Coindesk

Caroline Pham, one of the Republican commissioners at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, will take over the agency on an interim basis, according to two people familiar with the decision, as the administration of President Donald Trump shifts U.S. policy toward a friendlier relationship with digital assets.The CFTC stands to become a leading federal watchdog for crypto, and Pham takes over as acting chair at a point of major potential transition for the agency. Most of the early legislative efforts to establish a digital assets roadmap envision the CFTC taking over regulation of crypto spot markets for widely traded tokens such as bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum's ether (ETH). Those earlier bills are expected to be the foundation of crypto work...

World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the decentralized finance platform linked to Donald Trump and his family, purchased millions of dollars of cryptocurrencies in a buying frenzy on Monday hours before Trump's inauguration ceremony.The protocol's wallet address bought over $23.5 million of wrapped bitcoin (BTC), $29 million of Ethereum's ETH, $4.4 million of AAVE and $4.5 million of Tron's TRX, blockchain data by Arkham Intelligence shows. The address also purchased $4.5 million of Ethena and $5.5 million of Chainlink's LINK in over a dozen transactions through decentralized exchange CoW.The transactions happened as sales of the protocol's governance token WLFI picked up over the past few days after a lackluster launch last October. Over 21.7 billion of tokens ($1.08 billion) have been sold...

Tigran Gambaryan, the Binance executive who was kidnapped and illegally imprisoned in Nigeria for eight months, said it would be an honor to serve his country again, if asked to do so, fighting crypto crime under the new Trump administration.Gambaryan, who has been the head of financial crime compliance at Binance for the past two years, is a former federal agent and part of an elite group of early crypto tracers in the federal government, which included some high-profile investigations during Trump’s last term in office.“While I am not a political person, some of my most consequential casework occurred during the President-Elect’s previous term,” Gambaryan told Coindesk via email. “If given the opportunity, it would be an honor to serve...

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 4022.91, up 0.3% (+12.57) since 4 p.m. ET on Friday.Four of 20 assets are trading higher.Leaders: SOL (+16.0%) and LINK (+4.3%).Laggards: DOT (-13.3%) and RENDER (-12.9%).The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.Source link

The crypto craze is sweeping the general public as observers said President-elect Donald Trump's decision to debut a memecoin has flipped the Overton window, bringing digital assets to the mainstream.Google Trends, a widely used tool to gauge general or retail interest in trending topics, is currently returning a value of 100 for the worldwide search query "how to buy crypto." The final figure for the week will be confirmed Saturday.A score of 100 represents peak popularity – the maximum number of searches observed for the query during a given time frame, in this case, five years. It's a sign that more and more people are scanning the web for information on how to take exposure to cryptocurrencies.Google Trends provides access...