Coindesk

A thawing in the trade stance from both the U.S. and China has sent risk assets higher in the hours since the U.S. stock market closed on Wednesday."The current tariffs and trade barriers are unsustainable, but we don’t want to decouple," said U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, disclosing plans to travel to Switzerland to meet with Chinese counterparts for trade talks this coming weekend."Senior U.S. officials have made a series of remarks hinting at adjustments to tariffs and have expressed, through various channels, a desire to engage with the Chinese side on tariff-related issues," said a China Ministry of Commerce spokesperson. "China has carefully evaluated these messages from the U.S. side and, after fully considering global expectations, China’s own interests,...

The leading Senate Democrat on a panel tasked with investigating corruption and mismanagement is scrutinizing U.S. President Donald Trump's recent crypto activities and whether they're part of a "pay-to-play scheme to provide access to the Presidency to the highest bidder."Richard Blumenthal, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations — a panel housed within the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs — wrote letters to Bill Zanker of Fight Fight Fight LLC and Zach Witkoff, a co-founder of World Liberty Financial on Tuesday, asking them a series of questions about the ownership and investment structure for Trump-affiliated entities, including Fight Fight Fight LLC (the company behind the TRUMP memecoin), CIC Digital LLC (which issued Trump's NFTs and...

Bitcoin (BTC) tightened its grip on the crypto market on Tuesday, with dominance surging to fresh four-year high as crypto traders rotated into the market’s anchor asset ahead of tomorrow's key Federal Reserve policy meeting.BTC held steady around the $94,000-$95,000 area, up a modest 0.4% over the past 24 hours and extending a tight-range trading pattern that has persisted since the weekend. Meanwhile, the broad-market CoinDesk 20 Index slipped 0.7% lower, with Ethereum's ether (ETH), and native tokens of Sui (SUI), Aptos (APT) and Polygon (POL) dragging the benchmark lower.A check on traditional markets showed stocks booking back-to-back losses, with the S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq closing 0.7%-0.8% down, once again underperforming BTC.Despite the lack of major price action,...

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has dropped its appeal in its case against Kalshi, a New York-based prediction market, according to a Monday court filing, finally clearing the way for the platform to offer political event contracts.Under the conditions of the motion for voluntary dismissal, which is still subject to court approval, both parties will pay their own legal costs and Kalshi waives any right to sue the CFTC for the litigation."Today is historic. We have always believed that doing things the right way, no matter how hard, no matter how painful, pays off. This result is proof of that,” Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said in a statement. “Kalshi's approach has officially and definitively secured the future of...

New Hampshire has become the first state to allow the investment of its public funds into crypto assets with its governor signing the new law on Tuesday.The state beat a number of others to the punch this year as what had started as a surge in state lawmaker momentum had run into roadblocks over recent weeks. As the first to authorize its treasurer to set up such a reserve, New Hampshire could very well beat the U.S. government in forming a stockpile, too."New Hampshire is once again first in the Nation," New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte, a Republican who's in her first year in office, posted on social media site X.The New Hampshire bill allows the investment of up to...