Ripple’s prime-brokerage unit announced Monday it closed a $200 million funding agreement with global investment firm Neuberger Berman to expand the margin it offers investors to trade in traditional and digital asset markets. In its announcement, Ripple also said the funding will help support the ongoing growth of its multi-asset prime brokerage platform, Ripple Prime,…
Solana developer Anza said Monday that Alpenglow, the network’s biggest proposed consensus overhaul to date, is live on a community test cluster, marking a major step toward a potential mainnet rollout. The update means validator operators can now test software designed to move Solana from its current consensus system, which combines Proof-of-Stake with TowerBFT and…
Circle’s (CRCL) upcoming Arc blockchain and its $222 million token presale are raising a broader question for crypto investors: should Circle still be valued mainly as a stablecoin issuer, or as an infrastructure company building the rails for digital finance? Alongside its quarterly earnings this week, the company announced a major fundraising round for Arc…
When Strategy (MSTR), the largest publicly traded company holding bitcoin, first floated the idea of selling its bitcoin stash to fund its dividend obligations during its recent earnings call, it raised concerns among investors and the crypto community. However, executive chairman Michael Saylor sat down with CoinDesk senior analyst James Van Straten at Consensus in…
Payward, the parent company of crypto platform Kraken, is raising new capital at a $20 billion valuation, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Kraken declined to comment on the raise. The latest fundraising round comes as the company ramps up spending on takeovers. Most recently, it bought stablecoin-focused payments firm Reap for…
Immediately after Morgan Stanley announced it was rolling out E*Trade, charging a mere 50 basis points undercutting established rivals Coinbase, Robinhood and Schwab, Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas said “crypto exchanges should be scared.” Others were less blunt, saying the Wall Street giant’s “isn’t entering crypto to complement Coinbase—it’s entering to replace it…” The battle for…
Anchorage Digital, the first federally chartered crypto bank in the U.S., says it will take a back seat to the Global Dollar stablecoin (USDG) consortium, which includes Robinhood and Kraken. USDG, which has a circulating supply of around $3 billion, is issued by Paxos Digital Singapore and supervised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Other…
The American Bankers Association (ABA) is mounting an aggressive lobbying push against portions of the Senate’s Digital Asset Market Clarity Act ahead of a scheduled Banking Committee markup on Thursday, warning lawmakers that stablecoin provisions in the updated bill could still undermine bank deposits and weaken financial stability. In a call-to-arms circulated to bank executives…
Payments firm Corpay (CPAY) add stablecoin wallets and settlement capabilities for its global corporate customers alongside BVNK to give companies another way to move money across borders outside traditional banking hours. Teaming up with BVNK will allow Corpay clients to see stablecoin balances alongside fiat balances inside its platform, while allowing them to send, receive,…
Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) has sharply slowed its ether (ETH) purchase pace as Chairman Tom Lee signaled, following months of aggressive buying that made it the world’s largest Ethereum treasury company. The firm bought 26,659 ether last week, worth about $63 million based on ether’s current price. That’s roughly a quarter of the average weekly…
