Coindesk

After the election, as everyone except for muggles know, the price of BTC rallied to all time highs (ATH) just short of $100,000. At the time of this writing, it’s hovering around $98,000. An interesting question then is: what happened to Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy (MSTR) during this period?The publicly traded stock, synonymous with its unconventional and risk-on co-founder as well as the price of BTC, also rallied to post-election ATH — as one might expect — exceeding $500.Then last week, it took a precipitous ~22% short selling-inspired hit based off of a report expressing concerns about the company’s valuation. The noise around the stock piqued my interest. I was curious to dig in and see what potential market opportunities might...

Botanix Labs, the developer of Bitcoin layer-2 network Spiderchain, which aims to advance the possibilities of decentralized finance (DeFi) on the world's original blockchain, has moved to its final testnet phase ahead of a 2025 mainnet debut.The testnet, known as Aragog, introduces tools that will form the basis for the mainnet's DeFi offering, such as bitcoin (BTC)-backed stablecoin Palladium, decentralized exchange Bitzy and lending and borrowing market Spindle.Botanix Labs, which aims to introduce the mainnet in the first quarter, is building Spiderchain to be compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the software that powers the Ethereum network. The goal is to allow any application or smart contract to be copied and pasted onto Bitcoin, creating provision for the...

Russia's President Vladimir Putin said nobody has the power to ban bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies and that they will continue to develop, news agency RIA reported.“Who can ban bitcoin? Nobody,” Putin said at an investment conference in Moscow on Wednesday. “And who can prohibit the use of other electronic means of payment? Nobody. Because these are new technologies and no matter what happens to the dollar, these tools will develop one way or another because everyone will strive to reduce costs and increase reliability,” he said.Just last week, Putin signed a law classifying digital currencies as a form of property in foreign trade settlements under an experimental legal regime, taking a significant step in cryptocurrency regulation.The action was part of...

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 3892.21, up 1.3% (+48.1) since 4 pm ET on Tuesday.Fifteen of 20 assets are trading higher.Leaders: DOT (+17.3%) and FIL (+16.3%).Laggards: HBAR (-5.3%) and LTC (-2.7%).The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.Source link

It has been almost exactly a year since Javier Milei became the 59th President of Argentina.Inaugurated on December 10, 2023, the flamboyant libertarian economist — a former goalkeeper who cloned his dogs and called central banks “the worst garbage that exists on this Earth” — had vowed to end the South American nation’s hyperinflation crisis and to drastically reduce government spending.Since then, Argentina’s monthly inflation rate has fallen from 25.5% in December 2023 to 2.7% last October. The government has registered a fiscal surplus for nine months in a row, a substantial achievement considering it’s been running deficits since 2008. The Argentinian peso isn’t in freefall against the U.S. dollar anymore. And while the country’s economy is projected to have...