Coindesk

Bergen County, New Jersey is turning to the Avalanche AVAX network to put its entire property record system on blockchain, claiming to be the largest property deed tokenization project in the U.S.Under a five-year agreement with land record blockchain firm Balcony, the well-to-do county across the Hudson River from New York city will migrate 370,000 property deeds — representing about $240 billion worth of real estate — onto an immutable, searchable blockchain ledger, according to a press release. The system, powered by Avalanche, will serve nearly a million residents across 70 municipalities."This initiative is about improving the lives of our residents," said John Hogan, County Clerk of Bergen. "By digitizing property records, we are making the process simpler, faster, and...

Trading platform eToro (ETOR) has expanded its crypto offerings in the U.S., adding 12 new digital assets including Dogecoin DOGE, Cardano ADA and XRP XRP, the company said Wednesday.The additions bring the total number of cryptocurrencies available to U.S. users to 15. The new tokens also include Aave AAVE, Chainlink LINK, Compound COMP, Ethereum Classic ETC, Litecoin LTC, Uniswap UNI, Stellar XLM, Shiba Inu SHIB, and Yearn Finance YFI. Previously, U.S.-based users could only trade Bitcoin BTC, Bitcoin Cash BCH and Ethereum ETH on the platform.The move is part of eToro’s push to widen its footprint in the U.S. market and to meet retail demand and match offerings from larger players like Coinbase (COIN) and Robinhood (HOOD).The announcement comes just...

Conduit, a cross-border payments firm that uses stablecoins, has raised $36 million in a Series A round to expand its global payment rails, the company said on Wednesday. The round was led by Dragonfly and Altos Ventures, with backing from Circle Ventures and Digital Currency Group among others.Founded in 2021, the Boston-based startup offers real-time payments that blend crypto infrastructure with traditional finance systems. Its platform supports both stablecoins and local fiat currencies, helping businesses in markets with limited dollar access or unstable currencies move money more efficiently.The firm claims that its clients have saved over 60,000 hours in settlement time and avoided more than $55 million in fees.Stablecoins are one of the fastest-growing sectors in crypto, and an increasingly...

Instant messaging app Telegram has signed a deal with Elon Musk's xAI to integrate the Grok AI service within the app.Telegram founder Pavel Durov, revealed on X, that the two companies agreed to a 1-year partnership that would see Telegram receive $300 million in cash and equity from xAI, in addition to 50% of revenue from xAI subscriptions sold via Telegram."Together, we win!" Durov wrote.The deal comes as Telegram looks to raise $1.5 billion via a bond offering that is being backed by the likes of BlackRock, Mubadala, and Citadel. The proceeds of the raise will be used to repurchase debt from Telegram’s earlier bond issuance in 2021.The messaging giant has 1 billion customers and reported a $540 million profit...

The futures and options market, a proxy for big money, is increasingly backing ether ETH over bitcoin BTC in a major market shift.Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization, recently reached record highs of over $ 110,000. According to CoinDesk data, the cryptocurrency has gained over 16% this year, drawing strength from the macroeconomic factors and persistent inflows into the spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds.Meanwhile, ether has dropped 20% this year despite its parent blockchain, Ethereum, maintaining its pole position in the decentralized finance (DeFi) and tokenization markets. The performance gap, however, may be closed in the near term as the following indicator shows a growing bullish bias for ether.Options indicate bullish sentiment for etherOptions listed on Deribit show a stronger...