Coindesk

Tokenized gold, such as Tether’s XAUT and Paxos’ PAXG continued to be a favorite of crypto investors in Asia as investors seek a safe haven despite a de-escalation in trade war tensions.On-chain data shows that Tether’s XAUT was a top-10 market performer out of all digital assets. Tether’s tokenized gold, the largest by market cap, is up 3.4% in the last 24 hours.CoinGecko data shows the sector is up 4.3% in the last 24 hours, compared to the CoinDesk 20, an index of the performance of the largest digital assets, which is down 2%.The price of gold initially moved down during the early hours of the Asia trading day, after breaching an all-time high during the end of U.S. hours....

For years, Wall Street criticized bitcoin (BTC) for its volatility, but the situation has dramatically changed as President Donald Trump's aggressive trade policies diminish the appeal of U.S. assets.Since Trump's Liberation Day tariff announcement on April 2, the seven-day realized volatility of the S&P 500, Wall Street's benchmark equity index, has surged from an annualized 50% to 169%, according to data from TradingView. That's the highest level since the coronavirus crash in 2020.BTC's seven-day realized volatility has doubled to 83%, yet it remains significantly lower than the S&P 500, hinting at the cryptocurrency's possible evolution as a low-beta hedge against stocks. The cryptocurrency also looks significantly less volatile than the S&P 500 on a 30-day basis."Equity markets experienced a...

Ripple Labs and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have jointly requested a pause in their respective appeals to finalize a potential settlement, per a motion filed on Thursday.The filing signals a possible end to a high-profile dispute that has gripped the payments upstart industry since December 2020 for its sale of XRP tokens, which the SEC alleged were unregistered securities.The case has been a focal point for debates over the regulatory status of cryptocurrencies in the United States, with Ripple arguing that XRP is a currency, not a security, and thus outside the SEC’s jurisdiction.Ripple and the SEC have reached an “agreement in principle” to resolve all outstanding issues, per a post shared by attorney James Filan. This...

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is under fire from Senate Democrats following his recent decision to narrow the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) crypto enforcement priorities and disband its crypto enforcement squad.In a Thursday letter to Blanche, six Senate Democrats — Sens. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I), Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) — blasted his decision to cut the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET) as “giv a free pass to cryptocurrency money launderers.”The Senators called Blanche’s directive that DOJ staff no longer pursue cases against crypto exchanges, mixers or offline wallets “for the acts of their end users” or bring criminal charges for regulatory violations in cases involving crypto, including violations of...

With a signature from President Donald Trump, the decentralized financial (DeFi) corner of the crypto sector is now freed from U.S. Internal Revenue Service demands that such platforms be treated as brokers and required to track and report user activity.That narrowly focused IRS rule, approved in the final days of former President Joe Biden's administration, has been formally struck down, according to Representative Mike Carey, an Ohio Republican who backed the effort. And the agency is prevented from pursuing anything like it, according to the Congressional Review Act power used by lawmakers to get rid of the tax regulation.Though the issue was relatively limited, its completion marks the first time a pro-crypto effort has cleared the U.S. Congress.Both the Senate...