Coindesk

A Trump family representative held talks to buy a stake in Binance's U.S. arm, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday. The stake could have been acquired through Trump-family backed crypto project World Liberty Financial, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.Steve Witkoff, a friend of the U.S. president, was involved in the deal talks, the report added.The talks started last year after Binance reached out to Trump's allies offering to reach a deal with the family so as to bring the crypto exchange back to the U.S.Binance U.S. this not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.Source link

Crypto trading volumes dropped sharply in February as concerns that President Donald Trump's tariffs on Mexico, Canada and other countries would stifle international trade reduced investor demand for adding to risky investments.Combined spot and derivatives trading volume on centralized exchanges fell 21% to $7.2 trillion, the lowest level since October, according to CoinDesk Data’s latest Exchange Review. Since November, the Trump administration has threatened to impose tariffs on trading partners including China and the European Union in response to what it considers unfair trade practices against the U.S. in various industries.Among centralized exchanges, Binance maintained its position as the largest spot trading platform with a 27% market share. It was followed by Crypto.com (8.1%) and Bybit (7.4%) with Coinbase (COIN)...

Bitcoin (BTC) staking platform Solv has raised $10 million for its Bitcoin Reserve Offering (BRO) as it aims to build a $100 million BTC reserve.BRO merges aspects of traditional convertible bonds with crypto-native features to drive institutional adoption of BTC finance, according to an emailed announcement shared with CoinDesk on Thursday.Solv is attempting to offer an "on-chain MicroStrategy" model, referencing the Michael Saylor-founded software company that now owns nearly 500,000 BTC.BRO may appeal to institutions who wish to invest in BTC as a store of value in a similar way to Strategy (as MicroStrategy is now called) but without physically purchasing and holding it themselves. Furthermore, they may be seeking a more active yield-generating form of BTC investment. Solv will...

Disclaimer: The analyst who wrote this piece owns shares of Strategy (MSTR).Strike (STRK), the preferred stock issued by bitcoin buyer Strategy (MSTR) has been listed for just over a month and is currently 3% higher than at its Feb. 5 introduction. Strategy's common stock, on the other hand, is 20% lower over the same period.Preferred stock like STRK can be thought of as a hybrid of equity and debt. Holders have a greater right to dividend payments than common stock owners if the company makes them and also to the company's assets in the event of a liquidation. STRK is a perpetual issue, which lacks a maturity date (like equity) and pays a fixed dividend (like debt).Those features mean preferred...

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)The crypto market has steadied over the past two days, with bitcoin briefly topping the 200-day simply moving average at $84,000 early today. Wednesday's softer-than-expected U.S. CPI release aided the sentiment by validating traders' pricing of four interest-rate cuts by the Federal Reserve this year.The past 24 hours' recovery was led by the memecoin sector, followed by tokens of layer-1 and layer-2 blockchains as well as AI tokens, according to data source Velo.Still, issues such as President Trump's tariffs, U.S. recession concerns and the bond-market volatility that recently rocked risk assets, including BTC, remain to cast doubt on the sustainability of the market recovery. That said, at least two factors suggest otherwise....