Coindesk

When we think of altcoins like XRP and their sudden price bursts, the first thing that comes to mind is South Korea, which has a reputation for heavily engaging with alternative coins.While Korean investors have contributed to XRP's impressive 30-day price surge of over 400% to $2.60, they're not the only game in town. The stateside investors have been hyperactive through the Nasdaq-listed Coinbase exchange.The XRP/USD pair on Coinbase has been consistently pricier than Binance's XRP/USDT pair in the past 30 days, with minute-level premiums ranging from 3% to 13%, according to data from analytics firm CryptoQuant.It's a sign of whales being active on Coinbase, according to CryptoQuant's CEO Ki Young Ju. In the meantime, prices have not seen a...

Grayscale has become the latest entrant into the Solana ETF sweepstakes as it looks to convert its existing Solana Trust (GSOL) into an exchange-traded fund.A 19b-4 filing submitted by NYSE Arca, the exchange that would list the fund, was made on Tuesday evening. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires exchanges to submit such a filing to inform the SEC of a proposed rule change by a self-regulatory organization (SRO) such as an exchange.Grayscale is now the fifth asset manager that has filed to launch a Solana ETF, following Bitwise, VanEck, 21Shares and newly formed Canary Capital, all of which announced plans earlier this year.Grayscale already successfully converted its flagship Ethereum and Bitcoin trusts into ETFs earlier this year....

Alex Mashinsky, the founder and one-time CEO of bankrupt crypto lending platform Celsius Network, pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud on Tuesday afternoon, according to reports from Reuters and Inner City Press.He has reportedly agreed to a maximum sentencing guideline of 360 months, or 30 years, in prison.Last July, Mashinsky was arrested in New York and charged with seven criminal counts tied to the operation of and the 2022 collapse of his company, including securities fraud, commodities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to manipulate the price of Celsius’ native token, CEL.“I said that Celsius had approval from regulators. It was false. I falsely said I was not selling my CEL tokens, I accept full responsibility for my actions,” Inner...

A lot of stars would need to align for Paul Atkins, reportedly president-elect Donald Trump’s top candidate to chair the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to take the job.It is an unattractive role for him because of the amount of work needed to turn around the bloated agency he believes was mismanaged by outgoing SEC chair Gary Gensler, a person familiar with Atkins' thinking said.Reluctance to clean up Gensler's “mess” has been shared by former Commodity Futures Trading Commission chair Chris Giancarlo, who has advocated for Atkins to take the SEC job and was once considered a candidate himself.Atkins, a former SEC commissioner, was spotted at Trump's Mar-A-Lago resort this week, one industry source said. He was scheduled to interview...

The analyst who co-wrote this piece owns shares of MicroStrategy (MSTR).Despite all the weird memecoins and degen behavior in 2024, ETFs are in the running for story of the year in cryptocurrency investing.And that story — which began when bitcoin and ether exchange-traded funds debuted to great fanfare — might not be over. After a sixfold surge in its stock price this year, Michael Saylor's bitcoin (BTC) investment firm MicroStrategy (MSTR) looks poised to join one of the biggest exchange-traded funds around, the $312 billion Invesco QQQ ETF (QQQ).That fund tracks the Nasdaq-100 Index. Every December, Nasdaq shakes up the membership list for that benchmark, which then filters into the Invesco fund (which copies Nasdaq's decisions exactly). The Nasdaq-100, roughly...