Coindesk

MetaMask, the popular self-custodial crypto wallet for the Ethereum (ETH) network, shared a flurry of announcements on Thursday, aimed at improving its wallet's user experience.Part of Metamask's revamped roadmap includes adding smart contract capabilities to its current wallet. At the moment, MetaMask is an Externally Owned Account (EOA), a type of wallet that is controlled by a public and a private key. One of the main downfalls with EOAs is that it is subject to human error, meaning if you forget your private key, you lose your crypto holdings in that account forever. The other type of wallet that exists on Ethereum are Contract Accounts (CAs), which are controlled by code and have recovery mechanisms in place and security checks...

For decades, your investment portfolio has revolved around a key academic idea that hasn’t held up very well: efficient markets. There’s a direct line from the efficient markets theory of Eugene Fama in the 1960s to modern portfolio theory. It paved the way for index funds, a strategy that has not only weathered market cycles but also become the default for managing pensions and retirement accounts.As we step into a new era of digital finance, tokenized assets may offer a way to broaden our investment horizons in ways that traditional models have overlooked.The genesis of modern portfolio theoryIndex fund investing didn’t arise by chance. In the early 1970s, amid vigorous debates over market efficiency, Burton Malkiel’s seminal work advocating index...

A group of big-name crypto and blockchain firms have joined forces to deliver open artificial intelligence (AI) services using combined infrastructure.The Open Agents Alliance (OAA) consists of NEAR AI, the payments and AI arms of crypto exchange Coinbase and an array of other blockchain and AI projects. The aim of the alliance is to "ensure secure, open source, economical, and fair AI access," according to an emailed announcement on Thursday.The participating organizations will offer combined infrastructure, such as AI agent frameworks, cloud hosting and on/off-ramps to fiat and crypto, to allow developers to build and deploy AI tools. Crypto and blockchain projects have been attempting to capture the zeitgeist of the proliferation of AI in the last couple of years...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is officially washing its hands of memecoins.The federal securities regulator said that memecoins — which it defined as a “type of crypto asset inspired by internet memes, characters, current events or trends for which the promoter seeks to attract an enthusiastic online community to purchase the memecoin and engage in its trading” — are more like collectibles than securities, according to a staff statement from the SEC’s corporate finance division published on Thursday. Because memecoins have “limited or no use or functionality,” they do not meet the definition of a security under the Howey Test and are therefore outside the SEC’s jurisdiction.The statement is a formalization of comments made by Commissioner Hester Peirce — the...

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...