Coindesk

Major financial institutions have been raising their gold price forecasts as the precious metal’s price benefits from growing trade war fears and central banks' accumulations.This week, strategists at both Citi and UBS issued increased gold price forecasts, anticipating the precious metal’s bull run will continue as markets are pressured by geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainties.Gold-backed cryptocurrencies have been benefiting from this trend, with tokens like PAXG and XAUT seeing performance in line with that of the precious metal. These tokens, backed by physical gold stored in vaults, have been outperforming the wider cryptocurrency market amid the uncertainty.Citi has adjusted its short-term gold price target to $3,000 per ounce and increased its average forecast for the year to $2,900, up from...

The perceived odds of Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, launching a token have plummeted after he posted on social media that he is “not doing a coin” in a post where he added that “coins prey on the fans with hype.”That post saw the perceived odds of Kanye launching a token this month, which at one point reached 40% on the popular prediction market Polymarket, plunge to around 10% as traders reacted to it.Various memecoins, called "Ye," have popped up since the rapper started the conversation about crypto on social media, in anticipation that the rapper is going to launch a token. However, after the denial, these have seen their value plunge. One of the tokens has...

Brazilian stock exchange B3 is set to expand its cryptocurrency offerings with the introduction of bitcoin (BTC) options and futures contracts for ether (ETH) and solana (SOL).The expanded offerings are set to come sometime this year, the exchange’s CEO Gilson Finkelsztain told local media. Bitcoin futures contracts were added to the exchange in April of last year and have been seeing R$5 billion (around $860 million) in trading volume per month, according to local news outlet Valor Investe.In comparison, according to Brazilian cryptocurrency market monitor Biscoint, traditional cryptocurrency exchanges saw a total trading volume of R$6.66 billion (roughly $1.13 billion) in the first month of the year.B3 is Brazil’s main stock exchange where dozens of cryptocurrency exchange-traded products are listed...

Ether (ETH) has fallen more than 5.1% over the past 24-hour period to below $2,600, while bitcoin (BTC) is down around 2.9% over the same period to $95,700.The largest altcoin’s price performance has pushed down the CoinDesk 20 Index by nearly 4% over the period amid a market downturn that also affected equities markets over U.S. President Donald Trump announcing plans to unveil reciprocal tariffs next week, escalating fears of a trade war with the country’s major trading partners.Yet ether’s underperformance comes amid other factors influencing the cryptocurrency specifically, including its circulating supply having recently risen past pre-Merge levels. The Ethereum Merge—the network’s merge with the Beacon Chain that moved it to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism—was widely expected to...

As Utah became the first state to get a bill through a legislative chamber that would allow the investment of public money into crypto assets, lawmakers in two other states joined the hunt this week: Kentucky and Maryland.Though broadly identified with the Republican-led charge toward a so-called "bitcoin strategic reserve" at the federal level, the states have moved their own measures, widely varied as to how each might invest state money into digital assets.Utah's bill to allow the state treasurer to put money into digital assets survived a tight vote in the Utah House of Representatives — advancing with just a three-vote margin — to head on Friday to the state senate. If it clears both chambers and is signed...