According to a recent study report by Coinbase (COIN), Circle’s USDC, the second-largest stablecoin by market cap, is making a comeback as a result of rising global liquidity and fast adoption outside of the United States. This has led to a substantial increase in supply in recent months. Analysts David Duong and Li Liu stated,

A notice posted on the Securities and Futures Commission website states that HTX’s company in Hong Kong, formerly known as Huobi, has withdrawn its application for a licence to trade virtual assets. Three days after submitting, HTX withdrew their application, according to the SFC website. According to a June 2016 report, Justin Sun estimated that

OKX has launched as a cryptocurrency exchange.TR, or Trading Pairs, is a Turkish Lira-denominated localised version of the marketplace. “We view Turkey as a unique and significant market.” According to OKX President Hong Fang, in a CoinDesk interview, “it ranks highly in terms of crypto adoption and crypto transaction volume.” In Turkey, people have a

In a move that came less than a week after its well-publicized separation from blockchain lending platform Aave, cryptocurrency risk manager Gauntlet said on Tuesday that it is joining up with competitor decentralized lender Morpho.In line with the new strategy, Gauntlet will develop its own loan products and will rely on MorphoBlue, a service that was introduced by Morpho in January and lets anyone build a lending pool for a specific pair of digital assets. MorphoBlue is a direct rival to Aave. “Gauntlet has decided it could better pursue its mission of making DeFi safer and more efficient by joining forces with Morpho, which endorses a layered risk management approach rather than the traditional monolithic approach,” Gauntlet said in a statement shared with CoinDesk. The ability for consumers to lend and borrow cryptocurrency without the need for conventional middlemen unites Aave and Morpho.However, Gauntlet co-founder John Morrow surprised everyone last week by announcing that his team was leaving Aave because they “found it difficult to navigate the inconsistent guidelines and unwritten objectives” of the lender’s “largest stakeholders.” Originally, Gauntlet was contracted to help Aave manage risk starting in 2021. The sudden split left some in the crypto industry perplexed, but the Morpho announcement may help clarify Gauntlet’s reasoning for calling it quits.Using a brand-new tool called MetaMorpho, which enables “risk curators” (like Gauntlet) to establish pools, control their risk criteria, and receive related fees, Gauntlet will administer its MorphoBlue pools.The Morpho model is intended to be more efficient than Aave’s from a risk management standpoint, hence Gauntlet’s adoption of Morpho may be seen as a jab at its former partner.But when considered strictly from a commercial perspective, Gauntlet’s justification for changing sides might make the most sense because it gives the risk manager the chance to make more money with more flexibility. DefiLlama reports that Aave leads the decentralized lending market by a wide margin, with over $9 billion in total value locked (TVL).The Aave DAO, a group of token holders who collectively control governance powers over the protocol, is in charge of overseeing Aave’s lending pools.The DAO compensates “risk stewards” (such as Gauntlet, until last week) to conduct analysis and provide input on significant choices. The DAO frequently votes on modifications to risk parameters.Although Aave’s risk stewards are granted restricted emergency controls to assist protect the protocol, community votes are typically held to make changes to risk parameters, which can be a laborious process considering the hundreds of risk parameters that Aave has to monitor on a daily basis. Initially, Morpho was one of Aave’s largest customers, contributing over $1.5 billion to the lender through its “Morpho Optimizers,” which enable investors to receive higher returns on their Aave deposits.Streamlining is the goal of Morpho’s new rival service, which gives risk managers direct management over their MorphoBlue pools.In addition to having direct control over the fees they charge customers, MetaMorpho’s “risk curators” oversee risk management duties for the pools they establish, including establishing collateral requirements, borrowing limitations, and other guidelines.Risk managers “answer to the DAO” on Aave, according to Nick Cannon, vice president of growth at Gauntlet, who spoke with CoinDesk this week.“Morpho,” contrary to popular belief, “makes Gauntlet and other risk curators closer to a first-class person.” After Gauntlet’s Aave exit was announced last week,

Investment banking firm Benchmark stated in a research report on Tuesday that it began covering the stock that MicroStrategy (MSTR) has a unique business model centered on the acquisition and holding of bitcoin (BTC), which accounts for the majority of the software company’s valuation.The shares are rated as buy by Benchmark, with a $990 price target.In early Tuesday trading, MicroStrategy gained around 8% to $860.75. “We believe the boost in demand for bitcoin resulting from the launch of multiple spot bitcoin ETFs, combined with the reduced pace of supply resulting from the halving, has the potential to drive the price of the cryptocurrency meaningfully higher during the next couple of years,” analyst Mark Palmer wrote. When bitcoin halving occurs,

MicroStrategy (MSTR), the biggest corporate bitcoin (BTC) owner, has brought its overall holdings to 193,000 coins after spending $155 million to buy an extra 3,000 tokens. The tokens were purchased at an average cost of $51,813 apiece during the period of February 15 to February 25, as stated in a filing with the SEC. Michael

Frax CEO and founder Sam Kazemian suggests that the core team behind the decentralised finance (DeFi) protocol Frax Finance may soon decide to adopt Uniswap’s proposal, which is the top DEX, to give stakers of its native token a share of protocol fees. Declared The utility token and governance of the ecosystem is (FXS). In

The first rug pull event occurred in the Blast ecosystem when the gambling and trading site RiskOnBlast vanished, taking with it approximately 420 ether raised from individual traders. After raising more than $1 million from investors, the mysterious RiskOnBlast team sent almost $500,000 to ChangeNow, $360,000 to MEXC, and $187,000 to Bybit. A project vanished

ZachXBT, a blockchain investigator, reported that he had recovered most of the money from a stolen DeGods NFT that was sold in May 2023 following a “lengthy process.” The majority of the proceeds from the sale of a rare DeGods non-fungible token (NFT), which was taken in May 2023 after its original possessor fell for

When selecting four Bitcoin ETFs for listing, the $30 billion advising business gave low costs, asset growth, and trading volume top priority. Four out of the ten Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have reportedly been added by financial services company Carlson Group to its lineup of products for registered investment advisers (RIAs). Bloomberg reported on February

Approximately three years after being purchased by Sam Bankman-Fried for $323 million, FTX Europe will be returned to its creators for $32.7 million. After resolving a conflict regarding its European subsidiary, bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX gave the business back to its original owners. A Reuters story from February 24 states that FTX agreed to return

Following Binance’s significant $4.3 billion plea deal, market watchers are keeping a careful eye on the expected price of Bitcoin and looking for clues that could point to the start of a bull market again. After a slight decline of 0.50% on Saturday, Bitcoin is currently trading at $50,500. The consequences of this court settlement

The CEO of Flincap, Nathaniel Luz, advises the Nigerian government to deal with licencing concerns for regional exchanges rather than holding the cryptocurrency industry responsible for monetary difficulties. Nathaniel Luz is the chief marketing officer and co-founder of Flincap, a local over-the-counter (OTC) cryptocurrency exchange. He believes that the Nigerian government needs to be clear

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the former CEO of Binance, has been subject to new travel restrictions, which the US Attorney’s Office has asked a federal judge to grant.  In a document filed on February 23 in the Western District of Washington U.S. Attorney Tessa Gorman asked Magistrate Judge Brian Tsuchida to grant a motion outlining the

Holding a newly airdropped cryptocurrency token for longer than 14 days has, almost half the time, resulted in missing the chance to sell at its peak, according to recent statistics from bitcoin data aggregators.Interest in airdrops has significantly increased after 2020. The most popular method of obtaining free airdropped tokens is via taking part in

Users on X noted that Trump’s sudden shift in stance towards Bitcoin might merely be an election-related ploy to draw in voters with an interest in cryptocurrencies. Donald Trump, a former US president, has had a shift in opinion towards Bitcoin. Having previously declared that Bitcoin is a hoax and made anti-Bitcoin pronouncements while serving

The lawsuit’s plaintiffs contended that an obligatory survey by the Energy Information Administration for cryptocurrency miners was an abuse of power and politically motivated. The Energy Information Administration’s attempt to obtain data on energy usage from cryptocurrency miners has been the subject of a lawsuit filed by the Texas Blockchain Council (TBC) and mining company

The new Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA) of the European Union will have its main office in Frankfurt, Germany’s financial center.By the middle of 2025, the supervisory body will be operational.If they operate internationally or are deemed high-risk, “high-risk and cross-border financial entities”—including cryptocurrency companies—will be subject to AMLA supervision.It will work with regulators and financial intelligence units in other EU nations to coordinate its supervision efforts.Frankfurt was named as the preferred location for the new agency’s headquarters in a news statement issued by the European Council and the Council of the EU on February 22.Situated in the city is also the European Central Bank.Alternative destinations that were shortlisted were Brussels, Dublin, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Riga, Vilnius, and Vienna. The executive board of the AMLA will consist of five full-time independent members in addition to the chair. The general board will be composed of representatives from financial intelligence units and regulators in each of the EU member states. June 2023 saw the implementation of the first comprehensive EU crypto framework, the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA). However, June 2024 is anticipated to see the application of regulations governing “asset-referenced tokens” and “e-money tokens,” which essentially come under the category of stablecoins.In December 2024, regulations pertaining to “crypto-asset service providers,” encompassing trading platforms, wallet providers, cryptocurrency exchanges, and related services, will come into force.In the meantime, the EU has been hard at work developing rules pertaining to the application of artificial intelligence (AI).The European AI Act is the first piece of AI-focused legislation in the world. The preliminary agreement was adopted on February 13 by the Internal Market and Civil Liberties Committees of the European Parliament. The EU AI Act seeks to address generative AI models by establishing protections, such as copyright protection for creators.Additionally, it outlaws AI applications like social scoring and biometric categorization that endanger citizens’ rights.April 2024 is the planned date of the AI Act’s first legislative vote.

As the blockchain develops its DeFi ecosystem, the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Aave has implemented its money market protocol on the BNB Chain network.The BNB Chain team announced to Cointelegraph that Aave is now a part of the expanding list of DeFi protocols on the platform.The lending protocol is expanding the DeFi ecosystem on the blockchain network by partnering with platforms such as Uniswap and PancakeSwap.The network will have many DeFi lending protocols, such as Ambit Finance and Venus, with the launch of Aave on BNB Chain.In addition, BNB Chain offers decentralized exchanges (DEXs), perpetuals, LP tools, and liquid staking protocols at the moment.The team claims that it might soon include restaking methods in its DeFi ecosystem. According to BNB Chain, the addition of Aave to the network provides the BNB Chain community with access to one of the top DeFi lending platforms in the market.Through the link, Aave users may now take advantage of BNB Chain’s cheaper fees.According to the company, Aave users will also have access to the liquidity on the BNB Chain-based FDUSD stablecoin. BNB Chain developers can gain further advantages from the new integration, according to a statement released by the BNB Chain Core Development Team and shared with Cointelegraph.“Apps that expand on Aave liquidity can now be launched by BNB Chain developers, greatly enhancing BNB Chain’s DeFi capabilities.”The connection would enhance the present ecosystem by giving developers and decentralized applications (DApps) a lending platform, according to the BNB Chain team.Aave is a “user app,” according to them, and it can serve as a foundation for more intricate DeFi apps. Additionally, when Aave’s DeFi platform comes on the network, the BNB Chain community will also be exposed to additional choices for borrowing and lending as well as enhanced liquidity. The Aave-Chan Initiative (ACI) founder, Marc Zeller, expressed his excitement to welcome FDUSD to Aave v3 and introduce Aave on BNB Chain in a press release to Cointelegraph. Zeller clarified. “This integration opens up new possibilities for Aave users, and Aave DAO aims to be a key protocol in the BNB Chain ecosystem. We believe this addition will contribute to the overall growth and adoption of DeFi.” BNB Chain further emphasized that the Aave integration is a component of their strategy to promote widespread adoption by focusing on DApps, such as DeFi protocols.One of BNB Chain’s primary goals for 2024 is DeFi, as the company said in its market outlook released on January 31.The chain will prioritize gaming, artificial intelligence (AI), and decentralization by augmenting the number of active validators, in addition to DeFi.

The biggest restaking protocol on Ethereum by total value locked (TVL), EigenLayer, has announced a $100 million fundraising round led by venture capital company Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).A Bloomberg story from February 22 states that the venture firm was the lone investor in the investment round.Blockchain Capital sponsored a $50 million fundraising round for the EigenLayer protocol in March.A PitchBook research states that venture capital (VC) funding for companies involved in the cryptocurrency space increased by 2.5% to $1.9 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023.Since March 2022, there has not been a rise in venture capital investments in cryptocurrency until now.PitchBook claims that the introduction of the first spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in January may have contributed to the increase in venture capital investments in the cryptocurrency space. Andreessen Horowitz general partner Ali Yahya believes that the collaboration may open up new application avenues. He stated to Bloomberg “It will enable all sorts of new kinds of applications to be built… People will stake capital in order to gain rewards from new services that get spun up on top of EigenLayer.” EigenLayer, which was established in 2021, allows stakers and validators to restake liquid derivative tokens for staking, such as Lido Staked ETH and RocketPool’s rETH, in order to validate and secure other networks.To increase yield, these assets can also be used in other decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.With a TVL of $7.91 billion, EigenLayer is now the third-largest Ethereum protocol.DefiLlama data shows that EigenLayer’s TVL increased by 4.30% in the 24 hours before to 2:15 PM CET and by nearly 347% during the previous month. According to an official announcement, EigenLayer’s TVL began increasing on February 5 after the protocol momentarily lifted its staking cap in an effort to encourage organic development.EigenLayer’s TVL increased by more than 181% during this restaking time, from just $2.15 billion on February 5 to $6.05 billion on February 10.Although a new staking cap was implemented, the project intends to eventually eliminate this cap permanently.With a total TVL of $7.94 billion, restaking protocols rank sixth among all protocol categories on DefiLlama, with EigenLayer accounting for 98% of this total.First place goes to the liquid staking procedure, with a total TVL of $45.7 billion.

The cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin has reacted to complaints made by users on the social media site Reddit regarding their inability to remove their money from the exchange.In the KuCoin subreddit, Reddit users began claiming on February 21 that they were unable to withdraw their money from the exchange.A Redditor said that they have been unable to access their money for the past four months.The user stated that despite having given KuCoin all the information requested, they had still heard nothing from the exchange. They have had their account restricted for the past two months, according to another Redditor.The user alleges that in response, KuCoin made some “serious allegations,” stating that it had received a complaint with adequate proof linking the account to specific crimes like fraud, token theft, or hacking attacks.The Reddit user asserts, nevertheless, that they have not heard anything further from the exchange. Furthermore, a user reported that the exchange had frozen $30,000 worth of their Monero tokens.Another community member, however, claimed that even though they had a verified account and had used it for years, their ability to make withdrawals had been blocked.Users speculated about the claims’ sources and held debates in response to the reports on Reddit.Others advised users to “get out” in order to prevent any issues with their digital assets, while some speculated that the problem might be due to Know Your Customer inspections. Users were reassured by KuCoin that the company was actively working to address the issues raised on the subreddit, nevertheless.Moderators are already interacting with users in all four of the Reddit incidents to address their concerns, according to Eden Gao, KuCoin’s global public relations and branding associate, who spoke with Cointelegraph.The exchange, according to Gao, would continue the discussion and offer answers for each situation.The representative for KuCoin continued. “Please note that KuCoin does not freeze user accounts nor prohibit users from disposing of their assets. To enhance user security, KuCoin implements a comprehensive risk control system and voluntarily cooperates with authorities or law enforcement organizations around the world to enhance our practice.” Along with that, the KuCoin representative stated that some customers of the exchange “might experience some disruptions,” given its 31 million global users.However, Gao gave the community the reassurance that KuCoin has selected supporters on several open platforms, including Reddit, X, Telegram, and others.

The Intergovernmental Fintech Working Group of South Africa will analyse use cases pertaining to stablecoins and deliberate on suitable policy and regulatory measures. Tokenization’s effect on home markets is another thing the committee is thinking about. For real-world assets (RWA) on a blockchain, tokenization is the process of representing them as securities. The team intends

Gyeonggi, the most populous province in South Korea, declared on Thursday that it had amassed $4.6 million from cryptocurrency tax evaders, as per a local article published by Yonhap News Agency. A digital tracking system, being employed for the first time in the nation, was implemented to enable the tracing and collection of the tax

The government of Hong Kong intends to introduce legislation for issuers of stablecoins and over-the-counter services for virtual assets. The Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau have started two industry-related consultations in the last few months. An official stated on Wednesday that Hong Kong’s government has reaffirmed its intention to move forward with enacting laws

The abrupt increase in volume coincides with VanEck’s Wednesday offering fee reduction to 0.20% from 0.25%. With respect to daily volume, HODL was the third largest, after GBTC on Grayscale and IBIT on BlockRock. One of the top ten spot bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds in the United States, VanEck’s HODL, had a 2,200% increase in

The wealthy twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have now contributed a total of $4.9 million to Fairshake, a Super political action committee (PAC) that supports candidates who support cryptocurrency, according to Bloomberg, which cited the most recent federal records. The Winklevoss twins, prominent bitcoin (BTC) investors and co-founders of the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, were among