Coindesk

Luxor Technology wants to make bitcoin mining easier. That’s why the firm has rolled out a panoply of products (mining pools, hashrate derivatives, data analytics, ASIC brokerage) to help bitcoin miners, large and small, develop their operations.Aaron Forster, the company’s director of business development, joined in October 2021, and has seen the team grow from roughly 15 to 85 people in the span of three and a half years.Forster worked a decade in the Canadian energy sector before coming to bitcoin mining, which is one of the reasons why he’ll be speaking about the future of mining in Canada and the U.S. at the BTC & Mining Summit at Consensus this year.Follow full coverage of Consensus 2025 in Toronto May...

As the crypto industry matures, much of the focus remains on regulation, custody, and scalability. But in 2025, the biggest barrier to adoption isn’t policy — it’s user experience. Crypto’s interfaces are still too complex for everyday users. From managing seed phrases to deciphering blockchain transactions, onboarding feels more like navigating a maze than joining a financial revolution. Wallets remain fragmented, unintuitive, and risky.To reach mainstream adoption, the industry must prioritize usability — making wallets and financial tools more accessible — without compromising the core principles of decentralization. Until then, poor UX will continue to hold crypto back.Vitalik Buterin’s Call for Account AbstractionEthereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has been one of the most vocal proponents for improving the usability of crypto...

The proliferation of mainstream artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the last couple of years has stirred the crypto and blockchain industry to explore decentralized alternatives to Big Tech products.The synergy between AI and blockchain is built on addressing the risk of centralized ownership and access to data that powers AI. The theory goes that decentralization can mitigate against the entire AI economy being powered by the data owned by a few tech behemoths like Alphabet (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Alibaba (9988) and Tencent (0700).It is unclear as yet whether or not this will prove to be a significant problem at all, much less whether the blockchain industry will be able to solve it. What is clear, however, is that...

It’s been an exceptionally volatile week, but one measure may be signaling longer-term bullish sentiment for bitcoin. The sell-off in equities began on April 3, spurred by President Donald Trump's tariff-led uncertainties. Each day since then has been marked by sharp moves in both directions. The panic has hit both the equities and bond markets, while gold has surged to new all-time highs, and the DXY Index has broken below 100 for the first time since July 2023.In response, the S&P Volatility Index (VIX)—often called Wall Street's "fear gauge" —has surged to its highest level since last August and this is where things get interesting for bitcoin. The ratio of bitcoin to VIX has hit 1,903 currently, touching a long-term...

April—a month marked by extreme market volatility—saw intensifying U.S.-China tensions and a broad selloff in global markets that led to panic selling of almost all asset classes.Amid the chaos, one of the most improbable winners emerged from the strange depth of the crypto market: Fartcoin (FART).The Solana-based memecoin, has rallied nearly 90% in the past week and roughly 300% over the past month, leaving traditional assets — and much of the crypto market— far behind.By comparison, bitcoin (BTC)—the largest and most established cryptocurrency—has been roughly flat over the past week and month, while riskier altcoins like ether (ETH), Solana (SOL) and XRP are in the red. Meanwhile, the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index has slid around 2% over the past week...