Real crypto news

Tether plans to launch a stablecoin product in the United States as soon as this year, the stablecoin issuer’s CEO, Paul Ardoino, said in an April 30 CNBC interview. Tether’s flagship stablecoin, USDT ( USDT ), is already the US dollar’s top “exporter,” Ardoino told CNBC. It has a market capitalization of nearly $150 billion, according to data from CoinGecko.  Now, Tether is preparing to expand into the US market “by the end of this year or early next year, at the fastest,” Ardoino said, adding that the timing depends on US lawmakers’ progress on stablecoin legislation. The stablecoin issuer is working to woo US regulators by proactively collaborating with law enforcement and highlighting USDT’s benefits for the US economy. "We are just exporters of what we believe to be the best product the United States ever created — that is, the US dollar,” the CEO said. Tether's USDT has 66% of the stablecoin market share. Source: Nansen Related: Tether still dominates stable...

Blockchain payments firm Ripple has reportedly bid up to $5 billion in an effort to acquire stablecoin issuer Circle, but the offer was rejected. According to an April 30 Bloomberg report, Ripple put in a bid of between $4 billion and $5 billion as part of an attempted takeover of Circle, which was rejected as being too low. Ripple hasn’t considered whether to make another bid to purchase the stablecoin issuer. The reported acquisition came less than 30 days after Circle applied for an initial public offering (IPO) in the US. Cointelegraph reached out to representatives of Circle and Ripple for comment, but did not receive a response from either at the time of publication. Related: Ripple acquisition of Hidden Road a ‘defining moment’ for XRPL — Ripple CTO Ripple reportedly had an $11 billion valuation in 2024, an estimate CEO Brad Garlinghouse called “outdated” as of January. The blockchain company purchased prime broker Hidden Road for roughly $1.2 billion in April, claimi...

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has postponed deciding on whether to greenlight two proposed cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs) holding Dogecoin and XRP, filings show.  The US regulator has delayed its deadline for ruling on the proposed ETF listings until June, according to two filings reviewed by Cointelegraph.  The filings were responses to March requests from US exchanges NYSE Arca and Cboe BZX Exchange to list Bitwise’s Dogecoin ( DOGE ) ETF and Franklin Templeton’s XRP ( XRP ) ETF, respectively.  They came on the same day that Nasdaq, another US exchange, asked for permission to list a 21Shares Dogecoin ETF .  Dogecoin is the world’s most heavily traded memecoin, with a market capitalization of around $26 billion as of April 29, according to data from CoinGecko. XRP is the native token of the XRP Ledger blockchain network. It has a market capitalization of approximately $133 billion, CoinGecko data shows. The SEC has delayed ...

Europe’s second-largest neobank, Bunq, is expanding into cryptocurrency, citing growing retail investor demand for digital assets worldwide. The Amsterdam-based neobank announced the launch of Bunq Crypto on April 29, a new offering enabling its users to invest in over 300 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin ( BTC ), Ether ( ETH ) and Solana ( SOL ). Starting April 29, Bunq users in the Netherlands, France, Spain, Ireland, Italy and Belgium will be able to access cryptocurrencies directly through the Bunq app, according to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph. The crypto offering is powered in partnership with Kraken, the 14th-largest centralized cryptocurrency exchange globally by trading volume . Related: Coinbase to launch yield-bearing Bitcoin fund for institutions All-in-one financial platforms in focus This marks the first phase of Bunq’s global crypto expansion, with plans to gradually roll out trading across the entire European Economic Area, as well as in the Uni...

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has called on government officials to address questions related to US President Donald Trump’s memecoin and his media company. In an April 25 letter to Jamieson Greer, acting director of the US Office of Government Ethics (OGE), Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts and California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff requested that officials address concerns about Trump’s memecoin after the president announced a dinner and White House tour for some of the individuals who held the most TRUMP tokens. The two senators requested that Greer provide information on safeguards and guidelines related to whether foreign actors and others could buy political influence with the president, potentially impacting his policy positions and federal pardons. “President Trump’s announcement promises exclusive access to the presidency in exchange for significant investment in one of the President’s business ventures,” wrote the two senators. “In promising such access,...

Key Takeaways: Bitcoin’s year-over-year return and realized price metric signal strong long-term support from holders and suggest that BTC is currently undervalued. Standard Chartered estimates a Bitcoin price target in the $110,000–$120,000 zone by Q2 2025. Positive funding rates point to a potential long squeeze to $90,500. Bitcoin’s (BTC) weekly close near $94,000 delivered an impressive year-over-year total return of 53.61%. Since the last halving in 2024, the market has shifted from the early 2024 euphoric phase to a "mature bull trend" based on onchain growth, rather than speculative frenzy.  Bitcoin fundamentals triumph over fear and speculation Bitcoin researcher Axel Adler Jr. pointed out that the year-on-year (YoY) realized price, a measure of the average price at which BTC was last moved, has surged 61.82%, outperforming the YoY market value to realized value’s (MVRV) decline of 8.98%. This indicates long-term holders are raising the base price f...

Key takeaways: Norges Bank lost $40 billion in Q1 2025 as US tech stocks fell, exposing the risk of concentrated positions. The bank’s indirect Bitcoin exposure via stocks reached $356 million, raising sell pressure risk amid a global trade war and recession concerns. Abu Dhabi’s $437 million spot Bitcoin ETF stake shows sovereign wealth funds see Bitcoin as a hedge. Norges Bank, Norway’s $1.7 trillion sovereign wealth fund, reported a $40 billion loss in the first quarter of 2025, with most of the decline caused by a drop in the value of US-listed technology companies. Norges Bank also indirectly owned 3,821 BTC through its stock market investments by the end of 2024, presenting a potential sell pressure risk to Bitcoin, especially when considering the socio-political uncertainty and the risk of an economic recession caused by the global trade war. In such times, could Norges Bank increase its investments in Bitcoin-related companies or even buy spot Bitcoin exchange-t...

Michael Saylor's Strategy is "synthetically halving Bitcoin" ( BTC ) by purchasing half or more of the newly minted supply from miners every single month, according to Adam Livingston, a BTC analyst and author of "The Bitcoin Age and The Great Harvest." Livingston said miners currently produce around 450 BTC per day or approximately 13,500 BTC per month, but Strategy acquired 379,800 BTC in the last six months. This translates to the firm purchasing roughly 2,087 BTC per day — far in excess of daily miner output. The author added: "When Bitcoin becomes this scarce, access to Bitcoin will require paying a premium. Lending against Bitcoin will cost more. Borrowing Bitcoin will become a luxury business reserved for nation-states and corporate whales, and Strategy will control the bottleneck." "BTC's global cost of capital will no longer be set by 'the market.' It will be set by the gravitational policies of the first Bitcoin superp...

Two Ethereum community members, Kevin Owocki and Devansh Mehta, proposed a dynamic fee structure for the Ethereum application layer to strike a balance between revenue generation for app builders and fairness in fee extraction. The April 27 proposal outlined a simple equation that uses a square root function that proportionally lowers the percentage of fees as the funding capital allocated to a particular project grows. Owocki and Mehta explained: "For smaller funding amounts, the fee follows a square root function (sqrt(1000 x N)), providing proportionally higher returns to make building mechanisms for smaller pools worthwhile. For example, if the funding pool is $170,000, then the root of 1000 x 170,000 equals $13,038.4 or 7% is taken as overhead." The authors of the proposal added that fees would be capped at 1% once a particular application's funding pool crossed the $10 million level, ensuring that small app builders can develop decentralized applications witho...

Key takeaways: Based on power curve trends, Bitcoin may hit $200,000 in Q4 2025. Bitcoin follows gold’s price trend with a 100-150 day lag. Bitcoin’s (BTC) price has rallied 11% this week, its best weekly return in 2025 and its highest seven-day growth since early November 2024. Bitcoin also reached $95,000 on April 25 for the first time since Feb. 24.  Bitcoin 1-week chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView 21st Capital co-founder Sina mentioned that Bitcoin reclaimed the power-law price. The power law's predictive accuracy stems from Bitcoin's network growth following Metcalfe's Law, where value scales with the square of users.  Based on Sina’s Bitcoin Quantile Mode l, reclaiming the power-law price keeps BTC on track to hit a price target of $130,000 and $163,000 before the end of 2025.  Bitcoin Quantile Model by Sina. Source: X.com As illustrated in the chart, Bitcoin is currently in the “Transition” range, where BTC accumulation occurs. Once it ...

SEC Commissioner and head of the crypto task force, Hester Peirce, says US financial firms are navigating crypto in a way that’s similar to playing the children’s game “the floor is lava,” but in the dark. “It is time that we find a way to end this game. We need to turn on the lights and build some walkways over the lava pit,” Peirce said at the SEC “Know Your Custodian” roundtable event on April 25. The lava is crypto, says Peirce Peirce explained that SEC registrants are forced to approach crypto-related activities like “the floor is lava,” where the aim is to jump from one piece of furniture to the next without touching the ground, except here, touching crypto directly is the lava. “A D.C. version of this game is our regulatory approach to crypto assets, and crypto asset custody in particular,” she said. Peirce said that, much like in the game, firms wanting to engage with crypto must avoid directly holding it due to unclear regulatory rules. “To engage in crypto-related acti...

Solana decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Loopscale has temporarily halted its lending markets after suffering an approximately $5.8 million exploit.  On April 26, a hacker siphoned approximately 5.7 million USDC ( USDC ) and 1200 Solana ( SOL ) from the lending protocol after taking out a “series of undercollateralized loans”, Loopscale co-founder Mary Gooneratne said in an X post.  The exploit only impacted Loopscale’s USDC and SOL vaults and the losses represent around 12% of Loopscale’s total value locked (TVL), Gooneratne added.  Loopscale is “working to resume repayment functionality as soon as possible to mitigate unforeseen liquidations,” its said in an X post.  “Our team is fully mobilized to investigate, recover funds, and ensure users are protected,” Gooneratne said. Loopscale’s ‘Genesis’ lending vaults. Source: Loopscale In the first quarter of 2025, hackers stole more than $1.6 billion worth of crypto from exchanges and on-chain smart con...

Semler Scientific has bought approximately $10 million worth of Bitcoin since Feb. 14, the healthcare technology company said in an April 25 statement.  The company purchased 111 Bitcoin ( BTC ) for $10 million at an average price of roughly $90,000 per coin, Semler said . It holds a total of more than 3,300 Bitcoin worth approximately $300 million in aggregate.  Semler said its Bitcoin purchases have earned stockholders a Bitcoin yield of 23.5% in the year to date. Bitcoin yield measures the ratio of BTC holdings to outstanding shares, reflecting growing exposure per share for investors. “Semler Scientific uses BTC Yield as a [key performance indicator] to help assess the performance of its strategy of acquiring bitcoin in a manner Semler Scientific believes is accretive to stockholders,” it said.  Semler bought 111 BTC since Feb. 14. Source: Eric Semler The company said it acquired its Bitcoin treasury for an average price of nearly $89,000. As of April 25, Bi...

In one of his first appearances as the recently sworn-in chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Paul Atkins delivered remarks to the agency’s third roundtable discussion of crypto regulation.  In the “Know Your Custodian” roundtable event on April 25, Atkins said he expected “huge benefits” from blockchain technology through efficiency, risk mitigation, transparency, and cutting costs. He reiterated that among his goals at the SEC would be to facilitate “clear regulatory rules of the road” for digital assets, hinting that the agency under former chair Gary Gensler had contributed to market and regulatory uncertainty.  “I look forward to engaging with market participants and working with colleagues in President Trump’s administration and Congress to establish a rational fit-for-purpose framework for crypto assets,” said Atkins. SEC chair Paul Atkins addressing the April 25 crypto roundtable. Source: SEC Some critics of US President Donald Trump see Atkins...