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 3644.43, down 0.3% (-9.33) since 4 pm ET on Wednesday.

Four of 20 assets are trading higher.

Leaders: HBAR (+3.1%) and APT (+2.9%).

Laggards: AVAX (-3.7%) and ICP (-3.7%).

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

Curve founder Michael Egorov was liquidated for 918.83K CRV ($882,000) after CRV fell by more than 12% over the past 24-hours.

The head honcho of the decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform suffered a series of mammoth liquidations earlier in 2024 after taking out loans to purchase CRV and bolster the price. $140 million in total was liquidated in June.

"Many of you are aware that I had all my loans liquidated. Size of my positions was too large for markets to handle and caused 10M of ba

EMBARGOED UNTIL 19 DECEMBER 2024 @ 9:00 AM ET

Blockchain security firm Blockaid said a full 59% of crypto tokens introduced this year were "malicious in nature."

The number of nefarious tokens being sold into the open market ties in with the rising memecoin narrative that has been consistent throughout this cycle.

There are now 10 memecoins with a market cap of $1 billion or greater and this relative success has led to copycat tokens being launched on Ethereum, Base and Solana among other cha

Another bitcoin miner, Hut 8 (HUT), has decided to pull the trigger on buying bitcoin in the open market, following the likes of MicroStrategy (MSTR) and MARA Holdings (MARA).

The Miami, Florida-based company said it bought about 990 bitcoin for an average price of $101,710 each. The latest purchase will bring the amount of bitcoin held in Hut 8's reserve to 10,096, or about $1 billion in market value, and make it among the top 10 largest corporate owners of bitcoin, the company said in a state

BTC's rise to record highs earlier this week is expected to allow miners to extend their November profitability into December, according to a report by investment bank Jefferies on Wednesday.

Bitcoin mining economics improved in November as the average price of bitcoin was 31% higher while the average network hashrate rose by almost 4%, the report said.

The hashrate, representing the total computing power dedicated to a network, is a proxy for competition in the industry and mining difficulty.

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

If you were looking forward to a quiet Christmas away from your computer, expecting bitcoin to rise steadily through the year-end, forget it. Looks like the Fed has dashed those plans.

First of all, Chair Jerome Powell's comments distancing the central bank from President-elect Donald Trump's potential creation of a strategic bitcoin reserve mean traders hoping for one will need some solid reassurance. Many are likely to sit on the sid

Craig Wright, who falsely claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin, is in court again.

This time, the Crypto Open Patent Alliances is arguing Wright's attempt to sue for 900 million pounds ($1.1 billion) over intellectual property rights related to the Bitcoin system in October amounts to contempt of court after a judge ruled in July that he was barred from pursuing proceedings related to his claim to be Nakamoto.

The two-day trial is due to end later Thursday and CO

Wednesday, Dec. 18, will go down in history as a day of market panic triggered by the 25 basis point Fed rate cut and Chair Jerome Powell's hawkish outlook.

Bitcoin (BTC) briefly tumbled below $100,000; U.S. equities dropped around 3%, while the dollar index (DXY) index soared to a two-year high of 108, which continues to put pressure on currencies worldwide.

The most significant movement came from the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), which skyrocketed by 74%, marking the largest one-day jump in t

Ilya Lichtenstein, who pled guilty last year to charges related to the 2016 theft of 120,000 bitcoin from Bitfinex, has made his first public statement since his 2022 arrest.

In a five-minute video posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday, Lichtenstein reiterated that he was the hacker and that he acted alone, denying speculation in a Netflix documentary that his father (or, perhaps, some spy agency, maybe Russia's) might have been involved in the theft.

“My dad is no hacker, he doesn’t even

World Liberty Financial, backed by the family of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, on Wednesday exchanged about $10 million worth of Coinbase's (COIN) wrapped bitcoin, cbBTC, for rival WBTC.

Wrapped bitcoin is a form of the world's largest cryptocurrency that can be used in decentralized finance (DeFi) on blockchains other than Bitcoin.

Coinbase introduced cbBTC in September, and in November said it would delist WBTC, citing its listing standards. That action prompted BiT Global, a custodian

The year 2024 has marked a significant breakthrough for digital assets, particularly for bitcoin (BTC), driven by increased institutional adoption. This shift has occurred through two key avenues: first, the integration of bitcoin into public balance sheets as a treasury asset, and second, the success of U.S. spot-listed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that have amassed over 1 million BTC.

A report from K33 Research reveals that U.S.-listed bitcoin ETFs have surpassed U.S.-listed Gold ETFs in term

A bitcoin (BTC) slump spiraled into over $700 million worth of liquidations across futures tracking major tokens, with XRP and dogecoin (DOGE) products recording unusually high losses.

BTC fell under $100,000 in late U.S. hours before slightly recovering during early Asian hours Thursday, as the Federal Reserve hinted at a few rate cuts in 2025. Fed chair Jerome Powell then said at a post-FOMC press conference that the central bank wasn’t allowed to own bitcoin under current regulations — in re

Crypto traders initial worries about a hawkish Fed materialized Wednesday as Chairman Jerome Powell cut interest rates but expressed uncertainty about the speed and extent of future easing. And now the sentiment has deteriorated.

Bitcoin's seven-day call-put skew shows that Deribit-listed put options offering downside protection and expiring in one week are trading at the highest implied volatility premium to call options since September, according to data source Amberdata. In other words, put

This is our final Crypto for Advisors newsletter of 2024. We are taking a break next week to relax before what we believe will be an action-packed 2025 in the crypto space.

This year, we’ve published 51 newsletters dedicated to educating advisors about digital assets. Our readership has nearly doubled from 24K to 44K active subscribers. We thank the many advisors who have signed up and engaged with us every week. As always, we enjoy hearing your feedback and suggested newsletter topics, so plea

When Michael Saylor announced MicroStrategy's conversion of $250 million in Treasury reserves to bitcoin in August 2020, Wall Street analysts dismissed it as a reckless gamble. "Superior to cash," Saylor declared of bitcoin at the time, drawing skepticism from traditional banking circles.

Yet today, those same banks that sneered at bitcoin's corporate adoption are now scrambling to participate in bitcoin-collateralized lending as they race to capitalize on its superior characteristics as instit

BOB, the "hybrid layer-2" network seeking to make Bitcoin the center of the decentralized finance (DeFi) universe, has taken a step toward that goal by integrating with BTC restaking protocol Babylon.

An abbreviation of "Build on Bitcoin," BOB's aim is to establish Bitcoin as the foundational network for DeFi by creating bridges between itself and other blockchains, using Bitcoin as the anchor chain to finalize transactions.

Integrating with Babylon forms part of BOB's roadmap by giving it "Bi

As 2024 draws to a close, cryptocurrency stands at a turning point. Bitcoin has crossed the $100,000 mark and digital assets have solidified their place in investment portfolios of all sizes. Yet, amid these milestones, a critical, yet overlooked issue remains: the estate planning challenges unique to cryptocurrency and other digital assets.

A Looming Crisis: Estate Planning in a Digital Era

Unlike traditional assets, cryptocurrencies and digital assets operate outside established estate plann

The U.S. Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark fed funds rate by 25 basis points to the 4.25%- 4.50% range, its third consecutive easing move this year and now marking a total of 100 basis points of rate cuts since September.

Market participants had fully expected Wednesday's move by the central bank, but recent data had shown continued solid economic growth and perky inflation. This turned the focus today to the policy statement, updated economic projections and the upcoming press conference w

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm Marc Hochstein, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

In this issue:

Solana was the biggest draw for new crypto developers in 2024

No wonder: Solana's transaction volume is off the charts

Coinbase alums take next step toward no-code blockchain development

Kraken’s 'Ink' layer-2 goes live

Avalanche activates biggest-ever upgrade

Ethereum'

Banking giant Deutsche Bank is building out a layer-2 rollup network on Ethereum with Matter Labs’ ZKsync technology.

Bloomberg reported the project Wednesday, and a representative for Matter Labs confirmed the story.

The chain will be "a public and permissioned L2," Omar Azhar, the head of business development at Matter Labs, told CoinDesk over Telegram. When asked to elaborate, he referred a reporter to another participant in the project, Memento Blockchain, which did not immediately respond