Coindesk

While Vancouver's City Council has passed a motion to explore becoming a 'bitcoin-friendly city', British Columbia still has a province-wide ban on mining BTC until December 2025.B.C.'s bitcoin mining ban began in December 2022 to address energy concerns, and it faced a legal challenge from Conifex Timber, which the B.C. Supreme Court upheld in early 2024, citing the policy's reasonableness and alignment with public utility regulations.BC Hydro, the largest electricity utility in the province, relies heavily on hydroelectric power, which generates over 90% of its electricity.Vancouver's motion – introduced to the council by Mayor Ken Sim – focuses on bitcoin's financial benefits and mentions the benefits of bitcoin mining, but it can't influence mining because of electricity regulation and BC...

IP-backed memecoin Simon’s Cat (CAT) surged 50% Monday after becoming the first cat-themed token to get a coveted Binance spot listing — amid some meme tokens taking the plagiarism heat.CAT zoomed from $0.000039 to a record peak of $0.000067 in early Asian hours Tuesday, data shows, before paring gains. Trading volumes rose tenfold from $55 million to over $500 million.Open interest in the token’s future products nearly doubled to over $60 million, showing a bump in expectations of further volatility with a bullish bias.Binance said Monday it would offer airdrops of CAT to users of their Earn products who staked specific amounts of BNB tokens last week. It would then list 1000CAT (where a single token holds a thousand CAT)...

Ripple’s upcoming RLUSD stablecoin is attracting bids upto 836 XRP ($2068) on onchain marketplaces ahead of its Tuesday release, a sign of frenzy among enthusiasts who may want to be the first to hold the token.These bids range from 500 XRP ($1237) to as much as 836 XRP ($2068) as of Asian morning hours on Tuesday, CoinDesk viewed on the Xaman application. Each XRP exchanges hands for just under $2.5, data shows.“There actually is someone willing to pay $1,200/RLUSD for a tiny fraction of one RLUSD.,” Ripple Labs CTO David Schwartz said in a Monday post. “Tools will show you the highest price anyone is willing to pay, even if it's just for a tiny bit. Maybe someone wants the...

Crypto wallet company Exodus Movement (EXOD) has been approved to list on the NYSE American, the New York Stock Exchange's sibling market.Exodus, which will be listed under its current ticker at the open of trading on Dec. 18, was originally meant to be listed on NYSE American in May, but the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it was still reviewing the company's registration. The approval of Exodus' uplist may be a sign of a change in the regulatory sentiment toward cryptocurrency following President-elect Trump's victory in November's election with the promise of running a pro-crypto administration."We expect this uplisting will raise Exodus’ corporate profile, while also enhancing liquidity for our current and future shareholders," CEO of Exodus JP...

I will remember 2024 as the year blockchain broke through. The transformations started early and just kept coming. What’s astounding to me is that at no time during this year did the overall direction or the market change. The only thing that happened was constant acceleration.At the end of 2023, we already knew that 2024 was looking likely to turn out well. The European Union’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MICA) act was going to come into effect. This created a legal framework for crypto-assets, real-world assets and stablecoins in Europe. We were already seeing business turn up across the region in anticipation of this transformation.And then as we entered 2024, the hits just kept on coming. The first Securities and...