Coindesk

The digital asset industry stands at a critical, hopeful juncture.After years of fragmented approaches to regulation and legislation, we've reached a moment where clarity is both urgent and achievable. Blockchain Association's consensus-driven market structure principles, which represent the perspective of the leading companies in the industry, offer a framework for the path forward. The market structure principles that emerged from this collaborative effort reflect the maturation of the industry and the focus required to enact meaningful legislation and achieve smart regulation.The principles tackle twelve key areas – at their core is a recognition that consumer protection and innovation are complementary, not competing, priorities. We call for standardized disclosures and robust safeguards while ensuring businesses can innovate without undue burden. This...

It's deja vu all over again in crypto after a hopeful report on a tariff delay was refuted by the White House.To review, President Trump on Thursday promised to impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada beginning Saturday Feb. 1. Having rallied over $106,000 prior to that news, bitcoin (BTC) quickly reversed 2% lower to around the $104,000 level. U.S. stocks gave up a chunk of earlier gains, though still finished the session in the green.Friday then brought a report from Reuters suggesting the tariffs would be delayed until March 1 as a process was put in place to allow countries to seek exemptions for certain exports.The White House, though, called that report "false," with Trump's Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt...

It was another busy week at CoinDesk as the new Trump Administration continued to roll out a pro-crypto agenda and the industry laid the groundwork for growth in the new cycle. Ripple was at the center of the news. Ondo Finance announced it would offer tokenized treasuries on Ripple’s XRP Ledger, Kris Sandor reported. The San Francisco company also said XRP Ledger would offer clawback features, enhancing liquidity for Ripple’s dollar-pegged stablecoin RLUSD, Shaurya Malwa reported. Meanwhile, CEO Brad Garlinghouse lobbied for XRP to be included in any national crypto reserve, riling Bitcoiners who say the reserve should be bitcoin-only. Omkar Godbole had that news, along with several incisive market analyses (his Daybook daily update is a must-read).In other protocol news,...

The supply of stablecoins on Solana jumped by 112% in January to a record high of $11.1 billion, CCData (a subsidiary of CoinDesk) said in a research report on Friday.The surge coincided with the launch of Donald Trump's memecoin $TRUMP, which caused a wave of inflows to the network, according to the report. Stablecoin supply has risen by 73.6% since $TRUMP launched on Jan. 18.Trading activity around $TRUMP resulted in record activity on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and contributed to stablecoin supply on Solana, surpassing its previous record set in 2022 and becoming the third largest network behind Ethereum and Tron, based on this metric.The report also said that the market capitalization of all stablecoins has passed $200 billion, having grown...

Evgeny Gaevoy began his career in traditional finance, specializing in market making and prop trading. But by 2016, seeing the inefficiencies of legacy financial systems and the potential for disintermediation, Gaevoy realized there was an opportunity to create something entirely new and better.With experience building up foreign exchange firm Optiver’s European ETF business — one of the largest in the EU — he decided to launch an algorithmic trading firm designed for the digital asset era. Since 2017, Wintermute has since grown into one of the largest algorithmic trading and liquidity providers in crypto, processing over $5 billion in daily trading volume and providing deep liquidity to 50+ trading venues across centralized and decentralized exchanges.This series is brought to you...