Author: NBTC

Some digital asset industry advocates are pushing back against a provision in a $56 billion state budget passed by the Illinois General Assembly on Monday, due to its impact on crypto users. In a Senate bill included as part of the Illinois state budget for the fiscal year 2027, lawmakers proposed a 0.2% tax on crypto transactions, to be imposed by the “digital asset broker making or effectuating the sale of the digital asset business activity.” The 1624-page bill, part of the revenue and tax package to fund the state’s 2027 budget, passed along party lines early on Monday. Senate…

Binance is trying to enter the Philippines market through a local partner. Regulators are making clear it won’t be simple. The country’s central bank said neither the world’s largest crypto exchange nor its local partner, BlockShoals Technologies Inc., holds the necessary license to operate as a virtual asset service provider (VASP) in the country, BitPinas media reported. The license, issued by Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, is essential to facilitate crypto payment and transaction rails and is separate from any approval granted by the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). CoinDesk reached out to Binance for a comment. Binance has previously…

In brief The 7D-SMA of US spot Bitcoin ETF netflows dropped to -$88M/day, the largest outflow since mid-February, Glassnode said. The 10-year Treasury yield hit 4.52%, and April CPI came in at 3.8% year-over-year—the highest in three years—pushing back expectations of a Fed rate cut. Analysts say $77,000 is the key support level; a break below, with open interest still elevated, could trigger a deleveraging phase. Bitcoin is struggling to hold above $80,000 as institutional investors exit ETFs amid rising Treasury yields, even as the CLARITY Act passed the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday The leading crypto is up 0.8%…

Fund managers are warming back up to digital assets, with Bitcoin continuing to dominate allocation preferences even as broader crypto sentiment improves, according to a new survey by CoinShares. The April survey gathered responses from 26 institutional investors overseeing a combined $1.3 trillion in assets under management. Allocations to digital assets remain relatively modest, at around 1%, reflecting what CoinShares described as “typical entry sizing” in the current de-risking environment. “Bitcoin remains the digital asset with the most compelling growth outlook,” CoinShares head of research James Butterfill wrote in the report. Sentiment toward Ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL) also improved…

Cloud Engines are configurable, application-specific execution environments built on the Internet Computer. Each Cloud Engine corresponds to a private subnet assembled and configured under the authority of the Network Nervous System, or NNS, $ICP’s autonomous on-chain governance system. They allow enterprises and developers to deploy workloads with customized security, performance, and resilience characteristics, while preserving the Internet Computer’s core properties of decentralization, tamperproof operation, verifiability, and fault tolerance. Why Cloud Engines Matter Right Now Global cloud infrastructure spending reached $102.6 billion in Q3 2025, a 25% increase year over year, according to research firm Omdia, driven by rising enterprise demand…

Ripple Chief Executive Brad Garlinghouse has made the clearest case yet for why the CLARITY Act matters to the entire crypto industry, even as he acknowledged that Ripple itself already has the legal certainty most digital asset companies are still fighting for. $XRP Already Has Clarity. The Industry Does Not. Speaking at an event, Garlinghouse was candid about Ripple’s unusual position in the current regulatory debate. After a four-year, $150 million legal battle against the SEC, a federal judge ruled definitively that $XRP is not a security. That ruling gave Ripple something most crypto companies can only dream of: court-established…

Ripple has expanded its existing payment partnership with Bitso, a leading digital financial services company in Latin America, to support the issuance of a Mexican Peso (MXN)-pegged stablecoin on the $XRP Ledger (XRPL). The stablecoin will be integrated into Ripple’s decentralized exchange (DEX)-based payment infrastructure, currently under development, to streamline cross-border payments between the United States and Mexico. Stablecoin Strategy for Corridor Liquidity The MXN stablecoin will work alongside Ripple’s corporate U.S. dollar stablecoin, RLUSD, to provide efficient liquidity and settlement for remittances and business payments in one of the world’s busiest cross-border corridors. According to data from the World…

While the rest of the crypto industry debates which chain wins, Blockstreams has spent over a decade betting that Bitcoin is the only foundation worth building on. Founded in 2014, it is one of the oldest companies in the space. Peter Bain, chief marketing office at Blockstreams, sat down with TheStreet Roundtable to make the case that Bitcoin is no longer just an asset, but the infrastructure layer for the future of finance. Bain argues that Blockstreams has already built the full financial stack institutions need, with real-world adoption and a security track record that other chains simply cannot match.…

Opinions below are his own. At a pivotal moment for the future of money, last week an evidence session with the Bank of England offered something we do not often get: a clear, candid readout from the heart of the UK’s monetary authority on how it views digital assets, systemic stablecoins, and the digital pound. After 18 months deeply engaged in the digital assets regulatory debate, as co-chair of the APPG on Digital Markets and Digital Money, I came away with two overriding impressions: the Bank is listening, and the Bank is cautious. Both are understandable. Neither, on their own,…

According to reports, over 80% of the crypto firms operating in the EU have not acquired the full Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) license despite the looming deadline. For context, only around 210 of the 1,200-plus VASP entities with pre-MiCA national registrations have converted to full CASP authorization. MiCA’s Deadline Remains July 1, 2026 The European Securities Markets Authority (ESMA) released a statement on April 17, 2026, noting that the transitional period for crypto firms across the EU expires on July 1, 2026. That leaves only three weeks remaining as of the time of writing for companies to complete their…