Bitcoin (BTC) bears looked to penetrate key support Sunday, extending a three-day losing streak as macroeconomic concerns overshadowed President Donald Trump's recent-crypto-related announcements. The leading cryptocurrency by market value slipped over 3% to $83,200, testing the 200-day simple moving average (SMA), according to CoinDesk and TradingView data. Prices have dropped over 10% since putting highs above $92,800 Thursday. The latest decline comes as trade tensions between the U.S. and China are set to escalate on Monday. Beijing will levy tariffs on certain U.S. agricultural goods in retaliation for President Donald Trump's latest hike on Chinese imports. The tariff war has injected significant uncertainty in the market and for policymakers. On Friday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell reaffirmed that the central bank will maintain its cautious stance on interest rates while assessing the economic impact of President Donald Trump’s policy shifts. The comments came on the heels of a soft U.S. nonfarm payrolls report and expectations for at least three Fed rate cuts this year. According to observers, these developments, coupled with recessionary signals from the bond market, are taking focus away from Trump's recent announcement of a strategic BTC stockpile. "Despite the very positive news, Bitcoin fell 4% from $90,000 to under $87,000 in hours. It appears focus on Trump's crypto-related actions are increasingly secondary as tariff war fears accelerate," analytics firm IntoTheBlock said in the weekly newsletter to subscribers Friday. The firm added that macro concerns, mainly tariff-related, have been pushing down markets, noting the strengthening positive correlation between bitcoin, ether and U.S. stocks. "Further actions like Trump stating he's not even looking at the stock market, and his administration targeting lower long-term interest rates instead, suggest that investor expectations of a Trump bull market may have been too eager," the firm said. Noelle Acheson, the author of Crypto Is Macro Now, said in Saturday's edition that BTC's dour price action in the wake of the strategic stockpile announcement "underscores how macro concerns still weigh heavy on crypto assets." The chart shows buyers stepped in below the 200-day SMA on Feb. 28 and March 2, leading to a price bounce. The market will likely keep an eye on this level to see if traders do the same again.

2025-03-09 17:24

Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence has launched a new tagging system on its platform, allowing users to track cryptocurrency transactions of influential figures in the cryptocurrency space. The feature, announced via a post on X, applies to those with more than 100,000 followers on the microblogging platform, labeling them as " key opinion leaders " or KOLs and linking their associated wallet addresses. The new tag currently features 950 addresses. Among those identified are Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao, Yearn Finance and Sonic Labs co-founder Andre Cronje, and U.S. President Donald Trump.

2025-03-08 22:27

Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor shared a comprehensive cryptocurrency strategy at the White House Digital Assets Summit, arguing that the U.S. can unlock up to $100 trillion in economic value over the next decade by establishing a clear regulatory framework, removing barriers to innovation, and strategically acquiring bitcoin. Saylor outlined a structured approach to these assets, categorizing them into four distinct classes: digital tokens for capital creation and innovation, digital securities for market efficiency, digital currencies for commercial and to strengthen the dollar’s global position and digital commodities like bitcoin for wealth preservation. In his proposal, Saylor argued that this taxonomy would reduce regulatory uncertainty and integrate digital assets seamlessly into the traditional financial system. His proposal calls for the removal of restrictions on cryptocurrencies, which would allow entities in the U.S. quick access to capital markets while ensuring the U.S. dollar would remain integral to global commerce. The first-ever White House Crypto Summit, held on Friday, was largely meant to set a tone for the Trump administration's friendlier stance on the industry compared to the former administration of President Joe Biden. The summit included a wide range of industry giants, including top executives of Coinbase, Ripple, Strategy, Kraken, Gemini, Chainlink, Robinhood and many others. Read more: CoinDeskTrump's Crypto Summit Sets Agenda for U.S. Pivot At the same time, Saylor’s proposal emphasized the need for fair disclosure and accountability to prevent fraud and conflicts of interest. Strategy’s founder also called for ending “hostile and unfair tax policies” on the crypto sector. Instead, government support would allow the industry to “reach its full potential.” “The government should encourage and provide support for major banks to custody, trade, and finance bitcoin assets. Debanking of crypto industry participants should not be tolerated,” the proposal reads. A central pillar of Saylor’s vision is a strategic bitcoin reserve, which would see the U.S. acquire 5%-25% of the total bitcoin supply by 2035 through steady, programmatic purchases. Strategy, the firm Saylor founded and in which he currently serves as executive chairman, adopted bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset in 2020, having purchased 499,096 BTC since . He projected that by 2045, this reserve could generate between $16 to $81 trillion, offering a long-term solution for national debt reduction for the U.S. Read more: Strategy Has Taken 30% of the U.S. Convertible Debt Market in 2025

2025-03-08 22:22

Brazil’s state-owned postal service, Empresa Brasileira de Correios e Telégrafos, has launched a pre-selection process for companies and specialists in blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) to develop solutions for its logistics and operational management. The tender, published in the country’s official journal Diário Oficial da União on Friday, seeks proposals that support the digital transformation of the agency's services. The initiative, called Licitação Seleção Prévia e Diálogo nº 25000001/2025 CS , is focused on finding advanced technological solutions to modernize business processes, operations, and internal supply management. “We want to promote a collaborative and dynamic process to find artificial intelligence and blockchain solutions for our business, operations, and hiring challenges,” the company announced . The organization did not specify the exact use cases it is targeting, but blockchain technology has been widely adopted for supply chain tracking, document authentication, and transaction security. The use of artificial intelligence is likely linked to logistics optimization and enhanced data analysis.

2025-03-08 20:29

Volatility Shares, an asset manager known for launching innovative exchange-traded funds (ETFs), has filed for three new products centered on XRP. These include a spot XRP ETF, a 2x leveraged XRP ETF and an inverse -1x XRP ETF. The spot XRP ETF is designed to track the price of the cryptocurrency directly, while the 2x XRP ETF aims to amplify daily price movements by a factor of two. The -1x XRP ETF offers investors a way to bet against XRP’s price, reflecting the reverse of its daily performance. This latest move comes as expectations rise for regulatory approval of a spot XRP ETF. Traders on Polymarket are currently weighing a 77% chance that a spot XRP ETF will receive approval this year. However, the perceived odds of approval before July 31 are lower, at 35%. Volatility Shares’ filings see it join various other asset managers looking to launch XRP ETFs in the United States, including Grayscale, WisdomTree, Bitwise, 21Shares, CoinShares and Canary Capital. Last month, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) kicked off its clock for making a decision on one XRP ETF filing by acknowledging a 19b-4 filing by the New York Stock Exchange and Grayscale. The world’s first spot XRP ETF , however, is set to soon debut in Brazil after being approved by the country’s securities regulator.

2025-03-08 18:36

A $150 million theft targeting Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen has been traced back to a security lapse involving the password manager LastPass, according to a forfeiture complaint filed by U.S. law enforcement on March 6 flagged by blockchain sleuth ZachXBT. ZachXBT shared that the complaint detailed how Larsen’s private keys — or code to access one’s token holdings — were stored in LastPass, the widely used password manager that suffered a major breach in 2022. At the time, hackers stole source code and technical data by compromising a developer's account. By November of that year, they used this access to infiltrate a cloud storage system, stealing encrypted customer password vaults and unencrypted metadata for an estimated 25 million users. Although ‘vaults’ were encrypted, weak or reused master passwords could be brute-forced, exposing stored data. Hackers exploited this vulnerability, accessing Larsen’s keys and siphoning off the XRP, valued at $150 million at the time of the theft and over $600 million as of Saturday’s prices. “A forfeiture complaint filed yesterday by US law enforcement revealed the cause for the ~$150M (283M XRP) hack of Ripple co-founder, Chris Larsen's wallet in Jan 2024 was the result of storing private keys in LastPass (password manager which was hacked in 2022),” ZachXBT wrote on his Telegram channel. “Up to this point Chris Larsen had not publicly disclosed the cause of the theft,” he added. Larsen confirmed the incident in January, where he clarified the hack affected only his personal accounts, not Ripple’s corporate wallets. He is yet to publicly comment on the forfeiture notice. The fallout from the 2022 LastPass hack has been extensive and remain ongoing. In December, The Security Alliance (SEAL), a team of cybersecurity experts focused on the crypto market, estimated that crypto losses connected to the breach had touched at least $250 million as of May 2024.

2025-03-08 13:18

The much-anticipated White House Crypto Summit on Friday ended with a whimper rather than a bang for cryptocurrency traders, sending altcoins like XRP, Cardano’s ADA, and Solana’s SOL into steeper declines than market leader bitcoin (BTC). Investors had pinned high hopes on President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto stance, expecting bold announcements about a U.S. strategic crypto reserve that would prominently feature major altcoins. Instead, the summit delivered a more subdued outcome : a framework for stablecoin legislation before August and assurances of a lighter regulatory touch—moves that failed to ignite the market as anticipated. Trump said it was "foolish" that the federal government had already sold so much of its seized bitcoin, adding that the country will a colloquial rule of “never sell your bitcoin.” XRP dropped 3.5% in the past 24 hours to nearly $2.4, down from a high of $2.98 earlier in the week — marking a decline of nearly 20% from its Sunday peak following Trump’s initial reserve announcement. Cardano’s ADA fell over 5% while Solana’s SOL shed 4% to hover around $138 as of Asian afternoon hours Saturday. Bitcoin, by contrast, held up better, trading at $86,000—down 2.5% in the past 24 hours but showing relative resilience compared to the altcoin bloodbath. The summit, chaired by Trump’s AI & Crypto Czar David Sacks, had been billed as a landmark event following the president’s earlier pledge to establish a U.S. crypto strategic reserve including BTC, ETH, XRP, SOL, and ADA. Trump’s Sunday Truth Social posts had sparked a massive rally, with majors surging as much as 60% as traders bet on a transformative policy shift. However, Sacks’ clarification on Friday that Trump’s mention of five cryptocurrencies was merely illustrative — not a firm commitment — doused hopes of longer rallies. Meanwhile, the embrace of bitcoin could eventually see other countries act in lockstep, potentially acting as bullish catalysts in the coming months. “The US’ prioritisation of Bitcoin as a reserve asset not only legitimises its status as “digital gold’ but also sets a precedent that could accelerate regulatory frameworks and drive institutional adoption worldwide,” Vincent Chok, CEO of First Digital, told CoinDesk in an email. “This move will inevitably prompt a diverse range of responses from global regulators.’ “For those aligned with US policy, it could accelerate the establishment of their own national strategic stockpiles. Such federal confidence could inspire institutions to move on-chain, increasing participation, injecting liquidity into the decentralised finance market, and broadening interest beyond Bitcoin to other digital assets like stablecoins,” Chok added.

2025-03-08 09:56

Crypto exchange and custodian Gemini has confidentially filed for an initial public offering (IPO), Bloomberg reported , citing people familiar with the matter. The firm, founded by billionaire Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, is working with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, the report said, noting that no final decision has been made on the listing. The potential IPO comes after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ended its investigation into Gemini without taking action, according to a February post by Cameron Winklevoss. The company also settled a separate Commodity Futures Trading Commission lawsuit in January for $5 million. Gemini is among several crypto firms lining up to list their companies in the U.S. public market after the SEC has been in a full-scale litigation retreat in the first months of the Trump administration. Just today, Bloomberg reported that Crypto exchange Kraken is considering an IPO by the first quarter of 2026, adding to the reports that firms such as Circle, Bullish (parent company of CoinDesk) and Blockchain.com are also queueing up for a U.S. listing.

2025-03-08 01:29

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As he walked out of the White House's crypto summit on Friday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said his U.S. exchange is planning to hire a thousand people because of the policy progress the industry seems to be making at the beginning of President Donald Trump's second term. "It's only been, what, 50 days or something like that, and it's already created enough of a tailwind that we feel more confident in investing in the United States and growing our business here," Armstrong told CoinDesk. He said the hiring would take place this year. Coinbase, specifically, watched the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission completely abandon its pivotal enforcement action against the leading U.S. crypto platform. The company had been fighting the expensive legal dispute in federal courts over fundamental questions in regulatory jurisdiction over digital assets. That question is now in Congress' hands rather than continuing as a court fight and a drag on Coinbase's resources. Armstrong was among dozens of people crowded into the White House's State Dining Room for the first crypto summit with the White House, leading regulators and senior Republican members of Congress. The big news coming into the meeting was Trump's executive order the night before that called for the establishment of a bitcoin (BTC) reserve, which Armstrong endorsed. "You can't really have a better holder of this asset than the United States government," he said. "It's becoming a core piece of the financial system, and I think it's going to be a part of every diversified portfolio over time." Coinbase was a pivotal player during the 2024 election, putting tens of millions of dollars toward the crypto-focused political action committee Fairshake. He said Coinbase will keep backing the super PAC, which did "an incredible job" in boosting pro-crypto candidates. Bo Hines, the executive director of the President’s Working Group on Digital Assets, told CoinDesk that Friday's summit represented Trump's commitment to the industry. "The president made a promise that he's going to make this country the crypto capital of the planet, and we're well on our way in delivering that promise," he said in an interview after the close of the summit, in which the crypto reserve ideas played a significant part. "We were just with 30 or so of the greatest luminaries in the space, and I think everyone was tremendously pleased," he said. In answer to industry concerns that the bitcoin reserve isn't initially organized to include new investment, he pointed out that the secretaries of the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments are ordered to weigh methods of buying bitcoins without burdening taxpayers, and "both of them are excited to look into ways to do it."

2025-03-08 01:06