Banking giant Deutsche Bank is building out a layer-2 rollup network on Ethereum with Matter Labs’ ZKsync technology. Bloomberg reported the project Wednesday, and a representative for Matter Labs confirmed the story. The chain will be “a public and permissioned L2,” Omar Azhar, the head of business development at Matter Labs, told CoinDesk over Telegram. … Read more
Wall Street’s rate cut outlook is overly pessimistic. This week brings an important update for investors everywhere. The Federal Reserve will update its interest rate policy on Wednesday Dec. 18. The consensus expectation is for a 25 basis point cut, lowering the effective rate to 4.4% from the current level of 4.7%. The more important … Read more
Plume, a blockchain network focused on real-world assets, raked in $20 million in fresh funds in a Series A fundraising round, the platform told CoinDesk on Wednesday. Investors participating in the round included Brevan Howard Digital, Haun Ventures, Galaxy Ventures, Lightspeed Faction, Superscrypt, Hashkey, Nomura’s crypto arm Laser Digital, A Capital, 280 Capital, SV Angel, … Read more
Solana’s network activity lit up on Tuesday as the Pudgy Penguins NFT project debuted its native token, PENGU, on the programmable blockchain. The layer 1 blockchain, considered a cheap alternative to Ethereum, registered a total transaction tally of 66.9 million, the highest since its inception in 2020, according to data source Artemis. To highlight how … Read more
Kraken, the seventh-largest crypto exchange, said its layer-2 rollup network, built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, has gone live. The network, called Ink, is based on the OP stack, a customizable framework that lets developers build their own rollups using Optimism’s technology. The team had originally planned for Ink to go live in early … Read more
No one can argue with 2024 being a breakthrough year for crypto. BTC and ETH ETFs launched, BlackRock spearheaded bitcoin adoption, a pro-crypto president was elected and BTC broke the 15-year all-time-high, to name a few. But the inflection point for crypto still awaits. Here are three predictions for 2025 that can help spark it: … Read more
Following the U.S. presidential election, crypto’s headwinds have seemingly dissipated. Since early November bitcoin has reached $100K amid regulatory wins such as the nomination of crypto-friendly Paul Atkins to replace Gary Gensler as SEC chair, the naming of crypto advocate David Sacks as the incoming White House “AI and Crypto Czar,” and Congressman French Hill’s … Read more
Donald Trump’s victory in the November presidential election is already ushering in a new era for crypto in the U.S., JPMorgan (JPM) said in a report Wednesday, noting that the total cryptocurrency market cap has jumped about 65% since his reelection. “Not only does this new administration bring a sense of crypto friendliness, but it … Read more
Earlier this year, some users of wrapped bitcoin wBTC were dismayed to find its issuer BitGo was sharing custody of their bitcoin (BTC) with BiT Global, a Hong Kong-based crypto custodian partly owned by TRON founder Justin Sun. The episode “reopened old wounds inflicted by previous centralized custody failure,” even though it did not expose … 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 3834.16, down 2.9% (-116.36) since 4 pm ET. One of 20 assets is trading higher. Leaders: HBAR (+0.8%) and BTC (-1.6%). Laggards: LTC (-7.6%) and FIL (-6.2%). The CoinDesk … Read more