Coindesk

Crypto borrow and lend platform Euler Finance just clawed its way back from the DeFi wilderness.The protocol this week notched new all-time highs in total value locked (TVL) and total borrows – two pivotal metrics of activity for a DeFi lender. Euler's hundreds of millions of crypto-dollars now under management might leave it well short of the Ethereum world's lending powerhouses, like the multibillion dollar Aave. But it's nonetheless notable for a protocol that nearly went kaput following a $200 million hack exactly two years ago."A lot of people wrote us off and said it would have been totally normal for us to end the project right there," said Michael Bentley, CEO of Euler Labs. But his team decided to...

Russia has turned to cryptocurrencies to facilitate oil trade with China and India, effectively bypassing Western sanctions in its $192 billion oil trade, Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.The country has been slowly moving deeper into the cryptocurrency space. Just this week, the Bank of Russia submitted proposals to create an experimental legal regime (ELR) lasting three years, allowing a “limited group of Russian investors” to trade cryptocurrencies.Some Russian oil firms use bitcoin, ether, and stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) to convert payments made in Chinese yuan and Indian rupees into roubles, the Reuters report said. These transactions currently represent a fraction of Russia’s oil trade.Other sanctioned countries, including Iran and Venezuela, have used crypto to maintain trade...

Layer-2 network ZKsync has announced that it will be sunsetting the Ignite Program, which rewarded users for providing liquidity, due to bearish market conditions."After careful consideration, the DeFi Steering Committee (DSC) has decided to not renew Ignite for Season 2 and will be sunsetting the program starting March 17th, 2025 by turning off rewards for period 6," ZKsync posted on X.It added that the long-term vision is centered around the Elastic Network, which is composed of multiple chains within the ZKsync ecosystem."Unfortunately we’re navigating a bearish market right now. In line with many other ecosystems, ZKsync has decided to be more conservative with spend in the short to medium term in response to these evolving conditions," it added. "To stay...

Spot gold surpassed $3,000 an ounce for the first time before retreating to $2,990. Gold futures for April delivery also broke the $3,000 mark on Thursday.The precious metal is now up over 15% this year, driven by strong ETF inflows, geopolitical uncertainty, and continued concerns over U.S. equities amid ongoing tariff discussions by former President Donald Trump.Meanwhile, gold priced in British pounds has yet to reach its all-time high of £2,363, currently sitting around £300 below that level.Charlie Morris, founder of ByTree and manager of the BOLD ETF, which includes both bitcoin and gold, has observed a divergence between gold and bitcoin ETFs and expects this trend to reverse soon.“In the last 30 days, gold ETFs have seen $10 billion...

World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the Donald Trump-backed crypto project, has closed its token sale after raising approximately $590 million.The project's raise of $590 million would put it in the top-10 list of token raises, according to data curated by ICODrops. To date, the largest token sale is EOS, which raised $4.21 billion.EOS is a blockchain platform developed by Block.one, which later founded Bullish, CoinDesk's owner.On stage at Consensus 2025 in Hong Kong, WLFI co-founder Zak Folkman credited Tron's Justin Sun with the success of the project's token sale.After WLFI first launched its sale, its critics called the momentum sluggish. But this changed after Sun invested $30 million into it in November 2024 and later invested more."When we were launching this...