Author: NBTC

A sweeping new regulatory landscape in the European Economic Area (EEA) has left most stablecoin issuers grappling with challenges, with Circle and Société Générale-Forge emerging as clear beneficiaries. According to data from the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), just nine out of approximately 23 electronic money token (EMT) issuers in the region have secured both EMT and crypto-asset services provider (CASP) authorization under the newly enforced Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation. Custody restrictions hinder service offerings The majority of European stablecoin issuers lack permission to hold custody of their own tokens on behalf of clients, significantly narrowing the suite…

Citadel has unwound more than 80% of the risk it acquired from Situational Awareness. The fund’s latest filing showed nearly $1.99 billion in Bitcoin miner positions, including major stakes in Core Scientific, Riot Platforms and IREN. The end of this forced selling could give miner stocks more room to trade on Bitcoin prices, operating performance and their growing AI infrastructure opportunities. Bitcoin miners have spent weeks under pressure from forced selling linked to the collapse of AI-focused hedge fund Situational Awareness. Citadel founder Ken Griffin said the firm had unwound more than 80% of the risk it acquired. The June…

In brief Jim Cramer says he is selling his Bitcoin after IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told him to get “paranoid” about crypto’s cryptography within three or four years. The warning follows a July 30 IBM and University of Chicago demonstration of verified quantum advantage. Traders invoked the “Inverse Cramer” trade, a pattern so established that a fund once existed purely to bet against his picks. CNBC host and long-time crypto critic Jim Cramer is out on Bitcoin—again. This time it’s over fears of the coming quantum computing threat, and it sounds like he might be out for good. Which is…

Ethereum’s better.codes contest now measures a cryptographic proof gap that researchers can attack from both sides. At 15:44:47 UTC on Aug. 21, the live leaderboard showed a 63.99-bit lower certificate and a 116.13-bit upper certificate for koalaIRS12. The two results left 52.14 bits unresolved after nine promoted submissions from seven solvers. KoalaIRS12 is a fixed parameter profile for an interleaved Reed–Solomon reduction used in proof-system research. The challenge repository defines its score as a spot-check quantity and expressly excludes interpreting it as minus-log2 of whole-system soundness or as full-protocol security. Researchers now have a public, reproducible measure of the distance…

Russia’s central bank has compiled a proposed list of crypto assets that could be admitted to public trading on exchanges under new rules approved last week. The list includes Bitcoin, Ether and Tether’s stablecoin USDT, the Bank of Russia said Tuesday, adding that the assets meet criteria including market capitalization, average daily trading volume and at least five years of price history on overseas markets. The proposal follows a new law, signed by President Vladimir Putin on Aug. 4, that gives the Bank of Russia authority to determine which digital currencies can be admitted to organized trading and set related…

Morph has launched a non-custodial payments platform that supports $USDC and $USDT, lets businesses connect their own wallets, and settles customer payments directly on-chain. Morph Payments leaves funds in users’ wallets According to an Aug. 12 press release from Morph shared with crypto.news, the service is available to online businesses, freelancers, and distributed organizations that want to accept, send, and monitor stablecoin payments. Morph Payments works by connecting a self-custodial wallet to the platform rather than requiring a business to transfer its funds into an account controlled by Morph. When a customer completes a payment, the stablecoins move directly to…

Bitcoin finished July on a strong note before losing momentum at the start of August with two straight daily closes below $63,000. The decline has raised fresh caution even as blockchain data points to steady buying around current price levels. That buying activity became clearer in recent on-chain data, which shows roughly 155,000 BTC moved into the $62,000 to $65,000 cost-basis range during the latest pullback. The zone now holds the largest concentration of supply across the market and represents about 0.7% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply. Accumulation Continues Despite Price Weakness According to the recent Bitfinex report, the supply cluster…

Coinbase founder Jesse Pollak responded to criticism that Coinbase sells Ethereum ($ETH), saying that the company’s contributions to the Ethereum ecosystem are being overlooked. Pollak stated in a social media post that Coinbase is by far one of the largest institutional $ETH holders, excluding digital asset treasury companies known as “DATs.” He also claimed that Coinbase has become one of Ethereum’s largest customers through the Base network, and that the company has made significant contributions to many developments in the EVM and Ethereum roadmap. Pollak stated that Coinbase introduced millions of users to the Ethereum ecosystem through Base, adding, “I…

Markus Infanger, an executive at Ripple, will speak at a major $XRP event. Infanger, who is RippleX’s senior vice president (SVP), is expected to participate in $XRP Seoul 2026, an event hosted by $XRP Ledger Korea scheduled for October 3 during KBW (Korea Blockchain Week). This event connects $XRP holders, builders, and ecosystem projects worldwide. The official $XRP Seoul 2026 X account announced that Infanger will be among the featured speakers at the event. This follows an earlier announcement in June that Ripple president Monica Long would be among the key speakers at the event. We’re honored to welcome @markusinfanger,…

The Clarity Act would take $XRP’s current digital commodity status, which today rests only on a joint interpretation from the SEC and the CFTC, and write it into permanent federal law. That single change would move $XRP’s oversight from the SEC to the CFTC, the same agency that regulates oil, gold, and wheat, and it would remove the risk that a future administration reverses the classification with a stroke of a pen. What Is the Clarity Act? The bill’s formal name is the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, also known as H.R. 3633. It passed the House of Representatives on…