Category: News

BPI sounds alarm on ‘backdoor’ for hardware wallets in Kentucky crypto bill

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Kentucky House Bill 380, a state-level crypto regulatory bill, includes provisions that would force crypto hardware wallet manufacturers to build a “backdoor” into devices, Bitcoin (BTC) advocacy organization Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) has warned.  The provisions require crypto hardware wallet manufacturers to provide recovery options for users’ seed phrases, and were added to the bill in a “last-minute” floor amendment, BPI said. The amended Section 33 of the bill reads: “A hardware wallet provider shall provide a mechanism for, and assist any person who owns a hardware wallet that was…

Bitcoin Sell-off Capped At $70K But Data Points To Rebound

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Bitcoin (BTC) dropped below $69,000 on Thursday, pulling the price back into its six-week range just days after tapping range highs above $76,000. The pullback coincides with an increase in selling from Bitcoin futures markets and stalling demand from US-based investors, but the chance for a rebound rally remains. A recurring chart setup indicates that BTC can return to its bullish pathway if the necessary conditions are met. Bitcoin futures set the trend as spot demand fades The latest pullback aligns with a visible shift in derivatives’ dominance over spot…

SEC Interpretation on Crypto Laws ‘a Beginning, Not an End,‘ Says Atkins

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US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Paul Atkins has clarified how the agency intends to approach digital asset regulation following an interpretative notice issued this week. In prepared remarks for a Thursday speech at the Practising Law Institute, Atkins said that the SEC would take a different approach to digital assets than its previous “regulation by enforcement” campaign. According to the SEC chair, the agency would first focus on its interpretation of how federal securities laws apply to crypto following the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the…

Forward Industries Funds Share Buyback With Solana-Backed Loan

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Forward Industries, a publicly traded company with a Solana-focused treasury strategy, has launched a share repurchase program funded through a crypto-backed loan from Galaxy Digital LLC, underscoring how digital assets are increasingly being used in traditional corporate finance. The company said Thursday it will repurchase 6,164,324 shares of its common stock from an unnamed institutional investor for approximately $27.4 million, reducing total shares outstanding to 76,977,809. Cointelegraph’s email to Forward seeking further information on the identity of the selling institutional investor was not answered prior to publication. A partial list…

EtherFi Allocates $25M to Plume to Bring RWA Yield Onchain

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EtherFi has allocated $25 million to Plume’s real-world asset (RWA) protocol Nest, marking a move to integrate tokenized RWA yield directly into its platform as it looks to expand beyond crypto-native sources of return. According to Thursday’s announcement, rollout will begin with exposure to Plume’s nBASIS vault, which is tied to Superstate’s USCC crypto carry fund, with plans to add a dedicated real-world asset vault directly into EtherFi’s interface in a later phase. The initial allocation gives EtherFi users indirect exposure to a strategy combining crypto basis trades, staking rewards…

Bybit Launches Yield Product For Tokenized Gold (XAUT)

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Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has launched a yield-bearing tokenized gold product that lets users earn interest on Tether Gold (XAUT), the latest entrant into a broader push to turn traditionally non-yielding assets into income-generating instruments. The product is designed to convert tokenized gold — typically a passive store of value — into a yield-bearing asset using XAUT, the largest tokenized gold product, the company announced Thursday. It allows holders to earn passive income while maintaining exposure to gold prices. The market cap of Tether Gold reached nearly $3 billion earlier this…

Animoca Brands Invests in Ava Labs to Expand Avalanche in Asia, Middle East

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Animoca Brands has made a strategic investment in Ava Labs and entered a partnership to support projects building on the Avalanche blockchain, focusing on capital deployment, advisory support and expansion in Asia and the Middle East. According to Thursday’s announcement by the Hong Kong-based Web3 company, the collaboration will target sectors including real-world assets, digital identity and entertainment, with Animoca providing business development support and access to regional networks to help Avalanche-based projects scale and reach institutional users. Projects pursued under the partnership may also tap into the broader ecosystem…

Bitcoin Rally to $76K Shows Strength but Lacks Confirmation

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Bitcoin’s (BTC) rally to $76,000 revived market optimism for investors, but onchain data suggested that the move may still be part of an early-stage recovery defined by frequent periods of price volatility. According to Glassnode, BTC price has entered a relatively “open” zone between $72,000 and $82,000, where there’s less resistance. This range is particularly defined by the UTXO Realized Price Distribution (URPD), which highlights where the investors accumulated their coins. This means BTC may move more freely in the short term within this range, if the momentum holds. Bitcoin…

Carpool and Ride Sharing Company Ryde Adopts Crypto Treasury Model

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Ryde Group, a Singapore-based ride-sharing and carpool platform, similar to Uber or Lyft, said Wednesday that it has adopted a crypto treasury strategy for its corporate reserve. The company said it will invest a portion of its corporate reserves into Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), and Sol (SOL), with specific allocations and time of purchase to be determined by a governance team at Ryde, according to its announcement. Ryde cited the “evolving macroeconomic environment” as the reason for adopting a crypto treasury, and said that the option to invest portions of…

Major League Baseball Inks Deals with US Regulator, Polymarket

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Major League Baseball (MLB) announced that it had signed an “integrity protection” agreement with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as it separately inked a deal with prediction markets platform Polymarket.  In a Thursday announcement, MLB said that its commissioner, Robert Manfred, signed a memorandum of understanding with CFTC Chair Michael Selig following the league’s request for “strong integrity protections in the rapidly evolving prediction market space.” In a separate deal, the league said it had reached an agreement for predictions market platform Polymarket to be its Official Prediction…