Kraken parent goes for the OCC charter in bid to become a federal crypto bank

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, has applied for a national trust company charter with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), according to a Friday announcement shared with CoinDesk, as the company looks to expand its regulated digital-asset custody business. If approved, the charter would establish Payward National Trust … Read more

Ripple-linked XRP pushes toward $1.40 as tightening range lowers breakout chances

XRP keeps grinding toward the top of its recent range, and the move is starting to matter more because liquidity has thinned out while price keeps compressing underneath resistance. That combination tends to make breakouts sharper once the market finally picks a direction. News Background • Analysts continue pointing to longer-term bull flag and falling … Read more

Hiring slowdown could be great for bitcoin (BTC) — unless wages spoil the party

Friday’s U.S. nonfarm payrolls report could inject volatility into the crypto market. Economists expect April job growth to slow sharply, with payrolls forecast to rise by just 62,000 compared with March’s 172,000, while the unemployment rate is seen holding steady around 4.3%, according to Reuters. At first glance, weaker hiring data appears supportive for bitcoin … Read more

AI agents could solve crypto’s user problem

The crypto industry’s embrace of AI is less about chatbots and more about building financial infrastructure for autonomous machines, says Chappy Asel, a former Apple engineer and founder of AI nonprofit The AI Collective. Speaking at Consensus Miami, Asel, founder of The AI Collective, a global nonprofit AI community with more than 200,000 members across … Read more

Privacy and accountability can coexist onchain, say panelists at Consensus Miami

Public blockchains make transactions transparent enough to trace, audit and police, but that visibility can come at the expense of user privacy. Traditional compliance systems often address accountability by identifying people, but that can undermine one of crypto’s original promises: the ability to transact without exposing personal identity by default. According to panelists at CoinDesk’s … Read more

Coinbax wins $20,000 PitchFest prize at Consensus Miami for stablecoin compliance

MIAMI – Coinbax won the $20,000 grand prize at Consensus Miami’s PitchFest after pitching a system designed to help banks and financial firms manage compliance for stablecoin payments. The company, founded by former Jack Henry executive Peter Glyman, builds programmable escrow infrastructure that adds controls to wallet-to-wallet crypto transactions. The software is meant to reduce … Read more

Coinbase stock drops 4% after Q1 revenue miss as crypto trading slows

Coinbase (COIN) shares fell about 4% in after-hours trading Thursday after the crypto platform reported weaker-than-expected first-quarter results as falling crypto prices weighed on trading activity, one of the company’s main sources of revenue. The company posted a loss of $1.49 per share, compared with analyst expectations for a 27-cent profit. Revenue came in at … Read more

AWS, Coinbase, and Stripe build payment rails for bots

Amazon Web Services (AWS) rolled out a new payments infrastructure for AI agents on Thursday which is built in partnership with Coinbase and Stripe. AWS explained that autonomous software agents will be allowed to buy APIs, web content, MCP servers and other online services in real time using stablecoins. It added, however, that future versions … Read more

ANTPOOL, Block Inc, F2Pool, Foundry, Spiderpool, MARA Foundation & DMND Join Stratum V2 Working Group

The Stratum v2 Working Group announces today that ANTPOOL, Block Inc, F2Pool, Foundry, Spiderpool, MARA Foundation, and DMND have joined the working group to advance the adoption of the Stratum v2 protocol.  The working group was founded in 2022 by Braiins and Spiral to develop and maintain the Stratum v2 protocol as an open and … Read more