Coindesk

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)Since Friday, cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin BTC, have demonstrated resilience in the face of the Iran-Israel hostilities. But they also haven't rallied on what might be considered positive news.The two largest tokens, bitcoin and ether ETH, have traded in a narrow range in the past 24 hours. Even the best-performing of the top 100 tokens, bitcoin cash BCH, added just 4%.Behind the scenes, though, institutions are continuing to embrace crypto. On Monday, investment banking giant JPMorgan filed an application for a crypto-focused platform, JPMD, to offer trading, exchange, transfer and payment services and issuance of digital assets.Strategy, for its part, said it bought over 10,100 BTC worth $1.05 billion last week, one of...

Traders on decentralized betting platform Polymarket have scaled back expectations for U.S. military action against Iran amid reports that President Donald Trump's team is looking to mend fences.As of writing, probability that U.S. will strike Iran by June 30 stood at 46%, down sharply from the overnight high of 66.9%, according to trading in the Polymarket-listed contract "U.S. military action against Iran before July."The decline follows a report from Axios that the U.S. is mulling a meeting this week between U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The meeting will be aimed at exploring a diplomatic initiative involving a nuclear deal and an end of the Israel-Iran conflict.Yet one Polymarket user said that "Trump should join the...

The number of whale wallets holding large amounts of XRP XRP has increased to a record high in a sign of confidence in the cryptocurrency's price prospects. "There are now over 2,700 whale & shark wallets holding at least 1M XRP for the first time in the asset's 12 plus year history," blockchain analytics firm Santiment said on X.Additionally, the amount of active XRP addresses has averaged over 295,000 per day over the past week, significantly higher than the average of 35,000-40,000 over the past three months.XRP is the payments-focused cryptocurrency used by the fintech company Ripple to facilitate cross-border transactions. As of writing, the cryptocurrency traded flat around $2.23, representing a 7% gain for the year, CoinDesk data show.Source...

The institutionalization of cryptocurrencies is accelerating rapidly.Crypto derivatives exchange Deribit's on-demand liquidity tool, the Deribit Block Request-for-Quote (RFQ) interface, has registered a cumulative trading volume of over $23 billion in less than four months since its debut in early March.Deribit is a prominent derivatives exchange, offering the world's largest options market for traders of bitcoin BTC, ether ETH, Solana SOL, and XRP XRP. It also offers futures and spot trading.The exchange introduced the block RFQ system in March, where participants (takers), typically institutions and high-volume traders, request pricing for a structure – a single instrument trade or a multi-legged strategy involving spot, futures, or options. A block trade is a large transaction.Market makers, entities tasked with providing liquidity, then respond...

Social media giant X suspended Pump.fun’s official account and co-founder Alon Cohen’s personal handle on June 16, alongside other memecoin-related platforms including GMGN, Bloom Trading, BullX, ElizaOS, and more earlier on Tuesday.The platform issued no reason, triggering speculation about internal policy enforcement or wider regulatory intervention, but sparked grapevine talk in crypto circles of a possible legal crackdown on such products.Pump.fun’s website remains live as of Asian morning hours Tuesday, continuing to churn out Solana memecoins uninterrupted. Theories range from unauthorized livestream or API abuse, pump-and-dump mechanics, or early-stage SEC activity. So far, none of these theories have been confirmed by platform officials or regulators.Last November, concerns over unsafe livestream content, ranging from threats of violence to explicit stunts, forced the...