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April has been a month of extreme volatility and tumultuous times for traders.From conflicting headlines about President Donald Trump's tariffs against other nations to total confusion about which assets to seek shelter in, it has been one for the record books. Amid all the confusion, when traditional "haven assets" failed to act as safe places to park money, one bright spot emerged that might have surprised some market participants: bitcoin. "Historically, cash (the US dollar), bonds (US Treasuries), the Swiss Franc, and gold have fulfilled that role [safe haven], with bitcoin edging in on some of that territory," said NYDIG Research in a note. NYDIG's data showed that while gold and Swiss Franc had been consistent safe-haven winners, since 'Liberation Day'—when President Trump announced sweeping tariff hikes on April 2, kicking off extreme volatility in the market—bitcoin has been added to the list. "Bitcoin has acted less like a liquid levered version of levered US equity beta and more like the non-sovereign issued store of value that it is," NYDIG wrote. Zooming out, it seems that as the "sell America" trade gains momentum, investors are taking notice of bitcoin and the original promise of the biggest cryptocurrency. "Though the connection is still tentative, bitcoin appears to be fulfilling its original promise as a non-sovereign store of value, designed to thrive in times like these," NYDIG added. Read more: Gold and Bonds' Safe Haven Allure May be Fading With Bitcoin Emergence... Read more

TRUMP, the memecoin tied to U.S. President Donald Trump, is up about 16% in the last 24 hours, even as Democratic lawmakers cite the president’s involvement with the token as potential grounds for impeachment and after a massive unlock earlier in the month.At a town hall on Friday, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) pointed to the crypto project offering its top holders an invitation to a dinner event with President Trump, calling it a clear case of selling access to the presidency, NBC News reports.“When the sitting president of the United States is selling access for what are effectively payments directly to him. There is no question that that rises to the level of an impeachable offense,” Ossify said.U.S. Senators Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also sent a letter on April 25 to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics asking for an investigation to determine if President Trump violated federal ethics rules by inviting top investors. Read more: Dinner With the U.S. President? All You Need Is $420 Worth of TRUMPThe allegations stem from an announcement that a private dinner will be held on May 22, where the top 220 TRUMP memecoin holders can meet with the U.S. President.Still, the TRUMP token has kept on rising. The memecoin surged over 70% after the event was announced and has already been up 85% over the last seven days.The rise came even after the token saw a massive $320 million unlock earlier this month, significantly inflating its circulating supply. In less than three months, TRUMP token is set to endure an additional unlock of 25.1% of its current circulating supply, at the time of writing, worth nearly $780 million.Despite the recent rise, the token is still down more than 77% from its all-time high above $70, which it saw shortly after launch. Its subsequent price plunge led to an estimated $2 billion of investor losses.Read more: TRUMP Token Pops 12% After U.S. President Calls It 'The Greatest of Them All'... Read more

Gaming tokens have seemingly been on the sidelines since the 2021 crypto boom. In fact, data from SoSoValue shows that they were the worst-performing crypto basket over the last 12-month period, enduring a 62% drop in the period, compared to a 174% rise on PayFi tokens.However, under the Trump administration's crypto-friendly stance, it might be changing.Gala Games—a blockchain-based gaming platform—says it became the first crypto gaming company to partner with the White House, bringing a Web3 game Easter Egg Hunt to the 2025 Easter Egg Roll. White House official X's account also mentioned on the social media platform about the tie-up amid a plethora of other collaborations with tech giants. The GALA token has risen roughly 18% since the announcement, GameFi tokens went up 13%, and the broader crypto market, as measured by the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index, rose 8%.User engagementThe effort aimed to introduce blockchain to families without overwhelming them. The game, hosted at easter.gala.games, offered a "free and simple" experience where players collected virtual eggs to win unique non-fungible tokens (NFTs) stored on GalaChain, Gala's proprietary Layer 1 blockchain, the company said in an announcement shared with CoinDesk.Players were able to log in, explore, and collect eggs without needing a crypto wallet experience, Gala Games said. Every NFT reward was stored on GalaChain, hinting at future use across Gala’s entertainment projects, including Gala Music and Gala Film.The Web3 gaming firm told CoinDesk that over 300,000 games have been played since the event launched, with about 100,000 new accounts created. Roughly 17% of participants went on to explore Gala's other projects, suggesting real user engagement beyond the Easter event.The project, founded in 2019 by Zynga co-founder Eric Schiermeyer, has been laying the groundwork for broader adoption through partnerships with DreamWorks Animation, NBCUniversal, and collaborations with artists like Snoop Dogg. Earlier this month, Gala Film announced a partnership with LG Electronics to bring Web3 entertainment to TVs, and the company hinted it is working with a government agency on transparency efforts.Industry reactionThe Easter game marks a real-world test for the project and the broader GameFi sector. When asked about the lead-up to the event, Schiermeyer shared that the project has been focusing on the high-level tie-up. "We have a team dedicated to government outreach," they said. "I also spent time at Mar-a-Lago and spoke with the President. But mainly we wanted to help make the event more fun, and I think that sentiment was well received."Industry reactions were mixed. Some praised the visibility, while others pointed out that more work is needed for the mass adoption of the GameFi industry. Jack O'Holleran, CEO of SKALE Labs, told CoinDesk that GameFi has never stopped expanding, but its issue has been visibility instead. The technology, on top of that, has matured. "In the past, you needed to manage your own crypto wallets and pay high gas fees just to play," he said. "Now, gas-free blockchains and seamless onboarding remove those barriers."“Functional values and utility that blockchain brings to gaming cannot be suppressed for much longer," he added. Still, a broader adoption of the GameFi sector will require further meaningful collaboration with mainstream gaming outlets. This could potentially open the “floodgates," O’Holleran added, as player bases for the traditional gaming sector are far beyond the crypto sector’s user count. If so, the “floodgates will be open.” Meanwhile, Mitja Goroshevsky, co-founder of Gosh, praised the visibility of Gala Games and the GameFi sector via the White House tie-up but warned that the industry must still solve its identity crisis. "It’s caught between being about gaming and being about trading," he said."Until blockchain games introduce fundamentally new experiences, government partnerships alone won't drive mass adoption."... Read more

Stripe is preparing to test a new stablecoin payments product aimed at companies based outside the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.The company’s CEO, Patrick Collison, confirmed on social media that Stripe had been planning this offering for nearly a decade and is now opening it up to pilot users.The announcement comes after Stripe received regulatory approval to acquire Bridge, a payments platform founded by former Coinbase executives Zach Abrams and Sean Yu. Bridge’s infrastructure offers an alternative to traditional systems like SWIFT for cross-border transactions.Stripe's stablecoin pilot project comes at a time when companies ranging from crypto firms to TradFi banks are piling into the industry, trying to grab a piece of the red-hot sector. In fact, Citi said stablecoins could be a "ChatGPT" moment for blockchain adoption, and the market, primarily pegged to the U.S. dollar, could grow up to $3.7 trillion by 2030 with regulatory support.Stripe has a long history with crypto. It was the first major payment processor to support bitcoin payments back in 2014, though it later dropped the feature over BTC’s slow transaction speeds and fees.Read more: Stablecoins Are a 'WhatsApp Moment' for Money Transfers, a16z Says... Read more

DeFi Development Corp. (JNVR), formerly known as Janover, is doubling down on its plan to buy more Solana for its treasury as it looks to offer up to $1 billion worth of securities. The firm, formerly a commercial real estate lending tech platform, revealed in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that it plans on using the funds for “general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of Solana.” The offering will include common and preferred stock, debt instruments, warrants, and units.DeFi Development has already acquired approximately $48.2 million of SOL and plans to operate validators on the Solana blockchain to earn staking rewards.Taking a playbook out of Michael Saylor's bitcoin buying strategy, corporations have been increasingly buying SOL for their balance sheets to provide TradFi investors with exposure to the token. SOL Strategies, the publicly traded company helmed by CEO Leah Wald—former co-founder of digital asset manager Valkyrie Investments—spearheaded the movement. Recently, the firm announced that it had secured an up to $500 million convertible note facility to ramp up its investments in the Solana network.DeFi Development's new offering comes after a significant leadership shakeup earlier this month. Former Kraken executive Joseph Onorati took over as CEO and chairman, and Parker White, another ex-Kraken engineer, was named chief operating officer and chief investment officer. The company also brought on John Han, a former Binance and Kraken executive, as CFO. DeFi Development adopted a treasury strategy centered around Solana as part of its new direction.In addition to the $1 billion shelf registration, DeFi Development also filed to register 1.24 million shares on behalf of early investors, including Pantera Capital, Payward (parent company of Kraken), and Arrington Capital.Shares of DeFi Development Corp surged more than 970% following the leadership shakeup and moved up roughly 4% in after-hours trading on Friday to now stand at $54 per share.Disclaimer: This article, or parts of it, was generated with assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.... Read more

Bitcoin (BTC) continued its spring rally on Friday and is on track for its strongest weekly showing since Trump's election victory.The largest and oldest cryptocurrency held around $95,000 during U.S. afternoon hours, up 1.8% over the past 24 hours. Ethereum’s ether (ETH) followed closely, gaining 2% to hover just over $1,800. Sui’s native (SUI), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Hedera’s HBAR led gains in the broad-market crypto benchmark CoinDesk 20 Index.Today's gains cap an exceptional momentum for crypto markets recovering from the early April lows amid tariff turmoil. BTC is up over 11% since Monday, putting it at its largest weekly gain since November 2024, when Donald Trump clinched the U.S. presidency, kickstarting a broad-market crypto rally.Read more: Bitcoin Traders Target $95K in Near Term; SUI Continues Multiday RallyInvestor appetite from ETF investors also bounced back strongly: U.S.-listed spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $2.68 billion in net inflows this week so far, the largest since December, according to SoSoValue data. (Friday inflow data will be published later.)BTC decouplingBitcoin's recent strength relative to U.S. stocks and gold underscores BTC's decoupling from traditional macro assets, said David Duong, Coinbase Institutional's global head of research."It’s rare to witness market inflection points in real time, as we only tend to recognize major regime shifts with the benefit of time and reflection," Duong said in a Friday report. "This week’s decoupling of bitcoin’s performance from that of traditional macro assets may be as close as we come to such a moment.""In our view, this divergence highlights bitcoin’s maturing role as a store-of-value asset—one that is increasingly being viewed by institutional and retail investors alike as resilient against the macroeconomic forces affecting risk assets more broadly," he wrote.Doung noted that the thesis is gaining traction with more companies adopting BTC corporate treasuries. Following the success of Michael Saylor's Strategy, Twenty One Capital, a new firm backed by Tether, Bitfinex, SoftBank, and a Cantor Fitzgerald affiliate, also plans to hold 42,000 BTC at launch.Due in part to recent accumulation, liquidity in the spot BTC market has been "significantly drained," Dr. Kirill Kretov, lead strategist at trading automation platform CoinPanel, said in a Telegram note. According to the firm's proprietary blockchain analysis, a large portion of bitcoin liquidity has been withdrawn from actively transacting addresses, including exchanges, since November 2024, exposing markets to volatile price swings.“The market is thin, vulnerable, and easily moved by large players," Kretov said. "Sharp swings of 10% up or down are likely to remain the norm for now."Bitcoin's route to fresh recordsWhile the route could be choppy, this week’s rally is likely the early innings of bitcoin's next leg higher to new records, said John Glover, chief investment officer of crypto lender Ledn.Based on his technical analysis using Elliott Waves, he said BTC began the fifth and final wave of its multi-year bull market.Elliott Wave theory suggests asset prices move in predictable patterns called waves, driven by collective investor psychology. These patterns typically unfold in five-wave trends, in which the first, third, and fifth waves are impulsive rallies, while the second and fourth waves are corrective phases.While retesting this month's low at $75,000 cannot be ruled out, Glover sees BTC climbing to a cycle top around late 2025, early 2026."My expectations continue to be for a rally to $133-$136k into the end of this year, beginning of next,” he said.Read more: Bitcoin Whales Return in Force, Buy the BTC Price Rally, On-Chain Data Show... Read more

The Swiss National Bank has rejected holding bitcoin reserves, citing concerns over cryptocurrency market liquidity and volatility."For cryptocurrencies, market liquidity, even if it may seem ok at times, is especially during crises naturally called into question,” said SNB President Martin Schlegel at the bank’s General Assembly meeting Friday.“Cryptocurrencies also are known for their high volatility, which is a risk for long term value preservation. In short, one can say that cryptocurrencies for the moment do not fulfill the high requirements for our currency reserves.”Unknown block type "jwpVideo", specify a component for it in the `components.types` optionSchlegel’s comments were prompted by the Bitcoin Initiative, a bitcoin advocacy group whose research demonstrates that adding bitcoin to Switzerland’s treasury would complement its overall portfolio and yield substantial return with minimal volatility. Without bitcoin, the Swiss National Bank's investments grew by about 10% since 2015. A 1% bitcoin allocation to the central bank’s portfolio would have nearly doubled returns over the same period, according to a Bitcoin Initiative portfolio simulation. Annualized volatility would have increased only slightly.The Bitcoin Initiative emphasized that bitcoin's volatility should not be evaluated in isolation, but in terms of its influence on the overall dynamics and performance of the investment portfolio.“[Bitcoin] price reached new highs, it showed resilience under market stress, and it continues to be highly liquid with trading volumes in the double digit billions, every day and night, even on bank holidays,” said Luzius Meisser, a member of the Bitcoin Initiative and board member of Bitcoin Suisse.“The Bitcoin network remains one of the most reliable and secure IT systems ever created. And most remarkably, the United States has started a strategic bitcoin stockpile.”In an emailed statement to CoinDesk, the Bitcoin Initiative suggested the Swiss National Bank’s aversion to bitcoin might be political, as it could be perceived as “an expression of distrust towards other currencies” and harm delicate relations between Switzerland and the European Union.European Central Bank President Christine LaGarde has consistently criticized bitcoin, calling it “worth nothing” and a “highly speculative asset” linked to money laundering. In January, Lagarde said “I’m confident” that “bitcoins will not enter the reserves of any of the central banks of the General Council” of the ECB.That was in response to comments made by Czech National Bank Governor Ales Michl that his institution was evaluating adding bitcoin to its reserves. LaGarde argued that bitcoin fails to meet the ECB’s criteria for liquidity, security, and safety from criminal associations.In February, Poland's central bank ruled out “keeping reserves in bitcoins under any circumstances” and the Romanian central bank warned banks not to issue loans to crypto companies.Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said in December 2024 that the U.S. central bank was “not allowed to own bitcoin” per the Federal Reserve Act and it’s not looking to change the law.The Swiss National Bank has bitcoin exposure through stocks that own corporate bitcoin treasuries, including 520,000 shares of Strategy, 8.12 million shares of Tesla, 580,000 shares of MARA Holdings, and 500,000 shares of CleanSpark, as of the end of 2024 according to Fintel data.Schlegel rejected citizen calls to add bitcoin reserves to the Swiss central bank’s coffers as recently as last month. When it comes to technological advancements, Schlegel noted Thursday that the SNB is running a pilot project using central bank digital currencies to facilitate payments between financial institutions.By contrast, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order this year that establishes a strategic bitcoin reserve and crypto stockpile, along with a Crypto Council that will evaluate budget neutral ways to supplement U.S. digital reserves. The order further prohibits government agencies from creating or promoting a central bank digital currency in the United States out of privacy concerns for citizens.... Read more

Consensus, one of the leading events in the crypto conference calendar, will take place in Miami, Florida, CoinDesk announced today.Consensus 2026 will take place May 5-7 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. The first Consensus was in 2015, starting in New York City. The event went virtual during the pandemic lockdown before moving to Austin, Texas in 2022, 2023 and 2024. This February, CoinDesk held its first Consensus in Hong Kong, attracting more than 10,000 attendees.Consensus 2025, the North American flagship event, will take place in Toronto May 14-16, featuring headline speakers such as Eric Trump, Charles Hoskinson and Sergey Nazarov. Up to 15,000 people are expected, according to the organizers."We are excited to announce that the Consensus conference will be relocating to Miami in 2026,” said Michael Lau, Consensus Chairman.“As a leading tech and crypto hub, Miami provides an exceptional setting for innovation and collaboration. Its vibrant culture, strategic location, and international connectivity make it an ideal destination for participants from around the world.“The largest industry-wide conference across the Americas, Consensus in Miami will serve as a pivotal meeting point for innovators and leaders, facilitating the most consequential conversations and business opportunities in this thriving metropolis."Tickets for Consensus Miami will go on sale during Consensus 2025 in Toronto.... Read more

Z Squared, a firm that specializes in mining dogecoin (DOGE), the dog-themed memecoin that was propelled to mainstream recognition by Elon Musk in 2021, is merging with biopharmaceutical company Coeptis (COEP).The merger will enable the resulting company to keep DOGE mining operations going, while Coeptis’ pharmaceutical business will be spun out and operated separately. As a result, the firm will become one of the largest publicly-traded companies with a primary focus mining dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies like litecoin (LTC).“Going public provides us with broader access to capital markets to fuel the growth of our mining operations and pursue additional strategic opportunities we believe will be accretive to shareholders,” Z Squared CEO David Halabu told CoinDesk in an email.The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2025. The combined entity will have 9,000 U.S.-based DOGE mining machines. The company declined to share revenue figures with CoinDesk.Spun out from Bitcoin (BTC) in 2013, Dogecoin follows a similar Proof-of-Work consensus mechanism, meaning that miners compete to solve an algorithmic problem in order to produce the next block on the blockchain; whoever solves it first is awarded coins for their efforts.At $27 billion in market capitalization, DOGE is currently the eighth largest cryptocurrency, just ahead of Cardano’s ADA and Tron’s TRX.With the bitcoin mining industry becoming extremely competitive in the last few years, mining operations are seeking new avenues for revenue — by dedicating resources for AI purposes, for example, or mining other cryptocurrencies like dogecoin and litecoin. Bitcoin mining firm BIT Mining (BTCM), for example, announced in December that it had made three times more money mining DOGE and LTC than BTC since it expanded into those cryptocurrencies.Z Squared isn't the first crypto miner to go public using this strategy. Other entities such as Core Scientific (CORZ) and TeraWulf (TERA) employed a similar playbook in 2022.UPDATE (April 25, 18:40 UTC): The article was updated with extra context about bitcoin miners going public through mergers.... Read more

Global bank Citi has predicted 2025 could be a possible inflection point for blockchain adoption driven by stablecoins, akin to the breakout year artificial intelligence (AI) had with popular application ChatGPT."2025 has the potential to be blockchain’s ‘ChatGPT’ moment," the bank's analysts said in a report published earlier this week.At the center of the Citi's projection are stablecoins, a class of cryptocurrencies pegged to traditional currencies like the U.S. dollar. These tokens, led by Tether's $145 billion USDT and Circle's $60 billion USDC, have seen tremendous growth recently and are increasingly being used for payments and remittances globally.Citi sees the asset class potentially growing to $1.6 trillion by 2030 in its base case from the current $230 billion, with the caveat that regulatory support and institutional integration take hold. In the bank's more optimistic scenario, the market could balloon to $3.7 trillion, though lingering structural challenges could keep the number closer to $500 billion in the bank's bear case.A major catalyst is the supportive regulatory stance in the U.S., with a recent presidential executive order directing the formation of a federal framework for digital assets, the report said. The clarity around stablecoin rules could allow these tokens to be more deeply embedded in the financial system, offering faster payments, improved transparency and more efficient asset settlement. "This could lead to greater adoption of blockchain-based money and spur other use cases, financial and beyond, in the U.S. private and public sector," the authors noted.Stablecoin issuers to become major U.S. Treasury holdersStablecoins are expected to remain heavily dollar-denominated in the future. The report anticipates that around 90% of stablecoins in circulation in 2030 will still be tied to the U.S. dollar, cementing its dominance.This has major implications for the global financial system. Dollar stablecoin issuers could become one of the largest buyers of U.S. Treasuries, assuming that regulations push toward backing tokens with low-risk, highly liquid traditional financial assets like government bonds. Citibank estimated issuers could hold $1.2 trillion in U.S. government debt by the end of the decade, potentially surpassing all major foreign sovereign holders.Meanwhile, the central banks of countries in Europe and Asia will likely promote their own digital currencies, or CBDCs, the report noted.The report pointed to several risks that could hamper the growth. Stablecoins de-pegged nearly 1,900 times in 2023 alone, including more than 600 instances involving major tokens, the report's authors wrote, citing Moody's data. In extreme cases, mass redemptions—like those following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) that consequently hit USDC—can disrupt crypto liquidity, force automated selloffs and ripple through financial markets, the authors added.... Read more

Paul Atkins’ first public event as chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was a crypto roundtable on Friday, where the new agency chief devoted his inaugural speech to assuring the industry that he'll continue to remake securities policy to favor digital assets innovation.The agency and industry have been awaiting congressional action to establish crypto market-structure oversight that will likely set guardrails, and Atkins told an audience at the SEC's Washington headquarters that the regulator will work toward delivering "a rational, fit-for-purpose framework" for crypto.However, in answer to a question from CoinDesk after his speech, Atkins indicated that the agency may be able to act to some degree during this wait for new laws."It's always good to have Congress' input, and if there's a statute to back up what we're doing, I think that's all the better," Atkins said. "But we have ample room to maneuver under existing rules and laws."Atkins further suggested that he thinks the concept of special-purpose crypto broker dealers, a little-used registration most prominently represented by Prometheum, has been very successful and may need to be reconsidered, and he said the agency will look at whether custody rules need to be changed to "accommodate crypto assets and blockchain technology."Atkins previously appeared at a swearing-in ceremony earlier this week in the White House, where Trump said "he's the perfect man to lead this agency" at a time when the digital assets sector needs regulatory clarity, and Atkins said a "top priority of my chairmanship will be to provide a firm regulatory foundation for digital assets." But Friday's event at the SEC's headquarters represented his first full-fledged engagement with the public.Read More: Crypto Ally Paul Atkins Sworn In to Replace Gary Gensler Atop U.S. SECThe crypto sector has high hopes for Atkins, though his stand-in for the past few months — Commissioner Mark Uyeda — already took a number of decisive actions to reverse the regulator's earlier crypto reluctance under former Chair Gary Gensler. As interim chairman, Uyeda reversed or sidelined a number of crypto policy efforts pursued under Gensler and has abandoned most of the regulator's prominent enforcement actions targeting the industry.Until now, industry expectations for Atkins' leadership were based on conjecture rooted in his experience advising and investing in digital assets firms, especially since his Senate confirmation hearing failed to explore his crypto views.Atkins had served as an adviser to crypto entities such as the Digital Chamber and as a board member of tokenization firm Securitize, and his ties to Off the Chain Capital had previously linked him to its investment stakes in big crypto companies like Digital Currency Group (DCG) and Kraken.Friday's roundtable was the third in a series the agency has held on crypto matters, this time focused on custody in the industry. Crypto custody has been a particularly dicey topic at the agency, which under Gensler's reign had sought to approve a policy demanding investment advisers put their clients' digital assets only with certain qualified custodians. Gensler had argued that the rule was meant to exclude most of the existing crypto platforms as suitable custodians, but the effort was put on ice.Read More: U.S. SEC's Acting Chair Walking Back Agency Proposal on Crypto Trading PlatformsAtkins was asked by reporters on the event's sidelines about President Trump's own crypto interests and whether Trump's memecoin, $TRUMP, will rob credibility from the White House on industry policy."I have no comment on any of that," Atkins said.... Read more

After several weeks on a plateau, bitcoin saw some action this week, climbing to more than $95,000 at press time. It was up 12% on the work-week, buoyed by better macro news and a feeling that the worst of tariff-mania may be over. The CoinDesk 20 — which tracks about 80% of crypto market cap — jumped 10%-plus in the last five days.In an interview with CoinDesk’s Sam Reynolds, Coinbase Institutional's John D’Agostino attributed the rally to institutions and sovereign wealth funds accumulating bitcoin. Retail traders, by contrast, were tending to exit bitcoin ETFs, he said.Institutions continued to back bitcoin-accumulation vehicles. On Wednesday, Strike CEO Jack Mallers and Cantor Fitzgerald’s Brandon Lutnick unveiled Twenty One Capital, a new bitcoin investment company backed by Tether, Bitfinex, and SoftBank. Twenty One will have the third largest bitcoin corporate treasury with 42,000 BTC, Reynolds and Francisco Rodrigues reported. There was increasing evidence from the options markets that traders are willing to hold BTC through market swings, which explains why bitcoin held relatively steady when stocks and bonds were diving in recent weeks. CoinDesk’s market wizard Omkar Godbole reported on that.Bitcoin became the fifth most-valuable of all financial assets this week, surpassing Google’s market cap for the first time. Not bad for a protocol that started as a hobby among cypherpunks 20 years ago. In other news, Zora’s much-hyped token launch sagged a little on debut. Analysts said traders were weary of so-called “VC tokens” with relatively little liquidity. “The $ZORA launch highlights a recurring issue in Web3: overpromising and underdelivering,” Min Jung, a research analyst at Presto, told markets reporter Shaurya Malwa.Ouch.But rising prices for core crypto assets is opening space for expansive Web 3 ideas. This week, the hit British TV series Peaky Blinders launched a blockchain-based video game and Web3 “ecosystem,” for instance. And, in a shift from a year ago, we saw plenty of other gaming and cultural-crypto news announcements.Still, if you had to pick two winners in the current market, you’d have to go for bitcoin and… stablecoins (there are going to be hundreds of them soon). This week, USDC-issuer Circle announced a new global payments and remittances network (Ian Allison reported), and Coinbase free conversion between U.S. dollars and PayPal's PYUSD stablecoin.You can’t go really too far wrong — though it’s not investment advice —accumulating bitcoin, and paying in stables.... Read more

Nasdaq, the operator of one of the premier U.S. stock exchanges and a crypto index, is advising the U.S. regulators to carefully focus on defining digital assets in four buckets that will clearly determine which agency acts as referee, according to a 23-page letter sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission's crypto task force."While a stock by any other word would still be a stock, the existing market ecosystem can readily absorb digital assets by establishing the proper taxonomy and calibrating certain rules to reflect what is truly new and novel about digital assets," the letter argued in response to the invitation issued by the task force's chief, Commissioner Hester Peirce, to weigh in on future regulations.The four future categories of digital assets, in Nasdaq's view, should be:financial securities (tokens tied to assets that are securities under existing definitions, like stocks, bonds and exchange-traded funds (ETFS), which Nasdaq said should be treated just the same as their underlying assets);digital asset investment contracts (tokenized contracts that check all the securities boxes under a "clarified version" of the Supreme Court's so-called Howey test);digital asset commodities (meeting the U.S. definition of commodities)other digital assets (stuff that doesn't fall anywhere else and shouldn't have rules for securities or commodities imposed on it)The securities categories belong in the hands of the SEC, which will be working with its cousin agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, that will handle the commodities. Those agencies — presumably directed at some point by a new crypto law hatched by Congress — will figure out the precise border between their jurisdictions.The letter, signed by John Zecca, the company's chief regulator executive, argued that "digital assets that constitute financial securities must trade as they do today."Nasdaq also suggested that the two agencies should formulate a kind of crossover trading designation for platforms that can handle digital asset investment contracts, commodities and other types of assets under one roof.In the letter, Nasdaq underlined its digital-asset credibility, saying its "trading and clearing services, market and trading surveillance, and central securities depository technology support digital assets platforms on six continents." It contended that the regulators should consider imposing safety measures or further constraints on firms that want to handle investors' activity from top to bottom, which is the common approach of existing crypto firms.Read More: SEC 'Earnest' About Finding Workable Crypto Policy, Commissioners Say at Roundtable... Read more

The team behind the Trump memecoin said Thursday that the top 220 holders on its list, where the smallest wallet holds $420 worth of TRUMP, are eligible to win dinner with President Donald Trump, contrary to rumors that a six-figure token stash was required.“We want to clarify a few things people seem confused by on X and in the Media,” the team’s X account posted. “You need $300K+ to participate (You Don't); That we're unlocking into this competition (We're Not).”TRUMP surged 70% this week, trading at around $12 as of Thursday, mainly driven by hype around the so-called “Dinner with Trump” event, according to CoinDesk’s earlier reporting.Some users on X claimed that only holders with more than $300,000 in tokens could participate. Others speculated that the wallet ranked 220 on a blockchain explorer was the minimum cutoff.The team dismissed both claims, stating that users must register via the official leaderboard and that only time-weighted holdings during the competition will count.Currently, the leaderboard's top wallet, under the pseudonym “Sun,” holds over 1.1 million TRUMP tokens, worth nearly $14 million. The 220th spot was held by “HAR,” with just 35.3 TRUMP tokens, or about $420 in dollar terms.Twenty five wallets are listed as VIPs on the leaderboard, where the cut-off holder sits on over $400,000 worth of TRUMP.The team also addressed concerns about token unlocks affecting the leaderboard, stating that both the cliff unlock and subsequent daily unlocks would remain inaccessible for 90 days, outlasting the competition itself.“We want to say again that the tokens from the initial cliff unlock and the following 3 months of daily unlocks will remain locked, each for an additional 90 days,” it said.... Read more

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 2774.43, up 1.5% (+40.48) since 4 p.m. ET on Thursday.Eighteen of 20 assets are trading higher.Leaders: SUI (+13.7%) and BCH (+7.1%).Laggards: POL (-1.9%) and ADA (-0.5%).The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.... Read more