Coindesk

The recent probe of Crypto.com and Kalshi's sports contracts all comes down to a single question — are event contracts premised on sports “gaming” within the meaning of the Commodities Exchange Act, said crypto lawyer Aaron Brogan.The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is probing the Super Bowl events contracts on Crypto.com and Kalshi, according to a Bloomberg report."If sports does not constitute gaming, then, given the CFTC’s current legal posture, the CFTC likely does not have the power to prohibit Crypto.com and Kalshi from self-certifying these contracts," Brogan told CoinDesk.However, all of this is a bit more complicated than it seems on the surface."This is a surprisingly thorny question, which was addressed in the Kalshi ruling," Brogan said, referring to...

Bitcoin (BTC) and Nasdaq futures faced renewed selling pressure during Asia trading hours on Tuesday as China imposed retaliatory tariffs against the U.S.Beijing imposed a 15% duty on U.S. coal and LNG and a 10% tax on crude oil, agricultural machinery, pickup trucks and large-engine cars. The move came after U.S. President Donald Trump's new 10% tariffs on China came into effect.On Monday, Trump agreed to a 30-day pause on his tariff threats against Mexico and Canada, offering a relief to BTC. The cryptocurrency's price staged a remarkable recovery from nearly $92,000 to over $102,000 in hopes that the trade war would be short-lived.China's fresh action, however, has dented the recovery, sending BTC down to $98,500 at press time. The...

U.S. prosecutors have charged a 22-year-old Canadian man with stealing a combined $65 million in crypto through two separate decentralized finance (DeFi) hacks — the 2021 Indexed Finance exploit and the 2023 KyberSwap hack.In a newly-unsealed indictment filed in the Eastern District of New York (EDNY), prosecutors say Andean “Andy” Medjedovic was the mastermind behind both exploits. Though Medjedovic’s alleged role in the KyberSwap exploit was previously unknown, he has publicly admitted to being the Indexed Finance attacker, wiping $16 million from the DeFi platform when he was still a teenager.Read more: After Stealing $16M, This Teen Hacker Seems Intent on Testing ‘Code is Law’ in the CourtsMedjedovic did little to hide his identity as the Indexed Finance hacker because he...

U.S. financial markets have long been burdened with a patchwork of outdated, overly complex, paternalistic rules. Meanwhile, the government’s failure to establish a regulatory regime for digital assets, coupled with its aggressive persecution of the industry, has stifled innovation. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the world surged ahead, leaving the U.S. behind.Now, under President Trump’s leadership, we stand on the brink of a historic shift. His “largest deregulation campaign in history” and “revolution of common sense,” offers us a rare chance to remove artificial boundaries, retire antiquated philosophies, and rethink our approach to regulating financial markets and digital asset ecosystems. Instead of creating and being bound by reactive regulations designed for past crises and technologies, we can design flexible, forward-looking frameworks...

Cryptocurrencies in the real-world asset (RWA) sector led the recovery of the broader digital asset market from the overnight bloodbath, underscoring the strength of the tokenization investment narrative.Decentralized finance (DeFi) tokenized asset platform Ondo Finance's governance token was 16% higher on the day, surging almost 40% from the overnight lows. The protocol today unveiled Ondo Nexus, an instant minting and redemption service for tokenized Treasury issuers. The company behind the protocol is holding a summit in New York later this week with several traditional finance heavyweights including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton participating.The native token of MANTRA (OM), layer-1 blockchain designed for tokenized assets focusing on the Middle East market, rebounded 30% from Monday's bottom and was up 16% on the day....