U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is close to naming hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, a cryptocurrency enthusiast, as his pick for Treasury Secretary, according to Bloomberg and other media outlets.

If the Senate confirms him, the next person whose signature adorns U.S. paper currency will be a fan of the digital currency ecosystem set up to replace the conventional financial system.

Bessent runs Key Square Group, a macro investing firm. He worked for prominent investor George Soros three dec

The sudden resignation announcement of a second Democrat from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Jaime Lizárraga, could give Republicans a boost as they start work changing the agency's policy direction.

Lizárraga's announcement comes a day after Chair Gary Gensler said he'd be leaving the moment President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath on January 20.

Another Democratic commissioner on the Securities and Exchange Commission is following Chair Gary Gensler out the door in January,

Popular memecoin Dogecoin {{DOGE}} jumped 5%, returning to multi-year highs hit earlier this month following fresh speculations on Elon Musk-owned social app X's long-anticipated payments service.

Apparently triggering the move was Musk posting a screenshot of podcaster Joe Rogan's X profile. The post included a dollar icon that's different from the app's tipping service, one user noted in an X post, speculating that it might be for sending money as part of X Payments.

Musk replied "true" to t

Intelligent Alpha builds portfolios by relying on AI investment picks.

The firm relies on a trio of AIs — ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini — and implements their decisions, even if they sound counter-intuitive.

The models have a great track record so far.

There’s a $30 million fund that, for all intents and purposes, leaves all investment decisions to be made by artificial intelligence (AI).

The firm’s name: Intelligent Alpha. Its staff includes founder and CEO Doug Clinton, a few programmers and

With Bitcoin eyeing $100,000 and “Peanut the Squirrel” grabbing headlines with 3,000% gains, crypto is firmly back on the menu this holiday season. Family debates about Bitcoin, meme coins, and “the dog thing Elon tweets about” will no doubt liven up the dinner table and you, as the designated ‘crypto expert,’ will need some talking points to win over the normies.

Crypto is libertarian lunacy

Trump's candidacy and victory sparked the latest crypto bull run and many now associate it with the wo

Polymarket blocked French users on Friday, weeks after reports that the country's government was investigating the prediction markets juggernaut for gambling law compliance.

The ban was not reflected in Polymarket's terms of service at press time, but on Friday a reporter using a VPN attempted to access the website from a French server and ran into a digital blockade.

Polymarket fell into the crosshairs of France's national gaming authority the ANJ after a French trader placed massive bets on

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.

The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 3219.34, up 3.0% (+95.19) since 4 pm ET on Thursday.

Fourteen of 20 assets are trading higher.

Leaders: XRP (+19.6%) and XLM (+18.9%).

Laggards: RENDER (-2.4%) and NEAR (-2.4%).

The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.

This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter, putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

Latest Prices

CoinDesk 20 Index: 3,273.75 +7.19%

Bitcoin (BTC): $98,833.89 +1.06%

Ether (ETH): $3,356.95 +1.95%

S&P 500: 5,948.71 +0.53%

Gold: $2,707.27 +1.42%

Nikkei 225: 38,283.85 +0.68%

Top Stories

Bitcoin is inching closer to the $100,000 mark, though its momentum has slowed. It clinched another record on Th

The U.K. plans to draft a regulatory framework for the crypto industry by early next year, Economic Secretary Tulip Siddiq said at a conference.

The rules will apply to stablecoins and staking services and will end months of uncertainty for the industry.

The U.K. plans to draft a regulatory framework for the crypto industry by early next year, Economic Secretary Tulip Siddiq said at a conference in London on Thursday, Bloomberg reported.

Under the plans, stablecoins will no longer fall under

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, says it expects to have 645 full-time compliance employees on staff by the end of the year — a 34% increase from last November — as it continues to rapidly build out its compliance department.

Including contractors, the crypto exchange already has over 1,000 employees focused on compliance, according to a Friday press statement from Binance.

Binance’s intense focus on regulatory compliance is relatively new for the crypto exchange, which just one y

Cardano's ADA hit the highest level since May 2022.

On-chain activity shows large traders are participating in the price rally.

As bitcoin {{BTC}} gets closer to the $100,000 mark for the first time — it crossed $99,000 earlier Friday — capital is rotating into alternative cryptocurrencies, creating a buzz in the broader crypto market.

Amid the excitement, proof-of-stake smart-contract blockchain Cardano's native cryptocurrency ada {{ADA}} is having its moment. The token has surged 10% in the

Bitcoin (BTC) is close to reaching $100,000, with prices hovering just over $99,000 after a recent spike.

U.S. spot BTC ETFs have seen over $1 billion in net inflows, with BlackRock’s IBIT leading at $600 million.

While there's strong demand and bullish long-term bets with futures and options pricing above $100,000 into 2025, a short-term pullback near $100,000 is anticipated.

Bitcoin (BTC) prices are a little over 1% away from reaching a landmark $100,000, close to 15 years after the asset w

XRP zoomed as Gary Gensler’s announcement of stepping down in January as chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) kept a multiweek bullish trade going.

XRP prices surged 25% in the past 24 hours, with most of the gains in early Asian hours Friday, amid widespread belief of a shift toward a crypto-friendly regulatory environment for U.S.-based companies.

XRP is closely-related to Ripple Labs, a high-profile payments company targeted by the SEC since 2020 on allegations of s

Continuing a massive comeback from a crypto winter price collapse of more than 95%, {{SOL}}, the native token of the Solana blockchain, has shattered its all-time high reached in October 2021.

At press time, SOL was trading just above $263, higher by 11% over the past 24 hours and nearly 360% on a year-over-year basis.

The new record came two years after the downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire FTX and Alameda Research, prominent backers of the Solana ecosystem. SOL plummeted to as lo

Crypto-investments firm Bitwise took a big jump Thursday toward offering a Solana exchange traded fund (ETF) in the United States.

Paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) makes Bitwise the fourth investments company vying to offer a Solana ETF, behind Canary Capital, which filed in October and VanEck and 21Shares which kicked off the race in June.

Donald Trump's coming return to the White House has reset expectations for the crypto industry, making once far-off regula

One of the more impressive runs higher ever seen in stocks took at least a brief breather on Thursday, with Bitcoin Development Company MicroStrategy (MSTR) sporting a double-digit percentage loss even as the price of bitcoin {{BTC}} surged to a new record high just shy of $100,000.

At one point lower by more than 20%, MicroStrategy closed the session down 16.2%. The move isn't much more than a large blip on the longer-term chart, with shares still higher by more than five-fold for 2024 and ahe

Financial services giant Charles Schwab has plans to directly offer crypto investments to its clients, president and incoming CEO Rick Wurster told Yahoo Finance in an interview on Thursday.

Wurster, who will step into the new role on Jan. 1, said that clients of the bank have already been very active in the crypto space through vehicles like exchange-traded funds (ETFs), futures and closed-end funds, and have done well with those.

But the bank wants to take it a step further.

“We also would

Is your social media feed once again full of crypto bros taking victory laps attesting to the inevitability of bitcoin?

If you’re wondering, "How did we get back here?" or why TV news told you that Bitcoin died, you're not alone. Driven by viral social media campaigns like Elizabeth Warren’s “Anti-Crypto Army,” crypto has become as dirty a word as investment banking was in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. The crypto-is-a-scam crowd may have sounded prescient as FTX blew up in 2022, b

Gary Gensler is stepping down. And no one in crypto is going to miss the SEC chair. Under his tenure, the lead U.S. securities regulator led a wide-ranging campaign against digital assets companies that was both damaging and frequently unfair. Meanwhile, Gensler offered no clarity to crypto companies wanting to do business the right way. At times, it seemed that Gary, along with his ally, Senator Elizabeth Warren, simply wanted to let crypto die on the vine — such was their obvious distaste for

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has ordered the Securities and Exchange Commission to throw out its so-called "dealer" rule, finalized in February.

Crypto industry groups had sued the agency, arguing its rule marked an inappropriate stretch into the sector.

The ruling emerged just as SEC Chair Gary Gensler was announcing his resignation and touted the agency's legal wins against the crypto industry.

A Texas federal court has rejected the U.S. Securities and Exchange