Coindesk

Traditional finance firms that have adopted crypto are moving past the experimentation phase and are actively working on real-world solutions, Mastercard’s head of crypto and blockchain, Raj Dhamodharan, told CoinDesk.“Many of us in the industry are moving beyond experimentation; it’s actually real solutions,” he said, noting that Mastercard has already enabled stablecoin payments for financial institutions. Those institutions can choose to settle transactions using stablecoins, reflecting a broader trend in crypto adoption.Last week, the payments giant announced a partnership with crypto compliance firm Notabene, which will integrate Mastercard’s Crypto Credential into its SafeTransact platform to make digital asset transactions more secure and user-friendly.The Crypto Credential system continues to be a focus of Mastercard’s efforts to make crypto more mainstream. It...

The second-largest publicly traded corporate bitcoin holder, MARA Holdings (MARA), has announced the completion of the acquisition of a wind farm in Texas, adding 114 megawatts of nameplate wind capacity and 240 megawatts of interconnection capacity to its operations.The Florida-based company plans to use the wind farm to power bitcoin mining operations using last-generation ASIC mining hardware “that would have otherwise been written off or sold into the secondary market.”MARA noted that repurposing the machines and leveraging renewable energy will reduce bitcoin mining products costs while using wind power that might have otherwise gone unused.“With this added renewable energy asset, MARA now owns and operates 136 megawatts of generating capacity,” CEO Fred Thiel said in an announcement.MARA is the second-largest...

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 3183.11, down 1.4% (-46.75) since 4 p.m ET on Monday.Two of 20 assets are trading higher.Leaders: LTC (+4.9%) and BTC (+0.3%). Laggards: APT (-5.6%) and SOL (-5.1%). The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.Source link

Following a rocketing higher in its stock price since beginning to add bitcoin to its balance sheet less than a year ago. Metaplanet has announced a 10-to-1 stock split set to take effect on April 1.The Tokyo-based firm first started buying bitcoin in April 2024 and since has accumulated 2,031 tokens worth nearly $200 million. The purchases were the driving factor in Metaplanet being the best-performing Japanese equity over the past 12 months with a gain of 3,900%.That price rise has created a “substantial financial burden for investors,” the company said in a press release announcing the split.“To address this, we have decided to conduct a stock split to lower the price per trading unit, thereby improving liquidity, expanding our...

The total hashrate of the U.S.-listed bitcoin (BTC) miners tracked by JPMorgan (JPM) has almost doubled from a year ago and now accounts for about 29% of the global network, the bank said in a report on Tuesday.The combined hashrate of the 14 companies "has increased ~95% y/y to 244 EH/s, versus a 45% increase in the network hashrate," analysts Reginald Smith and Charles Pearce wrote.The network hashrate is a proxy for competition in the industry and mining difficulty. The Bitcoin network hashrate has risen about 6% so far this month, and has climbed 45% in the last 12 months, the report said."Average bitcoin price also declined modestly from January, pressuring mining economics," the authors wrote.The hashprice, a measure of...