Crypto News

Investment advisers will probably overtake hedge funds as the biggest holders of U.S.-listed spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) next year, CF Benchmarks said Monday.A total of 11 spot BTC ETFs debuted in the U.S. on Jan. 11, providing a way for investors to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency without personally having to hold and store it. Since their inception, they have accumulated over $36 billion in investor funds.Demand has been dominated by hedge-fund managers, who own 45.3% of the ETFs. Investment advisers, the gatekeepers to retail and high-net-worth capital, are a distant second at 28%.That's set to change in 2025, according to CF Benchmarks, which predicts investment advisers' share will rise above 50% in both the BTC and...

Avalon Labs, the issuer of the BTC-backed stablecoin USDa, has raised $10 million to grow its Bitcoin decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.The Series A funding round was led by Framework Ventures and included contributions from UXTO Management, Presto Labs and Kenetic Capital, according to an announcement shared with CoinDesk on Monday.Avalon aims to evolve BTC from a digital store of value to a more active financial instrument that can serve a range of different purposes. Users can unlock the value stored in their BTC by collateralizing it for USDa it at a fixed borrowing rate of 8%. The token reached $700 million in total value locked (TVL) earlier this month.Along with its stablecoin, Avalon offers bitcoin-backed lending, yield generating savings accounts...

Several popular memecoins were added to a number of Chainlink services over the weekend, allowing them to be offered on other networks or as data streaming services.In the past few days, Shiba Inu (SHIB) and its ecosystem tokens, Turbo (TURBO) and Apu (APU), adopted the Chainlink Cross-Chain Token (CCT) standard to become available across 12 blockchains, making them accessible on networks other than where they were originally issued.On Sunday, tokens Simon’s Cat (CAT), Coq Inu (COQ), goat (GOAT), Hamster Kombat’s HMSTR and mog coin (MOG) joined a list of assets on Chainlink’s decentralized data streams.These streams use an oracle model where market data is continuously available off-chain. Such data can be accessed and then cryptographically verified on-chain when needed.CCTs are...

Financial collaboration between North Korea and Russia has exacerbated the situation, according to a cybersecurity expert.Source link

Disclaimer: The analyst who wrote this piece owns shares of MicroStrategy (MSTR)MicroStrategy (MSTR), the software developer that has made acquiring bitcoin (BTC) a core value, added to its holding for a seventh week in a row.The company bought 5,262 BTC for a total of $561 million in the week ended Dec. 22 to take its total holdings to 444,262 BTC it said. The purchase, at an average price of $106,622 per bitcoin, was teased by Executive Chairman Michael Saylor in a Sunday post on X. It brings the value of MicroStrategy's holdings to $42.2 billion at current market prices and raises the average cost to $62,257 per bitcoin.The latest acquisitions were funded by share sales under the company's at-the-market...