Coindesk

Wall Street giant JPMorgan (JPM) turned more bullish on some bitcoin (BTC) mining stocks in its coverage following third quarter results and recent gains in bitcoin price and the network hashrate, the bank said in a report on Tuesday.The bank upgraded Cipher Mining (CIFR) and CleanSpark (CLSK) to overweight from neutral. JPMorgan also introduced a new price $8 price target for Cipher, and raised its CleanSpark price target to $17 from $10.50.MARA Holdings (MARA) was also upgraded to neutral from underweight and raised its price target on the stock to $23 from $12.The U.S. bank downgraded IREN (IREN) to neutral from overweight while increasing its price target on the shares to $15 from $9.50. It raised its Riot Platforms (RIOT)...

Relai, a bitcoin (BTC) buy, sell and self-custody application, has raised $12 million Series A funding.The Switzerland-based company's Series A was led by Ego Death Capital, a bitcoin only VC, which committed $4 million to the raise. Other participants included Plan B Bitcoin Fund, Timechain, and Solit Group.Following the maxim of “not your keys, not your coins,” trusted self-custody has proved popular in Switzerland, even among newcomers to crypto, according to Relai, which has had over 400,000 downloads.The plan is to use the new funding to expand further into Europe and become licensed under the new Markets in Crypto Assets regime (MICA), Relai said in a press release."Despite the tough market conditions, our financing round was heavily oversubscribed. This fresh...

BlackRock's spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF), tickered IBIT on Nasdaq, dropped on Tuesday as the overheated crypto market cooled and unfounded concern that bitcoin's security might be compromised by quantum computing percolated across social media.IBIT's price fell 5.3% to $54.73, the biggest single-day drop since early August, according to data source Investing.com. The bitcoin price fell over 4%, hitting lows under $94,300, as overleveraged altcoin traders were liquidated, leading to bigger losses in the broader market.While such pullbacks are typical in a bull market, Monday's losses are noteworthy because they came alongside Google's announcement of its Willow quantum-computing chip, which can solve in just five minutes a problem that would take the world's fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years to...

The European Union’s wide-ranging regulatory regime for cryptocurrency firms, the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA), is set to take effect at year-end, but, with just three weeks to go, almost a quarter of the 27 countries that constitute the bloc aren't ready.For the regulation to apply in the country, EU members have to align local laws with MiCA. Those yet to do so include Belgium, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Luxembourg and Romania, according to a document created by the Electronic Money Association, a trade body, which was shared with CoinDesk.Trade associations representing the crypto industry say this state of unreadiness is being taken too lightly by overarching authorities at the European Commission and European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), which are...

It's raining options, CoinDesk said last week, pointing to growing demand for derivatives tied to bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies. Now, additional evidence has emerged in the form of record activity on decentralized finance (DeFi), which offers unique and programmable onchain options, perpetuals, and structured products.The total dollar value of crypto tokens locked (TVL) on Derive has risen past $100 million, alongside a record-setting trading volume and monthly active traders.“Derive.xyz's latest market insights reveal remarkable growth and heightened activity, with its total value locked surpassing $100 million for the first time, amid record-setting weeks for trading volume and active traders," Sean Dawson, head of research at Derive, told CoinDesk in an email.“Yield on all USDC deposits has reached 10% on...