Coindesk

Crypto venture capital (VC) funding is expected to recover this year as regulatory clarity and more crypto-friendly policies emerge during the tenure of President Donald Trump, JPMorgan (JPM) said in a research report Wednesday.The Wall Street bank noted that venture funding for the industry has been subdued in recent years. This may have been due to enforcement actions by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the climate of regulatory uncertainty during the previous administration, analysts led by Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote.The start of the EU's Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulations, which came into force at the end of December, is expected to "further bolster VC engagement," the report said.Still, the level of funding is unlikely to match previous...

Ethereum scaling plans and network applications should start supporting the network’s native ether (ETH) to further bump value for the asset, co-founder Vitalik Buterin wrote in a post on Friday.“We should pursue a multi-pronged strategy, to cover all major possible sources of the value of ETH as a triple-point asset,” Buterin said as part of a longer post on layer-2 scaling, security and interoperability. “Agree broadly to cement ETH as the primary asset of the greater (L1 + L2) Ethereum economy, support applications using ETH as the primary collateral.”Buterin called for implementing incentives for layer 2 networks to allocate a portion of their fees to ETH using mechanisms like burning fees, staking them permanently, or directing proceeds towards public goods...

Interblockchain settlements protocol THORChain paused bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) withdrawals on its lending and savers programs to prevent a potential insolvency risk.Network node operators proposed and implemented a 90-day pause in early Asian hours on Friday, to formulate a plan to resolve debts, messages from THORChain's Telegram channels show.THORChain's lending program only has BTC and ETH, but its saver vaults support more assets.A potential insolvency situation could be created if all loans and savers positions were closed and repaid at exactly the same time, and if market sentiment also caused a steep decline in RUNE.THORChain meets its lending obligations by minting RUNE and selling it into liquidity pools. As such, deposits had been turned off a year ago as...

Bitcoin (BTC) held steady during Friday's Asian hours after Bank of Japan (BOJ) lifted the benchmark borrowing cost to the highest in 17 years while raising inflation forecasts. "If the outlook presented in the January Outlook Report will be realized, the Bank will accordingly continue to raise the policy interest rate and adjust the degree of monetary accommodation," the policy statement said, citing positive outlook on wages and maintaining guidance to keep raising rates, according to ForexLive. The anti-risk Japanese yen rose over 0.6% to 155.12 against the U.S. dollar following the rate decision. Still, risk assets remained resilient. Bitcoin showed no signs of stress, trading little changed on the day above $104,000. The futures tied to the S&P 500...

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published a new Staff Accounting Bulletin Thursday withdrawing its controversial SAB 121.SAB 121 directed banks and other public companies that they had to mark any customers' crypto assets on their own balance sheets. SAB 122 "rescinds the interpretive guidance" and instead directs firms to use Financial Accounting Standards Board rules or International Accounting Standard provisions.Source link