Coindesk

The cryptocurrency market is lacking positive catalysts in the near term, Wall Street bank JPMorgan (JPM) said in a report Wednesday.The correction in crypto markets in recent months has seen both bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) futures near backwardation, which is a sign of lower demand, the report said. Backwardation occurs when the spot price of an asset is higher than the price trading in the futures market."This is a negative development and indicative of demand weakness by those institutional investors that use regulated CME futures contracts to gain exposure into these two cryptocurrencies," analysts led Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote.If demand for bitcoin and ether futures is healthy, the futures cost more than the spot price, and the curve is said...

HONG KONG—Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West who has repeatedly called himself a "Nazi" in recent weeks, plans to launch a crypto token, according to three sources close to the project.The token, YZY, is designed to help Ye side-step platforms like Shopify that have cut ties with him in response to his hateful rhetoric.Crypto, with its censorship-resistant ethos, offers Ye an alternative avenue for cashing in on his celebrity status: Seventy percent of the YZY token, named after Ye's Yeezy clothing brand, will be reserved for Ye personally, with just 10% allocated for liquidity provisioning and 20% for investors.Ye's foray into crypto comes on the heels of years of public controversy that have strained his business empire. In...

After months of rapid expansion, Bitcoin’s hashrate growth slowed down in January, according to the latest report from TheMinerMag. The network’s difficulty saw its first decline since September, indicating that even though publicly listed companies have kept increasing their hash power, their growth isn't enough to compensate for the capitulation of other, probably smaller operators.The total revenue made from bitcoin (BTC) mining remained stable at $1.4 billion for the month. Publicly traded mining companies, which collectively hold 99,000 bitcoin (worth roughly $9.7 billion), accounted for about 30% of the hashrate market share in January.Competition between the biggest publicly traded companies has also increased.The leading mining firm, Marathon Digital (MARA), retained its top spot with a realized hashrate of 41.65 EH/s,...

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin expressed his disappointment with some ETH community members and thought it was “bad” that the ecosystem was too welcoming for “casinos.”During an ask-me-anything (AMA) on Tako, Buterin responded to a question about whether he had felt disappointed at the Ethereum Foundation, the crypto industry or the community. He answered “of course,” especially when others question why Ethereum has not been more open to applications with blockchain gambling, seemingly taking a jab at its competitor, Solana, and how their ecosystem has embraced a lot of memecoin activity over the past year.Buterin’s comment comes as the Ethereum community has faced backlash from members raising the alarm that the chain will lose its competitive advantage to rivals if it...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission unit tasked with chasing bad guys in the crypto space will be smaller and called something significantly different, the agency said Thursday, further cementing its trend away from an aggressive enforcement stance against the industry.In three years, the same internal group has transitioned from the "Cyber Unit" to the "Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit" and now to the "Cyber and Emerging Technologies Unit," seemingly taking some focus off its crypto role. In 2022, then-Chairman Gary Gensler's SEC announced the enforcement squad was almost doubling to 50 people. The latest announcement says it will include "approximately 30 fraud specialists and attorneys across multiple SEC offices.""The unit will not only protect investors but will also facilitate...