Coindesk

As expected, the U.S. Federal Reserve has kept its benchmark fed funds range rate steady at 4.25%-4.50%, the first pause since the central bank began easing policy last September.The accompanying policy statement noted that the unemployment rate had stabilized at a "low level" and inflation remained "somewhat elevated."Under pressure for most of this week, the price of bitcoin (BTC) dipped to $101,800 shortly following the news.Since the Fed's first September rate cut, the fed funds rate has been slashed by 100 basis points. The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield, however, has gone in the opposite direction, rising to 4.6% fro 3.6% — a divergence between short-term and long-term rates that rarely has been seen.That divergence as well as a series of...

Canary Capital didn’t even exist when the spot bitcoin or even the spot ethe rexchange-traded funds launched last year.But the company quickly made a name for itself in the business.Founded only last October, Canary Capital has quickly pushed out several applications for crypto ETFs, including ones for Solana (SOL), XRP (XRP), Litecoin (LTC) and Hedera (HBAR), with the latter two being the first ETF applications of their kind.From the outside, it seemed as though the firm had it all planned out perfectly.“We really had no idea that we would be getting back into the ETF game,“ said Steve McClurg, founder and CEO of Canary Capital.His name might sound familiar to some. McClurg co-founded and served as chief investment officer at...

Howard Lutnick, who is President Donald Trump's nominee to be secretary of Commerce, is drawing scrutiny on his relationship with Tether from Senator Elizabeth Warren — the ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee and one of Congress' most reliable critics of the digital asset sector.As CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street firm that acts as the U.S. banker for leading global stablecoin issuer Tether, the Massachusetts Democrat said Lutnick backed a crypto operation with "clear ties to criminal activity.""You played a critical role in the rise of Tether, a shadowy crypto firm with profits exceeding $7.7 billion in 2024," Warren wrote in a letter to Lutnick, who is making his case Wednesday to the Senate Commerce Committee that's...

Price outlookOur analysis for 2025 forecasts bitcoin reaching a target of $150,000 in the first half of the year. However, an initial pullback may occur in Q1 if the newly inaugurated Trump administration fails to introduce the anticipated “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve” at the pace expected by the fast-moving crypto market.Even without a fully implemented reserve strategy, bitcoin is expected to rally, driven by bullish momentum. We anticipate the price to enter the $130,000–$150,000 range by Q2 of 2025, supported by strong market catalysts.You're reading Crypto Long & Short, our weekly newsletter featuring insights, news and analysis for the professional investor. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday.Key catalysts driving growthRegulatory progress: With major regulatory barriers cleared...

Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms (RIOT) finds itself a target of a second activist investor, with Reuters reporting investment management giant D.E. Shaw as having taken an unspecified stake.The move by D.E. Shaw, which manages $70 billion in assets, comes just weeks after another activist investor, Starboard Value (roughly $9 billion in AUM), took a position in Riot. At the time of Starboard's investment, the WSJ reported the investor as pushing Riot to convert some of its bitcoin mining sites into data centers that could host machines to enable high-performance computing (HPC) for big tech companies. Reuters didn't specify if D.E. Shaw will put similar pressure on the miner. However, the report noted, the investment firm has been known to sometimes...