXC to roughly $6 and erasing close to $6 billion in market value. Social channels are already calling it the most suspicious crash of 2026. On-chain trackers say the dominant addresses moving $LAB through the dump were routers, proxy contracts, and settlement infrastructure, not retail holders or whales. The crypto community is asking how a multi-billion dollar drawdown printed with no whale-sized sells visible anywhere on chain. The biggest individual sell recovered from the entire crash window was just $18,600. A single proxy…

Former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond has thrown his weight behind the long-debated Clarity Act. During his recent appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” he stated that the legislation would actually benefit the banking industry. Banks stand to benefit The Clarity Act, which aims to establish a comprehensive regulatory framework for digital assets in the United States, has recently stalled in the Senate due to various disagreements, with the banking industry mostly rallying to oppose the bill. Asked whether banks were right to oppose the legislation, Diamond argued that the opposite is true, given that the bill is “really good for the…

Bitcoin Got the Wrong Crash Crypto investors usually know exactly which crash they would rather see: oil, not Bitcoin. When oil prices fall sharply, the market often reads it as good news for risk assets. Lower oil can reduce inflation pressure, improve the outlook for interest rate cuts, and support assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, $XRP, and other major cryptocurrencies. In theory, an oil crash after easing geopolitical tensions should have been a bullish signal for crypto. But this time, the market did not follow the usual script. Oil crashed after fresh US-Iran peace headlines and signs that energy supply…

Analysts at Bernstein have raised their price target on Robinhood Markets, based on their investment thesis that the online brokerage’s next phase of growth will be driven by tokenized equities and prediction markets rather than traditional crypto trading. In a Monday research note, Bernstein raised its price target on Robinhood (HOOD) stock to $160 from $130 per share and maintained its Outperform rating. HOOD stock was last seen trading around $101. The analysts said prediction markets are poised to become Robinhood’s fastest-growing business, forecasting segment revenue to reach $1.7 billion by 2028, representing a 64% compound annual growth rate. Beyond…

A previously undisclosed poll being circulated among Senate Democrats shows that cryptocurrency remains deeply unpopular with the party’s base, potentially complicating the path forward for the long-awaited CLARITY Act as lawmakers prepare for a crucial procedural vote next week. According to polling conducted by Democratic research firm Normington Petts and obtained by Semafor, 84% of Democratic primary voters hold an unfavorable view of candidates backed by the cryptocurrency industry. The survey also found that crypto is viewed more negatively than oil companies, Wall Street banks and data centers by Democratic voters, highlighting the political headwinds facing lawmakers who support the…