Author: NBTC

Keyrock, a Brussels-based digital asset services firm, has raised a Series C round led by SC Ventures, the venture arm of Standard Chartered, at a valuation of $1.1 billion, the company said in a press release Tuesday. Ripple, which provides blockchain-based enterprise infrastructure, also participated in the fundraising as an existing backer. The funding round remains open and could total up to $100 million. Keyrock said in the release that the new capital will be used to strengthen its balance sheet, expand its suite of services and pursue acquisitions. Founded in 2017, the firm offers market making, asset management, over-the-counter…

A significant regulatory step has been taken in the US that closely concerns cryptocurrency markets. The US Department of Labor has proposed a new draft rule that could open the door to investing in alternative assets like Bitcoin in 401(k) retirement plans. The draft regulation, published by the Department of State’s Employees’ Social Security Administration, aims to provide more than 90 million Americans with access to a wider range of assets in their retirement investments. The proposal details the processes plan managers should follow when including alternative assets in investment options, while also offering “safe haven” guidelines for selecting these…

Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) has introduced a new regulatory framework for crypto exchange-traded derivatives (ETDs), laying out how licensed crypto companies can offer the products in the emirate. In a Tuesday announcement shared with Cointelegraph, the framework, set out in Version 2.1 of VARA’s Exchange Services Rulebook, outlines requirements covering client suitability, leverage and margin controls, asset segregation, disclosure standards and regulatory intervention powers. VARA said the framework applies to licensed virtual asset service providers (VASPs) offering exchange services in Dubai. The update puts more formal guardrails around a higher-risk corner of Dubai’s crypto market as the emirate…

America holds roughly 38% of global Bitcoin mining capacity, and the specialized hardware powering that position comes overwhelmingly from Chinese manufacturers. Senators Bill Cassidy and Cynthia Lummis introduced the Mined in America Act on Mar. 30 to address that gap, proposing certification, domestic manufacturing support, and the codification of President Donald Trump’s Strategic Bitcoin Reserve to begin unwinding a foreign hardware dependence they frame as a national industrial vulnerability. Cassidy’s office cites 97% of mining hardware coming from China. Hashrate Index’s January 2026 update places US Bitcoin mining capacity at roughly 37%-38% of the global total, at around 400 exahashes…

The ECB now accepts tokenized securities as collateral, lifting DLT into its toolkit while X erupts over Axiology’s $XRP Ledger roots and “no $XRP” disclaimer. The European Central Bank has started accepting tokenized securities issued on distributed ledger technology as eligible collateral for Eurosystem credit operations, in what many in European markets see as a watershed moment for on‑chain finance. The change, effective March 30, 2026, follows months of preparation under the ECB’s digital finance and wholesale DLT experimentation agenda, and gives banks a way to post properly structured tokenized assets against central bank liquidity. The decision has quickly become…

The crypto market rarely stays predictable for long. Fresh data from Polymarket now signals a sharp shift in sentiment around Ethereum. Traders no longer treat its second-place ranking as guaranteed. The odds of Ethereum losing its position in 2026 have surged dramatically. At the start of the year, only a small fraction of participants expected such a scenario. That number has now jumped to 60%, reflecting growing Ethereum market cap risk across the ecosystem. This shift shows that confidence in Ethereum’s dominance has weakened. Market participants now actively hedge against downside scenarios. The biggest factor driving this change comes from…

For over a year, trading Hashdex’s diversified crypto ETF was like riding an amusement park without seatbelts. Investors could speculate, but if the market fell, there was little protection. That’s now changed. Options on the Hashdex Nasdaq CME Crypto Index ETF (NCIQ) went live on Nasdaq on Monday, providing investors a way to hedge, generate income and manage risk on a product that offers diversified crypto exposure, not just bitcoin or ether (ETH), for the first time. NCIQ, which debuted in February 2025, provides exposure to a broad, market-cap-weighted basket of digital assets based on the Nasdaq CME Crypto Index…

Chainlink Labs and Anchorage Digital announced that they were the founding contributors to a political action committee (PAC) “to support candidates working to advance digital asset and blockchain policy in the United States.” In a Monday announcement, the two crypto companies said they were supporting the Blockchain Leadership Fund, a hybrid PAC that allows contributions directly to candidates as well as independent expenditures, such as media buys. Source: Chainlink Neither company publicly disclosed how much they may have contributed to the PAC, and Federal Election Commission (FEC) records showed no funding between the Blockchain Leadership Fund’s creation in September and…

PlaysOut, the first Mini Game Layer built to power gamified experiences across super-apps worldwide, has announced its strategic partnership with Magne.AI, a U.S.-based technology company developing a Web3-native Artificial Intelligence (AI) smartphone and infrastructure that blends AI processing with blockchain technology. Partnership AnnouncementPlaysOut × @Magne_Ai PlaysOut is pleased to announce a new partnership with @Magne_Ai, establishing a foundation for collaboration across secure mobile infrastructure, on-device AI, and next-generation Web3 gaming experiences.Both teams will explore… pic.twitter.com/Om86n5jKd0 — PlaysOut (@itplaysout) March 31, 2026 The hidden purpose of this partnership is to create secure, AI-Powered, mobile-first Web3 gaming experiences. Both platforms are entirely…

Binance Wallet is set to introduce prediction markets through third-party integrations rather than an in-house service. Predict, a decentralized protocol on $BNB Smart Chain, is currently listed as the primary provider. Binance Wallet is preparing to add prediction markets to its product stack, opening a new lane for users who want to trade on outcomes without leaving the wallet environment. Binance is not building the market infrastructure itself. Instead, the wallet will aggregate services from external providers, with Predict, also referred to as Predict.Fun, currently identified as the main partner behind the feature. Predict operates as a decentralized prediction market…