Coindesk

As it stands, January is tied as the second-best performing month for bitcoin (BTC) in the past ten months, surpassed only by November 2024, which saw a 37% surge in price after President Trump's victory in the U.S. election. It shares second-place with May 2024, both recording an 11% gain, according to Coinglass data. On average, January sees around a 4% gain and has been historically one of the best performing months in past years, with five of the past six January's registering a green month.This January has been eventful with President Donald Trump taking office and pushing out many pro-crypto policies.Looking ahead, February has historically been the third best performing month for bitcoin, registering an average of 16%. Only...

VIRTUAL, the native token of the AI agent generator platform Virtuals Protocol, climbed during European trading hours after Upbit, South Korea’s leading cryptocurrency exchange, said it would list the coin.The price surged 28% to $2.61, almost testing the downtrend line that characterizes the sell-off from the Jan. 2 record high of around $5.25, data tracked by TradingView and CoinDesk show. The price jump followed Upbit's decision to list the VIRTUAL/KRW, VIRTUAL/USDT and VIRTUAL/BTC markets, exposing the token to altcoin savvy Korean traders.Early this month, Virtuals Protocol announced a program to buy back and destroy ecosystem agent tokens using the almost 13 million VIRTUAL tokens accumulated from post-bonding trading income. The protocol, a Base native, recently expanded to Solana via...

Elon Musk’s dad is promoting a memecoin that capitalizes on the family name to raise upto $200 million for various engineering projects, despite the father-son duo apparently being estranged.Errol Musk, alongside business partner Nathan Browne, will officially back the “MUSK IT” token with the ambitious goal of establishing the Musk Institute, a new for-profit think tank that Errol aims to spearhead, per Fortune.The Musk Institute plans to “go beyond rockets” and build flying vehicles and other scientific pursuits. It is unclear how Elon Musk will be involved in this, if at all."I’m the head of the family. It really started with me in our family—I’ve been ‘Musking It’ for years,” he told Fortune, dismissing any concerns about leveraging his surname...

Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Kazuo Ueda said Friday the central bank must maintain an accommodative monetary policy to support economic growth and ensure the underlying inflation gradually moves to the 2% target.Ueda told the Parliament that the recent increase in the consumer price index above the 2% target has been led by cost-push factors such as elevated food and fuel prices that will likely dissipate. The comments come a week after the bank raised the benchmark borrowing cost to 0.5%, the highest in over 16 years, and could assuage fears of a yen-led risk-off in global markets, including cryptocurrencies, as observed in August.The governor, however, maintained that rate hikes will continue if the economy evolves as expected. According to...

The parents of prisoned crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried are reportedly exploring how to secure a presidential pardon from President Donald Trump for their son, according to a Bloomberg report.Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, both professors at Stanford Law School and part of FTX’s inner circle, are reportedly engaging with individuals connected to Trump's inner circle, according to the report. In recent weeks SBF's parents have tried to engage with the Trump administration to discuss potential clemency for their 32-year-old son, who was handed a 25-year prison sentence after being convicted of fraud. The specifics of whether direct communications with the White House have occurred remain unclear, per Bloomberg.The appeal for a pardon leans on Trump's recent history of using his...