Author: NBTC

Institutional investors are betting on a crypto boom under President Donald Trump, with 92% expecting favorable regulations and key appointments to accelerate industry growth, a survey found. Institutional Investors Eye Regulatory Wins as Trump’s Crypto Agenda Takes Shape Institutional investors and wealth managers anticipate a more favorable regulatory environment and increased growth for digital assets under President Donald Trump’s administration, according to research by Nickel Digital Asset Management. The London-based digital asset hedge fund manager surveyed industry professionals across the U.S., UK, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, Brazil, and the UAE, managing around $1.1 trillion in assets. Nickel Digital shared the findings…

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe. As Solana awaits promised upgrades to its performance stemming from the release of Jump’s Firedancer client, one group is already plotting to move Firedancer to its own blockchain. Fogo Chain is a new layer-1 running on Solana’s software that will only use the Firedancer client and will implement multi-local consensus while making use of a curated validator set. Fogo’s creators think these features will help the chain — which is slated for mainnet and testnet launches in the first half of this year — push Solana’s software…

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has agreed to drop its enforcement case against Cumberland DRW, the crypto trading arm of Chicago-based trading firm DRW, according to a Tuesday announcement from the company. The SEC sued Cumberland DRW last October, accusing the firm of acting as an unregistered securities dealer and alleging it sold more than $2 billion in unregistered securities, naming tokens like Polygon (POL), Solana (SOL), Cosmos (ATOM), Algorand (ALGO) and Filecoin (FIL) as a “non-exhaustive” list of tokens the agency considered to be securities. At the time the suit was filed, Cumberland DRW and its CEO…

Eve Online creator CCP Games has appointed a former economist at the Central Bank of Iceland as its new Head of Economy. In this role, Stefán Þórarinsson will be conducting “experiments” where he will tinker with the virtual economy of its upcoming blockchain-based survival game Eve Frontier—in the quest of creating the perfect player-driven financial system. Þórarinsson believes that there aren’t any significant differences between working with real-world economies and virtual ones. That said, the major challenge he sees is the lack of research and data there is regarding virtual—and especially blockchain-backed—economies. As such, his first “experiment” will mostly focus…

ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood reportedly says that Bitcoin’s (BTC) market structure remains strong and the flagship crypto asset may soon have a massive breakout. According to a new Barron’s report, Wood says at the Cboe Global Markets 2025 Bitcoin Outlook webinar that the sideways trading of the top digital asset in the $90,000 range this month is “extremely healthy.” Says Wood, “We would not want the market to continue straight up to the right without looking back. We want a wall of worry.” Wood also says that institutional adoption of Bitcoin is in its “early stages” and money managers now…

Lombard Finance’s liquid-staking bitcoin token, LBTC, will launch on the Sui blockchain on Thursday, marking its first expansion to a non-Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible chain. The expansion extends LBTC beyond the blockchains it currently uses, which include Ethereum, Base, and BNB chains. The token is meant to install bitcoin as collateral on decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, which on Sui currently have around $1.3 billion in total value locked (TVL). Bringing LBTC to Sui means that users on the network will have access to bitcoin staking rewards while being able to leverage the tokens across its decentralized finance protocols, according…

A major crypto moment is set for Saturday, March 7. The White House will host its first-ever Crypto Summit, where discussions will go beyond Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). Word is that Cardano (ADA), XRP and Solana (SOL) could also be on the table for the U.S. Strategic Reserve. Founders and key figures behind these assets are expected to attend – except, of course, Satoshi Nakamoto. Solana cofounder Anatoly Yakovenko has a clear stance on the reserve idea, with three possible scenarios, in his view. Three major scenarios for U.S. Strategic Reserve One, there should not be a reserve at…

After Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao revealed his personal portfolio, BROCCOLI, a meme coin built on BNB, spiked nearly 33%. Although this asset spiked, BNB’s own altcoin actually went down. This is likely because CZ’s substantial holdings were common knowledge. CZ Reveals Substantial BNB Holdings Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the former CEO and co-founder of Binance, is impacting the market with his portfolio holdings. Recently, he caused a meme coin to rally after claiming he had little experience with DEX trades and caused a flood of BROCCOLI tokens when he revealed the name of his dog. Today, however, CZ displayed his…

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe. An SEC overhaul was one of the crypto industry’s major expectations upon lobbying for — and ultimately achieving — an administration change. While the Trump-Zelensky meeting fallout, the president’s crypto reserve announcement and tariffs have commanded headlines in recent days, the US securities regulator continues to share industry-changing news. The latest development? The SEC closed its investigation into Yuga Labs, which the company called “a huge win for NFTs” in a Tuesday tweet. It added succinctly: “NFTs are not securities.” Let’s map out the many other…

Bitcoin (BTC) price movements reflected a period of consolidation before dropping below $90,000 after BTC failed to break above its all-time high in February. According to the latest edition of the “Bitfinex Alpha” report, macroeconomic uncertainty worsens this scenario. Over the past week, Bitcoin fluctuated within a 6.5% range, peaking at $99,574 on Feb. 21 before closing at $96,346. Since it has dropped a further 7.5% to $88,600 as of press time. Two significant events exacerbated the market downturn: a hack involving crypto exchange Bybit and a sharp decline following the expiration of S&P 500 options. The latter resulted in…