Coindesk

Sony, the 78-year-old Japanese electronics giant, is the latest legacy megacorp to explore blockchain technology. On Tuesday, the company announced that it is officially launching "Soneum," a general-purpose blockchain platform.The team behind Sony Block Solutions Labs (SBSL), a joint project between Sony Group and Singapore-based Startale Labs, describes Soneuim — technically a layer-2 network atop Ethereum — as "a versatile general-purpose blockchain platform" built to support a diverse ecosystem of gaming, finance and entertainment apps. According to SBSL, the launch comes after a four month-long test period that involved participation from 14 million wallets.Sony's network is yet more evidence that traditional technology companies might again be keen on blockchain's ability to connect and commercialize the future of media. The chain...

Until recently, it was “green candle galore” in the crypto markets since Trump’s election win. Bitcoin momentarily broke the all-important $100,00 level, a near 500% recovery from the 2022 Crypto Winter lows, and optimism for crypto is even reaching Congress, where talks of a U.S. National Bitcoin Reserve are gaining serious steam.If stock market bull runs are marathons, crypto bull runs are breakneck sprints. But buyer beware: when crypto surges and FOMO takes hold, scammers seize the moment, turning hype into a goldmine for illicit activity.With no clear regulatory framework yet in place, the risks are amplified. As former President Trump returns to office with a more pro-crypto Congress, regulatory change feels imminent. But what risks do investors face if...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission must now thoroughly "explain itself" for refusing to grant Coinbase.'s formal request that the agency write regulations for how the industry should assess whether crypto assets are securities or not, according to a circuit-court ruling on Monday.A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in a legal rebuke of the securities regulator, partially sided with Coinbase's effort to get the agency to offer legal clarity by writing crypto regulations."Rather than force the agency to make a rule, we order it to explain its decision not to," one of the judges wrote. "Indeed, a rule may not prove necessary to solve the notice problems here; the agency could just state...

Blockchain analytics company Chainalysis said Monday it had acquired fraud detection startup Alterya. The deal carried a price tag of $150 million, according to Business Insider.Chainalysis, the largest company tracing illicit crypto flows on behalf of financial institutions and governments, plans to bolster its scam-stopping capabilities with Alterya, CEO Jonathan Levin told CoinDesk.The two companies attack a thematically similar problem – bad actors on the blockchain – from different positions. Chainalysis amasses troves of intel on crypto wallets to trace where money is moving. Alterya, meanwhile, uses data on scammers to nix their transactions mid-route."Alterya has collected the most comprehensive set of information about all of the scammers' financial infrastructure that's out there," Levin said. Exchanges that plug into its...

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. will soon be under new management, and the senior Republican there, Travis Hill, has outlined some pro-crypto policy thoughts just before he'll take over – at least on a temporary basis, if not as the permanent new chairman.FDIC Vice Chairman Hill, who is expected to be among those in contention for the job once President-elect Donald Trump takes office, is calling for the U.S. banking regulator to issue new guidance for digital assets. He wants to shed the agency's current, one-by-one approach to directing banks' cryptocurrency ties."It has stifled innovation and contributed to a public perception that the FDIC is closed for business if institutions are interested in anything related to blockchain or distributed ledger...