Coindesk

Bitcoin's rapid price rally has caught traders off guard, triggering large liquidations of bearish short positions.The leading cryptocurrency by market value has risen over 3% to $102,500 in the past 24 hours, with prices topping $104,000 at one point, the highest since Jan. 31. The bullish move came as President Donald Trump announced a comprehensive trade deal with the U.K. and the cumulative inflows into the spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) hit a record high above $40 billion.The broader market rallied as well, with the total market cap of all coins excluding BTC surging by 10% to $1.14 trillion, the highest since March 6, according to data source TradingView.That has led to substantial liquidations of bearish short positions, or leveraged plays...

Ethereum's ether ETH led the market in early Asia hours as traders reacted favorably to the protocol's recent Pectra upgrade, sending the token up nearly 20%, the biggest gain since 2021, and trading above $2100 according to market data from CoinDesk.The move comes amid a broader crypto market rally that coincided with bitcoin BTC soaring past $100,000 for the first time in three months. Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade, its most substantial overhaul since the 2022 Merge, represents a sweeping protocol hard fork, as CoinDesk previously reported.The upgrade consolidates validator operations by raising the staking limit from 32 to 2,048 ETH (via EIP-7251), advances wallet usability through account abstraction mechanisms allowing temporary smart contract functionality (via EIP-7702), and implements nine other Ethereum...

Ripple Labs and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have officially reached a deal that, if approved by a judge, will bring their years-long legal battle to a close.According to a settlement agreement filed in New York on Thursday, both parties have agreed to a $50 million penalty — a portion of the $125 million fine initially imposed last year by Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York (SDNY), and a tiny fraction of the massive $2 billion fine initially requested by the SEC.In her 2023 ruling, Judge Torres found that Ripple violated securities laws in selling its native XRP token to institutional investors, but did not violate securities laws in putting XRP on exchanges for...

You’re swimming in data. You’re creating new data every day. If your health app counts your steps? That’s new data. The Oura ring that’s tracking your bio-metrics? Valuable data. Your social media posts, even the stupid jokes that got zero likes? More data.This is all data that AI companies would love to harvest. You can’t build good AI without good data, which is why many view data as the “new oil’ in the race for AI. The problem, though, is that while your data is valuable in theory, the reality is that it’s hard to monetize your own personal data, as you have no leverage as an individual. (Open AI isn’t knocking at your door to buy your old tweets.)Enter...

Coinbase's (COIN) $2.9 billion acquisition of Deribit will be a tipping point for the company, pushing the U.S.-based exchange into direct competition with global heavyweights like Binance, Wall Street analysts wrote on Thursday.The massive deal is more than just a platform expansion; it's a paradigm shift for the exchange and trading industry. According to the analysts, the deal signals the start of a new consolidation cycle in the crypto trading industry, as smaller exchanges face pressure and TradFi firms look to expand further into the sector.Read more: In $2.9B Deal, Coinbase Buys Deribit to Expand in U.S. Crypto Options MarketDeribit controls 85% of the global crypto options market and reported $1.2 trillion in trading volume last year. By absorbing it,...