Coindesk

A year ago, restaking was one of the hottest areas of crypto, and projects like EigenLayer were heralded as the next big thing.Fast forward to mid-2025 and total value locked (TVL) has fallen across the sector and the hype that surrounded point farms has withered away.Through it all, Ether.fi, the market leader, has stayed steady, helping users generate yield through liquid staking tokens (LSTs) that can be staked across the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.Now, Ether.fi is looking to expand with plans to become a neobank for crypto companies and users.Ether.fi's dominanceEther.fi, which is based in the Cayman Islands, benefited from being one of the first movers in the liquid restaking space, starting up a lucrative points farm which saw early...

Another company has elected to add bitcoin (BTC) to its balance sheet.Christian Angermayer, the chairman of Germany-based biopharmaceutical company atai Life Sciences (ATAI) announced today that the firm would develop its own bitcoin treasury strategy.“In an era of persistent inflation and volatile markets, I find myself asking an important question for biotech companies looking to preserve and optimize the capital they have: Could allocating a portion of treasury cash to bitcoin help preserve, optimize, and even extend a company’s runway and hence contribute to its success,” Angermayer wrote on Substack.The company will initially invest $5 million in bitcoin, Angermayer said, while holding enough cash, short-term securities and public equity for operational expenses into 2027.The pharmaceutical firm is the latest in...

Bitcoin developers looking to expand the blockchain's decentralized finance (DeFi) capabilities are likely to be considering zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, functionality that's not currently available and which require a so-called soft fork, or new version of the software, to introduce them.That's a problem, according Edan Yago, a Bitcoin veteran of over a decade and core contributor to smart contract operating system BitcoinOS (BOS)."Forking a blockchain, especially one with $2 trillion worth of value on it, is like open-heart surgery," Yago told CoinDesk in an interview "Hard forks are obviously much more problematic, but I think introducing any kind of fork is fraught."A fork is a change to a blockchain's code that necessitates a divergence at a certain point onto a separate...

NEW YORK — With the U.S. government's help, the crypto industry will become a dominant in finance, U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday.Crypto is "as big as you can get," he said during a five-minute taped speech at the Digital Asset Summit in Manhattan. Trump was met by a full room of attendees, many of whom entered the room just before his scheduled speech and who immediately vacated after he wrapped up."Pioneers like you will be able to improve our banking and payment system and promote greater privacy, safety, security and wealth for American consumers and businesses alike," he said. "You will unleash an explosion of economic growth."Trump noted that his administration has already stopped selling seized Bitcoin and has...

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 2712.19, down 1.0% (-26.22) since 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday.Three of 20 assets are trading higher.Leaders: BCH (+1.0%) and LINK (+0.6%).Laggards: AVAX (-4.5%) and DOT (-3.7%).The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.Source link