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Leading U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) is in advanced acquisition talks with leading global crypto derivatives exchange Deribit, reports Bloomberg.According to the story, the companies have notified Dubai regulators (where Deribit is licensed) about the discussions.Bloomberg earlier this year — alongside rumors that Kraken was discussing an acquisition — reported Deribit could be valued in the area of $4 billion to $5 billion.Mostly known for its spot trading business, Coinbase (COIN) would be making a big push into the highly profitable crypto derivatives market with a purchase of Deribit, which say trading volume in 2024 of nearly $1.2 trillion — almost double that of the year prior.Source link

South Korean financial authorities are planning sanctions against crypto exchanges who are operating illegally in the country, business newspaper Hankyung reported on Friday.The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) classified a number of exchanges who are not registered as Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) as targets for sanctions, according to the report.The exchanges targeted - BitMEX, KuCoin, CoinW, Bitunix and KCEX - have been found to be operating Korean-language websites without reporting to FIU. For that reason, they are classed as illegal businesses, as per the country's regulations. "We are currently reviewing blocking access to unreported overseas exchanges that are providing services to domestic investors through consultation with the Korea Communications Standards Commission," an FIU official said, accordinh to the report. "We...

Right now, my X feed is full of people who are giving up on Web3 gaming. I get it. Over $12 billion of venture capital funding has gone into it since 2020 and they haven’t seen the sort of breakout success that many expected. Even the best games haven’t reached anything close to mainstream scale. Token prices are down. Studios are shutting down. And everyone is exhausted.But measuring Web3 gaming by token prices alone is like calling the internet a failure because of the dot-com crash — it ignores how far the technology has come and where it's headed. It’s missing the real story.At its core, Web3 gaming is about giving players real ownership — not just of the in-game...

The German financial supervisory authority BaFin said it identified "serious deficiencies" in Ethena's synthetic USDe stablecoin.Ethena is the yield-generating protocol. The stablecoin has a market cap of $5.4 billion. Ethena said on X that it will "continue to evaluate alternative frameworks," after being notified that the "application under the MiCAR regulatory framework will not be approved."In a statement, BaFin said that the deficiencies are related to the "bank's business organization and violations of MiCAR requirements, such as those regarding asset reserves and compliance with capital requirements.""BaFin also has reasonable grounds to suspect that Ethena GmbH is publicly offering securities in Germany in the form of 'sUSDe' tokens of Ethena OpCo. Ltd. without the required securities prospectus," the regulator said.Ethena's ENA...

HK Asia Holdings (1723) said it bought another 10 bitcoin (BTC) for $858,581.The Thursday purchase took the Hong Kong-listed company's total to around 18.88 BTC at a cost of roughly $1.72 million. The acquisitions were made via open market transactions and funded through internal cash reserves.In a statement, the company said it views bitcoin as a viable store of value amid global economic uncertainty, inflation concerns and expanding use of cryptocurrencies in investment strategies as well as "its potential to act as an effective hedge against depreciation of fiat currencies."Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see...