Coindesk

Sigma Capital, an early-stage venture firm, has unveiled a $100 million fund focused on Web3 startups.The Dubai-based company is attempting to capitalize on the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) reputation as a crypto hub, according to an emailed announcement on Tuesday.The fund will focus on decentralized finance (DeFi), tokenization and blockchain infrastructure by managing a portfolio of liquid tokens.Dubai has been jostling for the position of being a global crypto hub along with the likes of Singapore and Hong Kong, which it has strived to achieve through offering reasonably clear regulations. This has seen major crypto exchanges such as Binance, Crypto.com and OKX win approvals there in the last year.Read More: MANTRA Blockchain to Tokenize $1B of Real-World Assets for UAE-Based...

The stateside demand for regulated crypto products is real.The U.S. SEC-approved options tied to BlackRock's spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (IBIT), which debuted on Nov. 19, are already almost half the size of Deribit's eight-year-old bitcoin options market.On Monday, there were 2.16 million open or active IBIT options contracts, representing a notional value of $11 billion, according to data source optioncharts.io. This notional value is derived by multiplying the open interest by the ETF's price and the lot size 100. The tally equates to 50% of the $23 billion locked in the open BTC options on Deribit at press time. One option contract on Deribit represents one BTC.Options are derivative contracts that give the purchaser the right to buy or...

Huione, a Telegram-based illicit marketplace that offers personal data and money laundering services has rolled out its own stablecoin, according to report by blockchain security firm Elliptic.The stablecoin (USDH) was created to “avoid the common freezing and transfer restrictions of traditional digital currencies.” The Huione website adds that “USDH is not restricted by traditional regulatory agencies.” Prior to the launch of USDH, users on Huione were almost exclusively using tether (USDT). Tether froze one of Huione Pay’s accounts in July 2024 after a wallet received funds linked to a theft attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group.The company also released its own chat service to make it less reliant on third-party apps like Telegram.The report claims that Huione has facilitated $24...

The crypto industry has a new "unicorn" in digital asset bank Sygnum, which has just closed a $58 million funding round.The Zug, Switzerland and Singapore-based lender closed an oversubscribed "strategic growth round," which was led by BTC-focused venture capital firm Fulgar Ventures, according to an emailed announcement on Tuesday.The round gave Sygnum "unicorn" status, the term for a privately-owned startup with a valuation of $1 billion or more. The round comes around a year after Sygnum acquired a $900 million valuation on the back of a $40 million raise.Sygnum, which is currently licensed in Luxembourg, Switzerland and Singapore, plans to use the new capital to expand its entry to the European market and initiate a regulated presence in Hong Kong....

The pressing question on crypto traders' minds is: Has bitcoin's (BTC) price weakness run its course, or is there more to come?The former appears to be the case as Monday's price action, characterized by a swift recovery from intraday lows, contrasted with mid-December when the rally stalled and turned lower from record highs above $108,000.On Monday, BTC initially fell as investment banks scaled back expectations for Fed rate cuts, with some discussing the potential for rate hikes following Friday's stellar jobs report, causing prices to dip below the lower end of the key support zone of $90,000-$93,000 as major U.S. stock indices gapped lower.The breakdown of the support, however, was short-lived, and by the end of the day, BTC had...