Coindesk

MARA Holdings (MARA) is making a surprise pivot from its bitcoin (BTC) mining roots, announcing late Monday that it will acquire a 64% stake in Exaion, a high-performance computing (HPC) subsidiary of French energy giant EDF, broker H.C. Wainwright said in a research report Tuesday.While MARA has long floated the idea of helping power companies balance grid loads, H.C. Wainwright analyst Kevin Dede said he expected that to remain within a mining-centric strategy, not a direct plunge into HPC buildouts.But with bitcoin halving events looming in 2028 and 2032, and artificial intelligence (AI) demand driving premium returns on compute power, MARA is betting HPC offers stronger margins than mining alone, the analyst wrote.MARA is the latest bitcoin mining company to...

Crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) said on Tuesday it is reviving its Stablecoin Bootstrap Fund, aiming to boost stablecoin liquidity on decentralized finance (DeFi) markets.The initiative will be managed by Coinbase Asset Management and begins with deployments on Aave, Morpho, Kamino and Jupiter, according to a blog post.The exchange first launched the program in 2019 to help protocols seed early trading pools for USDC stablecoin. That effort supported early platforms like Uniswap (UNI), Compound (COMP) and dYdX (DYDX) and helped spearhead USDC in the DeFi ecosystem, which is still the most widely used stablecoin in the sector.In its new iteration, the initiative will allocate capital across both established and emerging protocols, aiming to ensure users can access stable yields and efficient...

NEW YORK — Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and wire fraud Tuesday morning, three years after the dramatic collapse of the Terra/Luna stablecoin ecosystem. Wearing a canary yellow prison jumpsuit, the 33-year-old Korean national said he "knowingly engaged in a scheme to defraud and did in fact defraud" purchasers of the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin.Judge Paul Engelmayer, who is overseeing the case, walked the Terra creator through the charges to establish the Kwon was indeed guilty of the allegations laid out in an earlier indictment, which had included seven other charges such as securities and commodities fraud. Under the terms of the plea agreement, laid out by an assistant U.S. attorney, Kwon agreed to...

President Donald Trump's crypto adviser, Bo Hines, exited after only months on the job, and the next in line — his deputy, Patrick Witt — will apparently be shepherding the industry's political priorities in Washington as it still seeks industry-wide regulations and the institution of a federal crypto stockpile.Witt shares a remarkably similar history with Hines – both ex-football stars who played at Yale before seeking law degrees and falling short in bids for Congress. Witt had a brief stint as a free-agent quarterback for the New Orleans Saints after leading the Yale Bulldogs team that Hines later played on as wide receiver. Both ex-athletes tied their political careers closely to Trump in recent years, and Witt will now be...

Digital asset investment platform Grayscale has launched two new single-asset trusts providing exposure to Sui protocols DeepBook and Walrus. The Grayscale DeepBook Trust and Grayscale Walrus Trust invest solely in the native DEEP and WAL tokens, respectively.DeepBook is a decentralized central limit order book (CLOB) built on the Sui blockchain. It serves as a foundational liquidity layer for the Sui ecosystem, meaning that it provides the underlying infrastructure for decentralized exchanges (DEXs), wallets, and other applications on Sui to facilitate token trading. Walrus, meanwhile, is a blockchain-based data storage platform designed to host the massive wells of information driven by the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. The trusts are open for daily subscription via private placement to accredited investors,...