Coindesk

Blockchain and Crypto have a complicated status in China: Beijing says no to crypto but yes to blockchain. It bans trading yet builds infrastructure.Now, with Hong Kong offering regulated crypto markets, insiders say a loophole is emerging.If China already allows investors to buy U.S. stocks through its Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) program, why not bitcoin? The key, one expert argued on stage at Consensus Hong Kong, is control, and Beijing may have just found a way to keep it.In China, there are two systems for mainland investors to buy and sell stock outside China. First, there’s QDII, which allows select investors to buy U.S. ETFs using RMB.Then there's also the Shanghai-Hong Kong Connect and Shenzhen-Hong Kong Connect, which let...

A lot of attention is paid to the decentralization of the Bitcoin network.Bitcoin miners should set up shop in a number of different jurisdictions in order to prevent any kind of regulatory capture of the network, so the thinking goes. Some members of the crypto community even saw China’s 2021 crypto ban as a positive because it forced mining operations — up until then clustered in the Middle Kingdom — to spread out to various other continents.That discourse isn’t as prevalent when it comes to Proof-of-Stake networks like Ethereum and Solana, but staking firm SenseiNode aims to make such blockchains as resilient as possible by spinning up validator infrastructure in Latin America.“When we started, 99% of nodes were located in...

This year's rapid surge in U.S. states' interest to put public money into cryptocurrencies before the federal government can establish a strategic reserve of digital assets has encountered mixed results after five such efforts flamed out, though Utah remains a single vote away from the finish line and Texas reportedly advanced a bill to its state Senate.Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota have fallen short of the mark in legislative efforts to put public money into crypto. Others — most notably Utah — have made significant progress toward passing bills that could tie their financial health to the digital assets markets, and the ground is shifting by the hour.The U.S. Congress and President Donald Trump have made noise...

BitMEX, the cryptocurrency exchange and derivatives trading platform co-founded in 2014 by Arthur Hayes, is looking for a buyer, according to two people with knowledge of the plans.The storied exchange, which arguably made perpetual futures the most popular product among leverage-hungry crypto traders, appointed boutique investment bank Broadhaven Capital Partners late last year to assist with the sales process, the people said.There has been some M&A interest around the crypto derivatives space of late. For instance, major exchanges Kraken and Coinbase are said to be vying for ownership of the leading crypto options exchange Deribit. Meanwhile, FalconX also bought Arbelos Markets earlier this year to expand its derivatives business. Back in 2020, BitMEX was alleged to have failed to implement...

What if artificial intelligence (AI) agents could hire other AI agents to help them with their work?That’s essentially the idea behind Mech Marketplace, a decentralized platform from crypto-AI firm Olas that enables easy collaboration between various AI agents on an autonomous basis.“We’re not at a point where AI agents can do everything,” David Minarsch, a founding member of Olas, said in an interview. “In order to architect the systems, it's better if you separate concerns. So you let different agents specialize in different things, and that specialization gives rise to the need for agents to trade with each other.”For example, if you’re using an AI agent to make money from prediction markets, the agent would typically know how to interact...