Coindesk

Matter Labs, the company behind layer-2 blockchain ZKSync, has been sued by BANKEX, a defunct digital asset banking platform, for intellectual property theft.Former BANKEX employees Alexandr Vlasov and Petr Korolev stole the company's technology to start Matter Labs, which received over $450 million in venture capital funding and has become a major player in the blockchain industry, BANKEX CEO Igor Khmel and the BANKEX Foundation alleged in a complaint filed Mar. 19 with the New York State Supreme Court.The complaint alleged that BANKEX was approached by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in 2017 to build operational software for "Plasma," a technology that was seen at the time as a way to make Ethereum cheaper to use.According to the complaint, Alexandr Vlasov...

Analog, a blockchain project looking to improve unified liquidity across multiple networks, said it raised $15 million through a token sale.Digital asset financier Bolts Capital completed the token purchase to bring Analog's total backing to $36 million, according to an emailed announcement shared with CoinDesk on Tuesday.Analog plans to use the capital to develop interoperability tools like Omnichain Analog Token Standard (OATS), which enables transfer of fungible and non-fungible assets across blockchains chainsAlso in the pipeline is Firestarter, a real-world asset (RWA) marketplace to tokenize real estate, collectibles and revenue-producing items.Tokenization of RWAs represents a use case for blockchain technology of considerable interest for traditional financial (TradFi) institutions. However, fragmented liquidity across multiple ecosystems is a potential roadblock to further...

Dutch bank ING is working on a stablecoin, looking to take advantage of Europe’s new cryptocurrency regulations that came into force last year, according to two people with knowledge of the plans.ING’s stablecoin project could take the form of a consortium effort involving other banks and crypto service providers, both people said.“ING is working on a stablecoin project with a few other banks. It's moving slow as multiple banks need board approval to set up a joint entity,” one of the sources said.ING declined to comment.Europe’s Markets in Crypto Assets regime requires stablecoin issuers across EU member countries to hold an authorization license, while promoting the potential of euro-denominated stablecoins (the vast majority of the stablecoins in circulation are...

Aave users can start supplying and borrowing Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin on the decentralized lending platform's V3 Ethereum Core market, Aave said in a Monday post on X.The peer-to-peer loans market has a supply cap of 50 million RLUSD and a borrow cap of 5 million RLUSD.RLUSD is a stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the U.S. dollar offered on the XRP Ledger and Ethereum blockchain. It is fully backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term U.S. Treasuries, and cash equivalents with each token matched by equivalent fiat value.Security features make RLUSD appealing to institutional users. An XRP Ledger amendment in January saw a “clawback” feature go live on the network, allowing the issuer to reclaim certain tokens, such as RLUSD, from users' wallets...

Bitcoin (BTC) is on the cusp of breaking out relative to the Nasdaq 100 Composite, with the current BTC/Nasdaq ratio sitting at 4.96. This means it now takes nearly five Nasdaq units to match the value of one bitcoin. The previous record of 5.08 was set in January 2025, when bitcoin hit its all-time high of over $109,000. Historically, each market cycle has seen the ratio reach new highs—2017, 2021, and now 2025—highlighting bitcoin’s continued outperformance against the Nasdaq. Across multiple timeframes, bitcoin is increasingly diverging from U.S. tech stocks. Year-to-date, bitcoin is down just 6%, compared to the Nasdaq’s 15% decline. Since Donald Trump’s election victory in November 2024, bitcoin has rallied 30%, while the Nasdaq has fallen 12%.When...