CoinDesk Crypto

Editor's note: CoinDesk has reprinted Aronow's letter in its entirety as it was provided, except for minor edits for profanity and grammar.It’s been a surreal couple of weeks for me. For those who don’t know, after a year of ignoring some pretty scary symptoms, my doc

Decentralized finance (or DeFi) is characterized by speed, autonomy and transparency unmatched by legacy banking institutions. The financial crises of the past half-century, brought about by opacity, obfuscation, inefficiency and excessive human meddling, clearly justify these in

The language included in the European Union's comprehensive crypto regulation, known as MiCA, is highly restrictive and could limit the growth and innovation of the blockchain industry. In particular, Article 68 poses a threat to the privacy and security of individuals, businesse

On Wednesday Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong went public with "rumors" about the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) working to “get rid of” retail-focused crypto staking offerings. If concerning, the scuttlebutt isn’t new: SEC Chair Gary Gensler took the

Decentralized finance (DeFi) has been one of the fastest-growing sectors in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space in recent years

Bitcoin miners, who have been battered by the recent bear market and high energy prices for months, are finally getting some relief thanks to natural gas prices that have fallen about 75% since August. Crypto prices, meanwhile have rebounded.Miners use copious amounts of energy,

Shutdown of the once-dominant darknet marketplace Hydra in 2022 changed the market for drugs and other illicit goods. According to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, blockchain data shows many of the darknet vendors quickly switched from Hydra to another marketplace, OMG!OMG!

JPMorgan seems to have confirmed what everyone already knows: The emergent world of artificial intelligence (AI) is the top trend of 2023. In a recently released survey of 835 institutional traders, some 53% cited AI and machine learning when discussing the technologies most like

You’ve probably heard the story of the market for “lemons” – not the fruit, I’m talking about low-quality consumer durables. In his seminal paper, economist George Akerlof showed that information asymmetry as to which second-hand cars are good and wh

This week, Glenn Williams Jr. addresses one of the hotter debates in cryptocurrencies at the moment: How traders should feel about bitcoin and ether possibly achieving a “golden cross,” a popular indicator from technical analysis.Then, Todd Groth, head of index resear

ChatGPT has stolen the headlines as one of the most impressive technology releases of 2022. Initially unveiled to highlight the capabilities of the upcoming GPT-4, ChatGPT quickly transcended the boundaries of the artificial intelligence (AI) space to become a pop culture phenome

Two weeks ago, Caitlin Long-founded Custodia Bank (formerly Avanti Bank), which is not yet in operation, learned the U.S. Federal Reserve Board had denied its application for membership, which would have formalized an association with the general reputation of the U.S. central ba

Lawyers have challenged a potentially consequential move from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to build a list of crypto tokens it considers unregistered securities.Nine tokens – most of which traded at Coinbase (COIN) – were featured by the regulator

When Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) invested in the decentralized crypto exchange Uniswap, it earned a massive trove of the project’s UNI tokens – crypto assets that double as votes in the exchange’s decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).The venture capital fi

2023 has been marked with increasing competition in the non-fungible token (NFT) space as different marketplaces fight for creators and collectors.OpenSea has been the frontrunner of the NFT marketplaces since its launch in December 2017. It continues to dominate the NFT scene: L

Crypto's future depends upon traditional finance (TradFi) investors. I'm not talking about banks and asset managers but the pension funds, endowments, foundations and large family offices that control large pools of discretionary, patient capital. If crypto is to realize its tran

A whopping $3.8 billion of crypto was stolen in 2022 -- the biggest year ever for crypto hacking, a recent report found. DeFi (decentralized finance) protocols became the primary target of crypto...

Casey Rodarmor tweeted that “Inscriptions are finally ready for Bitcoin mainnet” on Jan. 20, and the use of inscriptions the last two weeks sparked a big hullabaloo on Twitter between some of Bitcoin’s partisan factions.The hullabaloo included a number of differ

The White House published a statement warning about the risks of cryptocurrencies, pointing to last year’s various collapses. I spoke to an administration official about the statement and what it means.You’re reading State of Crypto, a CoinDesk newsletter looking at t

New concepts are complicated enough to talk about without having to struggle with vocabulary. It’s not so much the need to occasionally use arcane terms; it’s also that long-established words can be inadequate and better ones are not yet in circulation. One painful ex