Tether’s USDT, the world’s leading dollar-pegged stablecoin, has experienced the sharpest weekly decline in market value in two years, spurring market volatility concerns. USDT’s market cap slid more than 1% to $137.24 billion this week, the most significant decline since the crash of the FTX exchange in the second week of November 2022, data from … Read more
Spanish banking giant Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) is deepening its foray into the crypto ecosystem. Garanti BBVA Kripto, a crypto custody platform operated by Garanti BBVA — Turkey’s fifth largest bank, which as of December 2023 was almost 86% owned by BBVA — will soon be providing crypto trading services to the general public. … Read more
Crypto majors zoomed higher in the past 24 hours as the market entered a widely expected bullish year, with bitcoin (BTC) inching above $95,000 to shake off losses from last week. A CoinDesk analysis from Tuesday flagged unusually high trading volumes for XRP stemming from South Korean exchanges, which has historically acted as a harbinger … Read more
Traders are no longer chasing upside in Nasdaq-listed MicroStrategy (MSTR), a leveraged play on bitcoin (BTC), signaling a cautious shift in market sentiment. MSTR’s 250-day put-call skew, which shows the difference in implied volatility between puts (options to sell) and calls (options to buy), has bounced to zero from -20% in three weeks, according to … Read more
This special edition of the Protocol looks back at 2024’s groundbreaking developments and forward to what the coming year might bring for blockchain technology. Let’s dive into the milestones, trends, and predictions shaping the next era of crypto. This article is featured in the latest issue of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech … Read more
By answering three key questions on return expectations and target portfolio volatility, multi-asset investors can evaluate bitcoin’s suitability for their portfolios and determine its optimal allocation based on their unique goals. Contrary to popular belief, bitcoin’s price is primarily driven by demand, not its (mining) supply. Each of bitcoin’s five bull markets has been propelled … Read more
Centralized data networks, ones that are owned and/or managed by a single entity, have been structurally broken for years. Why? Single points of failure. If one entity (or even a few) has access to a database, then there is only one “point” to compromise in order to gain full access. This is a serious problem … Read more
Finance is increasingly a weapon of war. United States policymakers and our allies focus too narrowly on macroeconomic tools like sanctions and promoting the dollar as a reserve currency when the modern front is evolving. Today, the real battles are being waged on smartphones and in the global currency markets. China is waging a multi-decade … Read more
Over the past year, the crypto industry has attracted users on an exponential scale, with monthly active addresses tripling from 70 million in 2023 to over 220 million in 2024. With over 300 chains listed, the ecosystem should be able to cater to the needs of all types of users sustainably. However, in this sprawling … Read more
XRP trading volumes on South Korea’s biggest crypto exchanges have overtaken those of bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) in a sign of flurried interest that often precedes price volatility. Total trading volume against the won on UpBit, Bithumb and Korbit, the country’s largest exchanges by volumes and users, topped $800 million in dollar value in … Read more