Coindesk

Two men suspected in the kidnapping and torture of a 28-year-old Italian cryptocurrency investor have pleaded not guilty, while the investigation into their case appears to have expanded to the New York Police Department itself.New York police had previously arrested William Duplessie, 33, and John Woeltz, 37, on the charges, as well as a third individual, Beatrice Folchi, 24, though her prosecution is being deferred. The victim has not been publicly named.The men are accused of kidnapping the victim and holding him hostage in a luxury townhouse in Manhattan’s ritzy SoHo neighborhood for more than two weeks. During that time, New York City police say the trio tortured the man, forcing him to take drugs, dangling him from a ledge,...

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage promised today to pass crypto-friendly legislation and establish a bitcoin BTC reserve at the Bank of England if he comes into government.“We have put together… the Crypto Assets and Digital Finance Bill. We will campaign for this, and we will put it in place when we win in the general election,” Farage said on stage at the Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas.“We are going to launch, in Britain, a crypto revolution. We’re going to make London one of the major trading centers of the world. We’re deadly serious,” Farage added.The legislation will prohibit banks from debanking customers for interacting with crypto, Farage stated. He also talked about implementing a capital gains tax of 10% of...

Bitcoin BTC quietly slid to its weakest price in nine days on Thursday afternoon as crypto markets cooled off after a multi-week rally from the April lows.The top cryptocurrency hit a session low of $105,750 before rebounding to just above $106,000. It was down 1.5% in the last 24 hours, but still only 5% away from record high levels.The CoinDesk 20 — an index of the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization except for exchange coins, memecoins and stablecoins — has slumped 0.9% in the last 24 hours, with solana SOL and avalanche AVAX underperforming BTC with losses of 1.8% and 2%, respectively. Meanwhile, Ethereum's ether ETH and XRP XRP defied the downtrend with 1%-2% gains.Crypto stocks have had a...

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — You shouldn't be a crypto libertarian that comes crying for government help when things go badly, according to Hester Peirce, the chief of the crypto task force at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission."I do think that sometimes, when something bad happens in this space, people who are remarkably free thinkers, libertarian-minded people, come in and say, ‘Where was the government? Why weren’t you protecting me? Hey, Crypto Mom, where’s my bailout?'" she told a crowd at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas, referring to her industry nickname."C'mon, let's have some consistency,” Peirce continued. “Yes, you should have freedom to make your own choices, and when it goes wrong, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, learn from...

There’s a science to issuing a token.At least that’s according to Shane Molidor, the founder of Forgd, a platform that specializes in advising crypto projects on how to launch their own native tokens.“It's easier now to launch a token than ever, especially with pump.fun,” Molidor told CoinDesk in an interview, referring to the Solana-based launch platform favored by memecoin creators. “But it's harder now than ever to launch a utility token that actually ends up performing well, because there's a finite amount of attention among retail and institutional investors.”“At the end of the day, everyone seeks a positive return on investment, but if there's a finite pool of capital, you've got a lot of churn,” Molidor added.Forgd provides free-to-use software...