Coindesk

Russia's President Vladimir Putin said nobody has the power to ban bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies and that they will continue to develop, news agency RIA reported.“Who can ban bitcoin? Nobody,” Putin said at an investment conference in Moscow on Wednesday. “And who can prohibit the use of other electronic means of payment? Nobody. Because these are new technologies and no matter what happens to the dollar, these tools will develop one way or another because everyone will strive to reduce costs and increase reliability,” he said.Just last week, Putin signed a law classifying digital currencies as a form of property in foreign trade settlements under an experimental legal regime, taking a significant step in cryptocurrency regulation.The action was part of...

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 3892.21, up 1.3% (+48.1) since 4 pm ET on Tuesday.Fifteen of 20 assets are trading higher.Leaders: DOT (+17.3%) and FIL (+16.3%).Laggards: HBAR (-5.3%) and LTC (-2.7%).The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.Source link

It has been almost exactly a year since Javier Milei became the 59th President of Argentina.Inaugurated on December 10, 2023, the flamboyant libertarian economist — a former goalkeeper who cloned his dogs and called central banks “the worst garbage that exists on this Earth” — had vowed to end the South American nation’s hyperinflation crisis and to drastically reduce government spending.Since then, Argentina’s monthly inflation rate has fallen from 25.5% in December 2023 to 2.7% last October. The government has registered a fiscal surplus for nine months in a row, a substantial achievement considering it’s been running deficits since 2008. The Argentinian peso isn’t in freefall against the U.S. dollar anymore. And while the country’s economy is projected to have...

The bitcoin market is seeing unusual activity, hinting at increased adoption of the U.S.-listed spot ETFs for purely directional plays rather than arbitrage strategies.Since Nov. 20, the ETFs have seen strong daily uptake — other than Nov. 25 and 26 — capturing over $3 billion in net inflows, according to data source Farside Investors. On Tuesday, BlackRock's IBIT registered a $693.3 million net inflow, the most since in the period, bringing the lifetime tally to $32. 8 billion.Meanwhile, open interest in CME futures has declined by almost 30,000 BTC ($3 billion) to 185,485 BTC, according to data source Glassnode.The divergence is unusual and might be a sign of market participants buying the ETFs as outright bullish plays rather...

Memecoin issuance platform GraFun is expanding today to the TON Network, the third blockchain after Ethereum and BNB Chain, in a bid to capture newer audiences.Expanding to TON could help GraFun capture newer audiences, tap into higher liquidity for meme issuances and increase the platform’s visibility among crypto traders.“Creating and trading memecoins directly inside Telegram, one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, is almost here,” a GraFun developer told CoinDesk over Telegram message. “After launching 14k memecoins and generating more than $450M in trading volume on BNB Chain, GraFun is now making memecoin creation simple and fast inside Telegram.”TON holds over $350 million worth of user assets across various platforms based on the blockchain, data shows.A source...