Coindesk

MANTRA, a layer-1 blockchain designed for tokenized real-world assets (RWA), entered an agreement with United Arab Emirates-based property conglomerate DAMAC Group to bring at least $1 billion of the firm's assets to blockchain rails, the companies announced Thursday in a press release.The deal will allow investors to finance DAMAC's portfolio companies spanning across various sectors including real estate development, hospitality and data centers. By tokenizing assets, the companies aim to streamline traditional investment processes while increasing accessibility for both retail and institutional investors.Details of which DAMAC properties will be tokenized and specifications of the offerings will be announced in the coming weeks, a MANTRA spokesperson told CoinDesk. The offerings will be available starting in early 2025, the press release said.Tokenization...

Crypto exchange Gemini has appointed a new senior management team in Europe and plans to significantly expand its footprint in the region in 2025, the company said in a press release on Thursday.Mark Jennings has joined the company as its new head of Europe and Daniel Slutzkin has been appointed head of the U.K., Gemini said.Jennings was previously employed by rival exchange Kraken as its COO for European operations. Slutzkin joins from U.K. broker Stake.Vijay Selvam has assumed the role of international general counsel, and will be based in the U.K., the exchange said. Selvam relocated from Gemini's Asia-Pacific (APAC) team, and will be responsible for leading the company's licensing and regulatory strategy in Europe and the U.K.The European Union...

Dogecoin (DOGE) led losses among crypto majors as bitcoin (BTC) slid to nearly $96,000, a dump attributed to fresh economic data that sent U.S. treasury yields soaring.DOGE plunged 10%, with Solana’s SOL, Cardano’s ADA, BNB Chain’s BNB and ether (ETH) down at least 7%. Bitcoin fell 5.5%, while the broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20), a liquid index tracking the largest tokens by market cap, fell 7.1%.Crypto-tracked futures betting on higher prices saw liquidation of $560 million, data shows, setting a relatively high level at the start of the year.Losses in crypto tracked those in U.S. stocks. The latest Institute for Supply Management (ISM) report on U.S. service providers was stronger than anticipated, with the prices-paid measure reaching its highest point since...

Autonomous robots may sound like sci-fi concepts that are decades away, but large language models and generative AI now allow machines to plan, learn, and think. More than that - the same software that can win the math olympics and write novels can also control physical robots, allowing one digital persona to operate across the digital and physical worlds. So yes, robots walking around your neighborhood, or working alongside you, will have consistent opinions and actions on X/Twitter, on prediction markets, and in the real world.But there’s a major gap. How do we integrate thinking machines into human society, from schools, hospitals, factories to our homes and daily life? Most of the systems we’ve built are for other humans and...

Coinbase Inc. has been given an unusual chance to skip ahead in a U.S. federal court dispute with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) when a judge granted the company's request to chase a narrow appeal of the regulator's accusations about trading crypto securities.If the U.S. digital assets exchange can get the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to take its appeal and agree that the SEC was wrong about its accusations that Coinbase improperly handled the trading of unregistered securities, such a decision would echo throughout the wider crypto industry.Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York decided on Tuesday to approve a request from Coinbase to ask the...