Coindesk

Staunch crypto skeptic and disgraced former U.S. Senator Bob Menendez was sentenced to 11 years in prison on Wednesday on charges of bribery and acting as an agent for Egypt, the Associated Press reported.Menendez was a Democrat from New Jersey and famous for taking shots at crypto. He once called bitcoin (BTC) an "ideal choice for criminals" and also opposed El Salvador's acceptance of BTC.“You were successful, powerful, you stood at the apex of our political system,” District Judge Sidney H. Stein told Menendez, according to AP. ”Somewhere along the way, and I don’t know when it was, you lost your way and working for the public good became working for your good.” Stein added.Menendez took bribes in the form...

Institution-focused digital asset technology and trading firm BlockFills is collaborating with CoinDesk Indices to launch options tied to the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20).The CoinDesk 20 Index, which debuted a year ago, measures the performance of leading digital assets, catering to institutional demand for diverse tradable products beyond bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH). The availability of options means traders can speculate on volatility and time in addition to price direction, bringing professional liquidity to the index.Options are derivative contracts that give the holder the right to buy or sell the underlying asset at a predetermined price on or before a specific date. The ongoing crypto bull run, led by the institutionalization of bitcoin, has seen investors embrace options tied to BTC...

Bitcoin traded around the $105,000 level in European morning hours Thursday as the year’s first U.S. FOMC meeting concluded with keeping rates steady, bumping sentiment across stock equities and crypto markets.Jerome Powell-led FOMC maintained the policy rate steady at 4.25-4.50 per cent in the first decision of Trump's presidency after reducing the rates for three straight meetings in 2024.“We do not need to be in a hurry to adjust our policy stance," Powell said in a post-policy press conference. The rate pause comes because officials seek further progress on inflation.Interest rate hikes can make traditional investments more appealing, potentially reducing demand for bitcoin. Conversely, lower rates tend to boost bitcoin by making other investments less attractive. Higher rates might strengthen...

Bernstein remains bullish on Core Scientific (CORZ) even after the shares tumbled 30% earlier this week as Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepSeek challenged the idea that bitcoin (BTC) miners had value as data center plays. The slide means the stock is now available at a deep discount, the broker said in a research report Thursday.Core Scientific is the "leader of the pack" of the AI-focused miners, the report said, with 1.3 gigawatt (GW) of available power supply and a 12-year AI deal with CoreWeave. "Bitcoin miners have a 12-18 month finite window to build a hybrid data center business, while the hyperscaler capex remains consistent," analysts led by Gautam Chhugani wrote.Bernstein said Core Scientific is on track to...

The cost of using Avalanche, a DeFi-focused smart-contract blockchain, has slumped since the implementation of the Avalanche9000 upgrade on Dec. 16, sending the number of transactions up by more than a third.Since the upgrade, the proof-of-stake blockchain's usage fees known as gas have averaged roughly 75% less than in the months beforehand, data from Flipside and Bitquery show. The number of transactions has increased by 38% to an average of 354,691 a day.Avalanche, the world's fifth-largest smart-contract blockchain by the market value of its native token AVAX, boasts of a multichain structure of C-Chain, which handles smart contracts, P-Chain for managing staking and validator coordination and X-Chain for processing asset transfers.The upgrade comprised seven improvement proposals, including ACP-125, which...