Strong hands look to have been backing the recent rally to record highs for Ethereum’s ether cryptocurrency. The number of whale addresses (those holding at least 10,000 ETH) jumped to a 13-month high of 1,103 on Saturday, according to on-chain data from blockchain analytics firm Glassnode. More than 35 whale addresses have been created this

Maybe it’s just that winter is dragging on, but I find myself getting increasingly irritated with mainstream reports about Bitcoin that say it was a result of the financial crisis.  It wasn’t, and that matters. First, let’s look at why it wasn’t, and then I’ll explain why this misunderstanding bothers me. Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi

The document that started it all, in audio form. This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io. For this week’s Long Reads Sunday, NLW reads the document that started it all – the Bitcoin White Paper. Interestingly, this document was released under an MIT open-source license, available free to all. Image credit: Emir Hoyman/Getty Images Plus

Some rudimentary pixel art just sold for 605 ETH, or $761,889 at purchase. FlamingoDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for investing in digital collectibles, is behind Saturday’s eye-popping CryptoPunk sale. Only nine such “Aliens” exist in the CryptoPunk universe, which pioneered non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in 2017 and are the “Holy Grail” for an emerging class

Valkyrie Digital Assets filed an application on Friday for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), becoming the second company to do so in a month. According to Dallas-registered Valkyrie Digital Assets, the Valkyrie Bitcoin Trust would be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Coinbase Custody Trust Company, LLC would serve as the custodian for

Reports are that Chris Brummer – author of a volume on crypto assets and frequent speaker on digital currencies – will chair the CFTC. This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io. On this edition of the Weekly Recap, NLW argues that while bitcoin’s price was the short-term story of the week, the medium-term story was all

Bitcoin Core lead maintainer Wladimir van der Laan has decided to take “even more” of a “background role” for the sake of further decentralizing the project, according to a new blog post.  Bitcoin Core is the key software underpinning the Bitcoin network. While van der Laan’s work is mostly “janitorial” in nature, making sure the

The Bitcoin community is debating the extent to which Bitcoin Core developers and maintainers should shoulder the symbolic burden of hosting its white paper, particularly when doing so could unnecessarily sap their time and finances. The question arose after the Bitcoin white paper was taken down from Bitcoincore.org, a canonical repository for the Bitcoin software

While there was plenty of FUD flying around, it wasn’t the real reason prices pulled back so significantly. This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io. Download this episode Today on the Brief: Home sales up, home supply down Biden’s first test on the stimulus Euro pessimism Our main discussion: Why the bitcoin dip wasn’t caused by

Bitcoin’s shorter-term price woes are likely not over yet, analysts say, with one predicting a decline to $26,000. The cryptocurrency fell by 13% on Thursday in a spot market sell-off, hitting a low of $28,845 earlier on Friday, the lowest level since Jan. 4. In the hours since, the cryptocurrency has regained some poise to

The U.S. government’s top investments watchdog flagged a series of unregistered cryptocurrency companies for apparently duping mostly international investors with false corporate information. Of the 28 suspect investment firms the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) called out Thursday, CoinDesk found eight that appear to target would-be cryptocurrency investors. Some purport to be trusted newcomer

“I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.” Those were the words pseudonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto used to greet the world some twelve years ago in an email releasing the Bitcoin white paper. To this day, nobody still knows who he/she/they actually are. And since April

Amid another price downturn Thursday, bitcoin options traders appear to be becoming less bullish on the immediate prospects for the cryptocurrency. The one-week put-call skew, which measures the spread between prices of short-term puts and calls, has risen to a five-week high of 14%. The skew had bottomed out near an extremely bullish -33% just

Michael S. Barr, a former U.S. Treasury Department official and onetime member of Ripple’s board of directors, is likely to become the next Comptroller of the Currency, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. If named and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Barr will succeed Brian Brooks, the former Coinbase executive who served as Acting Comptroller

Bitcoin’s price slumped by around 5.6% in the past 24 hours thanks to some Asian traders taking a short-term bearish view and concerns the new Biden administration in the U.S. will seek to put a damper on cryptocurrency use. Profit-taking occurred in the spot market during Asian market hours after bitcoin failed to consolidate around

Ernst and Young (EY), the bankruptcy trustee for the defunct exchange QuadrigaCX, is trying to resolve a dispute over how to value the firm’s cryptocurrency assets before disbursement to creditors. EY will head to court on Jan. 26 to argue the valuation date for cryptocurrency claims should be considered from the date of the exchange’s

On Jan. 10, leading pro-EOS YouTuber Colin Talks Crypto announced he had sold all his holdings following the revelation earlier that day that Dan Larimer had resigned his position as CTO of Block.one, the company that made the software powering the EOS blockchain. In fact, Larimer has been gone since the end of the year.

Ether reached new highs, more people than ever are “long bitcoin” and a debate over bitcoin’s energy consumption is raging.  Top shelf Out of the ether?Ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain network, hit a fresh high of $1,439.33, up $19 from a previous record level of $1,420 in 2018. The currency is

Enjin Coin (ENJ) has jumped over Japan’s strict regulatory hurdles to become the first gaming cryptocurrency to be whitelisted for use in the nation. According to a press release shared to CoinDesk on Tuesday, ENJ has been given the official nod by the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association (JVCEA) – the country’s self-regulatory body overseeing

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day to our U.S. readers! A former Canadian prime minister said bitcoin could become a global reserve currency, Goldman Sachs is reportedly looking to get into the crypto custody business and MetLife is bullish on CBDCs.  Top shelf Goldman Sachs jumping in?Its crypto custody plans will be “evident soon,” according

With bitcoin hovering around $36,000 and Iran’s government blaming crypto miners for recent blackouts, CoinDesk’s Market’s Daily is back with the latest news roundup. Add Markets Daily to your Alexa Flash Briefing here. This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io. Prices fell by 6% in the seven days to Jan. 17, a weekly fall not seen

An offline mobile map for travelers has raised $50 million in a seed-funding round led by Alameda Research. Announced Monday, the funding will go toward the launch of a multi-currency wallet on Maps.me and enable a decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem on the offline mobile map platform. Cryptocurrency lender Genesis Capital and institutional cryptocurrency firm CMS

To think that such a festive concept, one that evokes both sophistication and childlike wonder, could become so financially charged … Last week, Bank of America Securities chief investment strategist Michael Hartnett said in a note that bitcoin looks like “the mother of all bubbles.” Harnett seems to be using the strength and speed of

Coinbase will break apart certain parts of its Coinbase.com and app infrastructure in a bid to keep the cryptocurrency exchange from going down during periods of high volume. During the recent bitcoin bull run, Coinbase has struggled to keep itself up during stretches of heavy volume, leading to snarky comments on Twitter and Reddit that

The second full business week of January has demonstrated many trends that NLW argues will shape bitcoin and crypto throughout the year. This episode is sponsored by Nexo.io. On “The Breakdown’s” Weekly Recap, NLW argues that this week is exemplary of a set of trends that will define 2021, including: Image credit: glorcza/Getty Images Plus

Fans of K-Pop girl group Mamamoo will soon be able to buy digital products related to the band using blockchain technology. RBW (Rainbowbridge World), a South Korean entertainment company representing Mamaoo and other popular K-Pop artists such as Vromance and Oneus, is jumping into the cryptocurrency world by issuing non-fungible tokens (NFT) on South Korea-based

Optimism has “soft launched” its solution to Ethereum’s transaction problem, the Optimistic Virtual Machine (OVM). The startup announced Friday that OVM is now live, at a time when gas fees have reached near all-time highs for decentralized finance (DeFi) traders. Indeed, the cost to send a single Ethereum transaction has hovered in the low single-digit

Bitcoin was slipping Friday on lower-than-average volumes for 2021 so far. In other news, while BTC and ETH are up this year, some DeFi tokens are doing even better. Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $35,610 as of 21:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Slipping 9.4% over the previous 24 hours. Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $34,425-$39,673 (CoinDesk 20) BTC

U.S. banking powerhouse Goldman Sachs has issued a request for information (RFI) to explore digital asset custody, according to a source inside the bank. When asked about timing, the Goldman source said the bank’s custody plans would be “evident soon.” Goldman’s digital asset custody RFI was circulated to at least one well-known crypto custody player

Bitcoin is in the red today, following yesterday evening’s announcement of President-elect Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan. Top shelf Stakeholders stakeThe bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP) from ETC Group (recently launched on Switzerland’s SIX stock exchange, though it trades elsewhere) has seen volumes far above all the other 1,800 ETPs listed on Deutsche Börse, the