Coindesk

Eight decades of dollar history can be read as a three-act play.Act I was the Eurodollar—off-shore bank deposits that sprang up in 1950s London so the Soviet bloc, European exporters, and eventually every multinational could hold dollars outside U.S. regulation, spawning a multi-trillion-dollar shadow banking base.Act II was the Petrodollar. After 1974, OPEC’s decision to price crude in dollars hard-wired global energy demand to U.S. currency and gave Washington an automatic bid for its Treasury bills.John deVadoss will appear in the “IEEE x Consensus Research Symposium: What's next in Agentic AI?” at Consensus 2025 on May 16 at 11:00am-12:30pm.Act III is unfolding now. USD-backed Stabledollars (a.k.a. stablecoins)—on-chain tokens fully collateralized by T-bills and cash—have leapt past $230 billion in circulating...

The European Central Bank (ECB) said it set up an innovation hub with 70 participants to test its digital euro project.The participants included start-ups, banks and payment services including global professional services company Accenture, Swiss telecommunications company Swisscom, Spanish bank CaixaBank and audit and tax firm KPMG, it said in a Monday release. The companies have signed up to work with the ECB to explore the central bank digital currency's payment functionalities and use cases, the release said.The ECB issued a call to small and large merchants, banks and payment-service providers last year. The central bank's President Christine Lagarde said that the testing phase of the CBDC, which it calls its preparation phase, should end by October. A decision on...

Formerly known as Janover (JNVR), DeFi Development Corporation (DFDV has added an additional 82,404 solana (SOL) tokens to its treasury, pushing its total holdings to 400,091 SOL.At SOL's current price of $143, the company stack is worth more than $57 million.The newly acquired tokens include locked SOL, purchased through BitGo’s over-the-counter desk, according to a press release. These tokens can’t be moved on-chain until unlocked, but they can still be traded over-the-counter between institutions, the firm said.The company said it plans to stake these assets to generate yield.The accumulation follows the acquisition of a validator operation earlier this week, which it will use to self-stake its entire SOL treasury and generate “protocol-native cashflow.”DFDV shares are lower by 3.8% in Tuesday...

Crypto asset manager 21Shares has launched a new exchange-traded product (ETP) offering investors regulated exposure to the native token of Cronos, a Layer 1 network developed by Crypto.com, for Web3 applications.The 21Shares Cronos ETP, which trades under the ticker CRON, is listed on Euronext Paris and Euronext Amsterdam. It carries a 2.5% annual fee and provides exposure to CRO.The product allows investors to add CRO exposure to their portfolios through brokers and banks, without handling crypto wallets or exchanges.This is the latest addition to the Zurich-based firm’s growing list of crypto-linked ETPs, which already cover various cryptocurrencies. The Swiss asset manager has also been moving to expand its offering in the U.S. with a recent S-1 registration form for a...

Bitcoin (BTC) options market flows signal moderate risk aversion ahead of Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Jerome Powell's expected remarks on a potential June rate cut Wednesday."While the Federal Reserve is widely expected to hold rates steady at this week’s meeting, we have only seen some nuanced demand for protective BTC puts, reflecting limited caution among sophisticated traders," said Luuk Strijers, CEO of leading crypto options exchange Deribit.A put option gives the purchaser the right but not the obligation to sell the underlying asset at a predetermined price on or before a specific date. Think of it as an insurance against price swoons. Traders typically buy put options when looking to profit from or protect long spot market positions from market...