2024-04-04 07:43

The Solana DeFi application Kamino is offering a weekly yield of more than 999%, paid out in W and JTO tokens. Staking Wormhole's W token paired with JitoSOL in the Kamino liquidity pool on Solana is offering a more than 999% weekly return Participants can earn daily rewards of over 3,300 W and 666 JTO, worth $7,000 at current rates, plus trading fees. The pool has a capacity of $7.5 million, with just under $5 million locked as of now. It has generated $17,000 in fees from $6 million in trading volumes in the past 24 hours. Staking bridging application Wormhole’s newly released W token is making traders 999% a week as long as its capacity on Kamino, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform on Solana, isn’t exceeded. The return can be gained by pairing W with JitoSOL (JTO) and locking both tokens in a liquidity pool on Kamino. The rewards on offer are more than 3,300 W and 666 JTO a day, worth a cumulative $7,000 at current rates, plus a portion of the trading fees generated on the W and JitoSOL pool. The pool can take on a maximum of $7.5 million, data shows, and had just under $5 million locked as of Thursday morning in Europe. The data shows that in the past 24 hours, it has captured $17,000 in fees from $6 million in trading volumes. JitoSOL is a token that is issued when a user stakes Solana’s (SOL) tokens on Jito, a separate protocol also based on Solana. A liquidity pool can be thought of as a smart contract where two or more tokens are locked to facilitate trades between those specific assets on a decentralized exchange. W, Wormhole's governance token, was released yesterday with a market capitalization of $3 billion. It was airdropped to thousands of users based on their prior activity on the bridging application. Wormhole allows users to transfer tokens between different blockchains, such as Ethereum, Solana, Terra and others. The token was among the most anticipated this year because Wormhole remained one of the few major protocols that did not offer a token. The W price has dropped almost 30% in the past 24 hours, CoinGecko data shows. The CoinDesk 20 Index, a measure of the broader crypto market, has lost 1.24%. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/04/04/wormholes-w-token-is-paying-out-999-a-week-on-solana-protocol-kamino/

2024-04-04 07:03

The license is the first awarded by Singapore to a crypto market maker. The crypto market maker received in-principal approval from MAS in September. GSR recently appointed a former JP Morgan executive to be its head of trading Crypto market maker and liquidity provider GSR has been awarded a Major Payment Institution license by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). GSR now holds Singapore’s Digital Payment Token Service license, which authorizes firms to buy and sell “digital payment tokens,” which is what the government calls crypto and is also the license exchanges use. The market maker first received in-principal approval from MAS in September. Typically, liquidity providers and market makers are not licensed entities as they are not customer-facing entities. Recently, Singapore expanded the scope of its licensing regime to include custodial services and cross-border money transfers. Earlier this year, the trading firm appointed a former JP Morgan executive, Andreas Koukorinis, as its new head of trading. Bloomberg first reported that GSR had been awarded a license. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/04/04/crypto-market-maker-gsr-recieves-singapore-crypto-license/

2024-04-04 05:37

The Frax token (FRAX), a crypto-collateralized stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, and its staked version, sFRAX, will become native to the Cosmos ecosystem via Noble. Frax Finance partners with Noble to bring FRAX and sFRAX tokens from Ethereum to the Cosmos ecosystem. Noble is a Cosmos application-specific blockchain designed to issue native digital assets to Cosmos. Frax Finance, the decentralized protocol that is the home to the seventh-largest stablecoin FRAX, has forged a significant partnership with asset issuance chain Noble to expand its footprint beyond Ethereum to the Cosmos ecosystem, which comprises about 80 blockchains. The Frax token (FRAX), a crypto-collateralized stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, and its staked version, sFRAX, will become native to the Cosmos ecosystem via Noble. The expansion to the Cosmos ecosystem, an interoperability network, is expected to boost the adoption of FRAX and sFRAX in diverse applications, including trading, savings, payments and collateral, while offering Cosmos users a decentralized alternative to USDC, the world's second-largest dollar-pegged cryptocurrency. “Bringing native FRAX issuance to Cosmos has been a priority for some time, and we are thrilled to announce Noble as our issuance partner. We look forward to FRAX and sFRAX being available and are excited by the potential innovative use cases and incentives developed by us and our partners as well as by the broader community of Cosmos appchains and users,” Sam Kazemian, founder of Frax Finance, said. Frax Finance is a full-fledged DeFi ecosystem offering stablecoins, liquidity staking on Ethereum, a layer 2 platform, and lending markets. Frax's other tokens, Frax Price Index (FPI) and frxETH may be available on Cosmos at a later date. Noble is a Cosmos application-specific blockchain designed to issue native digital assets in the Comos ecosystem. Circle’s USDC expanded to Cosmos via Noble in September 2023. At press time, Noble had a total circulating supply of over $195 million USDC, accounting for 0.6% of the total USDC supply across all blockchains. Noble facilitates seamless integration of assets with major Cosmos chains, including Osmosis, dYdX, Celestia, Sei, Injective, and more. In the past four weeks, more than $2.5 billion worth of crypto assets have been transferred between Cosmos chains. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/04/04/frax-finance-expands-to-cosmos-ecosystem-via-asset-issuance-chain-noble/

2024-04-03 20:00

Flows into the new spot ETFs have been subdued for a couple of weeks, possibly prompting a renewed interest in macro drivers for price direction. The price of bitcoin (BTC) remained below $66,000 late in the day during U.S. trading hours Wednesday after a couple of modest rallies were met with quick selling action. At $65,800 at press time, bitcoin was flat over the past 24 hours. Dragged down by 10% declines in bitcoin cash (BCH) and litecoin (LTC) the broader CoinDesk 20 Index is lower by 0.7%. Bitcoin managed two rallies to around the $66,500 level on Wednesday, one move coming a softer than expected report on March growth in the U.S. service industry and another coming after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said he continued to expect rate cuts this year despite continued perkiness in both inflation and the economy. Most of bitcoin's rally in 2024 roughly came from mid-February to mid-March. It was during this time that the spot ETFs were regularly adding 5,000-13,000 bitcoin each day, even with sizable selling by Grayscale's GBTC. The action since, however, has seen big sales of bitcoin continuing at GBTC, while purchases into the other ETFs have slowed. On many days, net flows into the spot ETF group as a whole have turned negative. Alongside, the price of bitcoin has dipped about 10% from a record of nearly $73,500 hit on March 12. Macro factors figure in In addition to the spot ETFs, another hoped-for catalyst this year was to be easier monetary policy from the Fed. Economic indicators, though, have crumpled much of that case. Inflation, which had been receding steadily for all of 2023, has actually turned higher in the first months of 2024. At 3.2% year-over-year in February, it remains well above the Fed's 2% target. Alongside, the economy appears to be continuing to steadily grow, with job additions of more than 200,000 each month so far this year and the unemployment rate remaining close to historic lows, according to government statistics. Earlier Wednesday, ADP reported private payroll growth of 184,000 during March, topping February's 155,000 and expectations for 148,000. The main event on jobs will be Friday morning's Nonfarm Payrolls report from the government, with economists expecting 200,000 additions. The strong data of late has sent the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield to its 2024 high 4.43% and the U.S. dollar to its strongest level since last November – both of which could tend to put a damper on risk asset prices, bitcoin included. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/04/03/choppy-bitcoin-price-action-continues-ahead-of-fridays-jobs-report/

2024-04-03 18:37

Galaxy's prolific venture wing plans to start accepting – and investing – outside capital. Galaxy Digital’s venture team has long invested its own money in crypto companies. Now, it’s planning to do that with outside investors’ capital, too. The crypto investments giant is putting together a $100 million fund that will invest in early-stage crypto companies, according to an investor email shared with CoinDesk. Galaxy moved its venture capital franchise into its asset management business in 2023. Called Galaxy Ventures Fund I, LP, the fund aims to invest in as many as 30 startups over the next three years, with checks starting at $1 million. It will target financial applications, software infrastructure and protocols built on crypto, the email said. The new fund “will continue the success of our proprietary balance sheet investing but through a direct, institutional-grade fund,” the email noted. Galaxy is already a prolific investor in crypto companies; according to the email, it invested $200 million into more than 100 projects over the past six years. While Galaxy’s Interactive team has taken outside capital previously, this is a first for the venture team. “We’re excited to build on our successful track record of investing in digital asset ventures and blockchain infrastructure. For years, we’ve been putting our own capital behind these innovators. Now we’re launching Galaxy Ventures Fund I LP to partner with outside investors, allowing us to continue fueling the digital asset ecosystem by backing promising early-stage ventures,” said Mike Wursthorn, Galaxy’s head of communications. CORRECTION (April 3, 07:30 UTC): Corrects to clarify that Galaxy has previously taken outside capital through its Interactive division. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/04/03/galaxy-plans-to-raise-100m-for-first-crypto-venture-fund/

2024-04-03 15:48

The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened up comment periods for ETF applications for Grayscale, Fidelity and Bitwise. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has opened the window for comments on three ether spot exchange traded fund (ETF) proposals. The ETF efforts tied to Grayscale Investments, Fidelity and Bitwise will be subjected to a three-week comment period, according to notices posted Tuesday by the agency "to solicit comments on the proposed rule change from interested persons." Despite rising hopes after the agency's approval of bitcoin spot ETFs in January, industry analysts have become less optimistic that the regulator will follow suit with the products tracking Ethereum's (ETH). The commission had been pressured into abandoning its earlier opposition of the bitcoin applications after a key loss in a court dispute with Grayscale, and SEC officials had argued that their resulting approval of bitcoin ETFs doesn't apply to other tokens. Read More: Ether Tumbles 6% as ETH ETF Hopes Dim Amid Regulatory Probe Reports SEC Chair Gary Gensler had said in January that the bitcoin approval shouldn't "signal anything about the commission’s views as to the status of other crypto assets under the federal securities laws." The arrival of the stable of (BTC) ETFs dramatically amplified investments in that token. A similar outcome could be expected for ETH if the agency ever arrives at similar approvals. However, the SEC has reportedly been probing whether ETH should be classified as a security, which would put it on a different legal footing than bitcoin. May 23 is the deadline for the SEC to make final decisions on some of the ETF applications. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/04/03/us-sec-calls-for-comments-on-spot-eth-etfs/