2024-02-06 16:18
While bitcoin's price is often denominated against fiat currencies, Wood pointed out that even relative to gold, BTC has risen consistently since its early days. Cathie Wood, the CEO of investment manager ARK Invest, said there is a "substitution" from gold into bitcoin (BTC) under way, and the availability of spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) will extend that trend. While the price of the largest cryptocurrency is primarily denominated in fiat currencies, usually the U.S. dollar, even relative to gold BTC has been rising consistently since its early days, Wood pointed out on ARK Invest's "Big Ideas 2024" podcast. "There's now a substitution into bitcoin, and we think that is going to continue now that there is a much easier way ... to access bitcoin," she said. Bitcoin is often compared to gold as a store of value due to its finite supply and the difficulty in mining gold and mining BTC. That contrasts with other assets, such as national currencies, which can seemingly be printed out of thin air. By extension, the possible effects of the first spot bitcoin ETFs are likened to the effect the first gold ETF had. The yellow metal's price surged over 250% in the seven years following its first ETF in November 2004. Read More: ARK Invest Says Optimal Bitcoin Portfolio Allocation for 2023 Was 19.4% https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/02/06/bitcoin-etfs-mean-substitution-from-gold-into-btc-will-continue-says-cathie-wood/
2024-02-06 15:00
On-ramps like the one used in this partnership are a key piece of infrastructure serving as a bridge between traditional banking rails and blockchain-based crypto economy. Self-custodial crypto wallet MetaMask now lets users buy cryptocurrencies through the popular online trading platform Robinhood, MetaMask developer Consensys said in a press release Tuesday. With the integration, MetaMask users can purchase digital assets using Robinhood's order flow, while Robinhood account holders can fund and transfer their crypto assets to their MetaMask wallet. The offering is a result of MetaMask integrating the trading platform's fiat-crypto on-ramp called Robinhood Connect as a service provider in its "Buy Crypto" feature. On-ramps are a key piece of infrastructure serving as a bridge between traditional banking rails and blockchain-based crypto economy. Because of this, it plays an important role to onboard users to web3 applications. Robinhood rolled out its own on-ramp feature in April as a tool for users to fund their crypto wallets without having to leave a decentralized application. "We know that crypto and internet users want greater control and ownership," Lorenzo Santos, senior product manager at Consensys, said in the press release. "This will help more people access crypto in a seamless and self-custodial manner, by offering more buying options with service providers they already use and trust." In December, U.S.-based Robinhood expanded its crypto trading services to U.K. and Europe, anchoring its crypto expansion outside of the U.S. by touting the European Union's (EU) comprehensive digital asset regulations. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/02/06/metamask-deal-with-robinhood-broadens-crypto-access/
2024-02-06 10:34
The blockchain freeze triggered a drop in Solana's SOL token, though it rebounded. Solana, the low-latency blockchain that's seen an explosion in activity in recent months, experienced an approximately five-hour outage on Tuesday. Solana's SOL token slumped from around $96 before the problem began to below $94 as the incident was ongoing, but has since recovered nearly all of that loss. Transactions resumed being processed around 15:00 UTC, blockchain data showed. They had stopped around 09:52 UTC, data showed. The halt came nearly a year after the Solana network's last outage, on Feb. 25, 2023. "Solana Mainnet-Beta is experiencing a performance degradation, block progression is currently halted, core engineers & validators are actively investigating," Laine, a Solana validator, said in an X post when the problem was still going on. Core engineers said they identified a fix and were building a new version for validators to upgrade, network validator @mtromp said in an X post. In a follow-up post, Laine said that validators had begun generating snapshots using their local ledger state – or the most recent data before the outage – to prepare for a restart. The new validator software release includes a patch to address an issue that caused the cluster to halt, said the Solana Foundation, which maintains the network. "Validator operators should prepare for an upgrade and restart of the network," it added. Validators are entities that utilize computing power to maintain a blockchain and process transactions. Snapshots refer to an exact copy of blockchain data at a certain point in time. Node operators were informed on Solana's Discord channel that failure to upgrade to the latest software would result in the loss of delegation status for the Solana blockchain. This means that node operators would stop receiving rewards and the network may become less secure as nodes will be less distributed. Oliver Knight contributed reporting. CORRECTION (Feb. 6, 2023: 23:26 UTC): Corrects date of Solana's last outage to Feb. 25, 2023, instead of April 2023 as stated in a prior version. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/02/06/solana-network-suffers-brief-outage-sol-steady/
2024-02-06 10:05
The platform paused withdrawals and fired 100 employees last June citing issues with service partners. South Korean authorities have arrested three executives at yield platform Haru Invest for allegedly stealing 1.1 trillion won ($828 million) worth of crypto from around 16,000 customers, Yonhap News reported on Tuesday. The company’s CEO is reportedly among the three arrested by the Joint Investigation Team of Virtual Asset Crimes of the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors' Office. Haru Invest, which once promised double-digit yields for crypto deposits on the platform, has been in troubled waters for some time. It paused withdrawals and deposits in June last year, citing issues with service partners, and fired around 100 employees shortly afterward. Yonhap reports the platform is suspected of running a scam known as a “rug pull,” where founders of crypto projects disappear with customers’ funds. The prosecutors have accused the Haru executives of misappropriating customer funds between March 2020 and June 2023 while advertising they were using “risk-free, diversified investment techniques.” https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/02/06/haru-invest-execs-arrested-in-south-korea-for-allegedly-stealing-828m-worth-of-crypto-report/
2024-02-06 10:01
The statements will help a judge determine if institutional sales of XRP after the SEC lawsuit was filed in 2020 broke securities law, the SEC said in its request. A New York judge has ordered Ripple Labs to produce certain financial statements and information on the institutional sale of XRP tokens at the request of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), court filings from Monday show. The SEC request, made in early January, follows a pivotal judgment in the lawsuit that accuses the crypto firm of selling unregistered securities in the country. Judge Analisa Torres' ruling last July that only Ripple's institutional sales of XRP broke U.S. law was celebrated by the crypto industry as a victory in its efforts to clarify how regulators treat digital assets. Having found Ripple liable for violations before the lawsuit was filed in 2020, the requested documents will aid Torres in determining whether the court should order injunctions or civil penalties for the period since then and, if warranted, decide how much, the SEC said in its request. An order signed by Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn on Monday compels Ripple to hand over financial statements for 2022-2023 along with contracts governing institutional sales since the lawsuit was filed. Ripple opposed the SEC's request in a Jan. 19 filing, saying it was untimely and that the regulator had "failed to justify each of its requests on the merits." "The SEC’s request for irrelevant and burdensome post-complaint discovery, especially given the close of fact discovery, should be denied," counsel for Ripple said. Netburn granted the SEC's request in full. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/02/06/ripple-must-share-financial-statements-requested-by-sec-court-rules/
2024-02-06 08:51
The former president has been a considerable driver for related crypto trading volume since 2020, data shows. Mechanism Capital said it is betting on tokens and NFTs centered around Donald Trump. In the run-up to the U.S. elections, Trump's media profile is likely to drive these meme coins higher, regardless of whether or not he wins, the crypto fund said. Several Donald Trump-themed tokens on Ethereum, Solana and other networks spiked as much as 100% in the past 24 hours as crypto fund Mechanism Capital said such tokens were its first positions of 2024. “Mechanism Capital has accumulated its first new positions of 2024,” founder Andrew Kang said in an X post. “These new positions center around Trump and include Trump-related meme coins and NFTs. Prolific usage of Trump sticker packs to start immediately.” Those positions are a bet on news cycles and attention on Trump in the coming months ahead of the U.S. Presidential elections, Kang said, and meme tokens are a way to profit from the hype. “This bet is not just on whether Trump wins or not...His whole strategy is being provocative, saying outrageous and funny things, things that get the people going,” Kang added. Mechanism’s bet is on a specific TRUMP meme coin offered by @MAGAmemecoin. These tokens have a market capitalization of over $90 million and saw $3.3 million in trading volumes in the past 24 hours, DEXTools data shows. A crypto wallet thought to be directly owned or operated by Trump, as per labeling by the on-chain platform Arkham, holds over $1 million of these TRUMP tokens. The wallet originally received $7,100 of TRUMP from the meme coin’s developers between August and October of last year but grew significantly in value as their use as a proxy bet on Trump’s campaign grew. DEXTool data further shows several other Trump meme tokens rose in value in the past 24 hours, some rising as much as 100%, albeit on relatively lower liquidity and trading volumes than @MAGAmemecoin. As such, issuance of the TRUMP token, or any other meme token, has nothing to do with the former U.S. President directly. Anyone can call a smart contract and issue tokens on Ethereum (or other blockchains) for a few cents, and the presence of decentralized exchanges means tokens can instantly be issued, supplied with liquidity and traded soon after. Blockchain bettors crazy for Trump Meme coins, which are a gauge of popularity and not a prediction market, seem to be gaining popularity as an alternative tool for betting on future events, with tokens centered around the former president becoming a considerable driver for trading volume. During the 2020 election, FTX created a perpetual contract market in a similar fashion to the crypto derivatives markets it was famous for, asking investors to bet on the outcome of the election. Should Trump have won, it would have risen to $1, and when he lost, it fell to $0. In the run-up to the election, the TRUMP and BIDEN tokens had a combined volume of nearly $4 million, with just over $2 million traded in the days following the announcement by the White House that he had been diagnosed with Covid. Over at Polymarket, a contract that's asking betters to predict the result of the 2024 presidential election has over $37 million in volume, with a $4 million bet on the outcome of a possible Trump presidency and a $3 million bet on Biden. The market is currently giving Trump a 53% chance, while Biden has a 36% chance. Bettors are also giving 7% to Michelle Obama and 2% to Gavin Newsom, considered to be wildcard bets as there’s no credible evidence that suggests they would replace Biden as the Democrat’s candidate. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/02/06/trump-themed-tokens-rocket-as-prominent-crypto-fund-bets-on-coins-modeled-after-ex-president/
