Coindesk

Bitcoin (BTC) quickly bounced back from the Tuesday dip to $93,000, but downside pressure still persists risking a deeper pullback to $86,000, CryptoQuant analysts said. Waning demand, faltering blockchain activity and lack of liquidity inflows to crypto are among the factors that could drag BTC lower, the report said.Demand for bitcoin, which picked up in late 2024 amid optimism over easing regulatory headwinds on Trump's election win, is now retreating. CryptoQuant data shows that demand growth slumped to 70,000 BTC recently from the 279,000 BTC peak on December 4. Inflows to spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETF), a typical occurrence during bitcoin’s previous rallies, have disappeared, booking regular net outflows over the past two weeks after previously seeing as much as...

Nearly every big name in the crypto industry has signed onto a letter calling for Congress to eliminate a U.S. tax policy they say could jeopardize decentralized finance (DeFi) technology by shoehorning much of that space into the field of brokers subject to data collecting and reporting.The Internal Revenue Service — the U.S. Treasury Department's tax arm — pushed through a key digital assets broker rule between Christmas and New Year's, just days before President Donald Trump's administration was set to arrive. It was meant to institute similar information-reporting demands on DeFi brokers as would be faced by securities brokers and exchanges.Recently approved rules can be erased under the Congressional Review Act, and Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, introduced...

Bitcoin price may be volatile but it didn't stop giant financial institutions from continuing to invest more.Large institutions such as pensions or hedge funds tripled their holdings of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the fourth quarter of 2024, data from 13F filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) showed.Institutional investors bought $38.7 billion worth of the spot bitcoin ETF, according to Bitwise chief investment officer, Matt Hougan. This is more than three times the previous quarter, in which only $12.4 billion worth of holdings were reported.Investors with assets over $100 million are required by the SEC to report their holdings each quarter.Several hedge funds and pension funds, among others, have started buying the funds since January 2024, when...

A group of top Ethereum developers and leaders released Wednesday a new framework that would simplify and standardize cross-chain token transfers.The initiative, called the Open Intents Framework (OIF), was kickstarted by contributors from the Ethereum Foundation and is supported by 25 projects including teams building layer-2s like Arbitrum, Optimism, ZKsync, and Scroll, according to a press release shared with CoinDesk.The goal of the initiative is to bring “intents” to all corners of the Ethereum ecosystem, which is a technological feature that lets a blockchain user accomplish a specific goal by asking an intermediary to fulfill that goal (like a trade or transaction they want to make.)There are some standards out there that are already trying to make cross-chain transactions easier...

EToro said it received regulatory approval under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework and will soon be able to provide cryptocurrency trading and custody services across the region. The trading platform announced the approval from the Cyprus Securities Exchange Commission on Wednesday.The MiCA regulation that requires firms to acquire a crypto asset service provider license (CASP) took full effect in December and established a standardized legal framework for crypto services across the 27-nation trading bloc. Approval under MiCA also opens the doors to Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway which are not EU members.The company joins crypto exchanges Bitpanda, OKX and Crypto.com among others who have obtained a MiCA license.Israel-based eToro, which offers a mix of traditional and crypto trading...