MicroStrategy (MSTR) is set to soon be included in of the world's largest exchange-traded funds after becoming the first bitcoin-centric company to win entry into the Nasdaq-100 Index.

The Nasdaq-100 Index tracks the 100 largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange and is filled with dominant market names like Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Tesla and Costco.

The price of bitcoin (BTC) added modestly to earlier gains, topping $102,000 in the minutes following the Frida

Michael Novogratz's Galaxy Digital (GLXY) has hired former Point72 chief financial officer Anthony Paquette to serve in the same role at the crypto financial services firm.

He will replace Alex Ioffe, who will transition into a senior adviser role, the company said in a statement on Friday.

Paquette previously spent four years as the CFO at Steve Cohen’s hedge fund Point72, leading the firm’s global finance, treasury, and broker relations, among other things. Before that, he worked at SoFi, JP

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 3837.79, down 0.0% (-1.86) since 4 pm ET on Thursday.

Nine of 20 assets are trading higher.

Leaders: HBAR (+5.5%) and APT (+3.7%).

Laggards: RENDER (-2.6%) and SOL (-2.1%).

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

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

Bitcoin and ether's bull momentum has hit a roadblock. The U.S. Producer Price Index (PPI) came in hotter than expected Thursday, prompting investors to tighten their stances and keep a bid for the dollar, as we anticipated. There's also the Truflation index stirring up concern. Seen by some as more reliable than government numbers, it rose above 3% for the first time in over two years.

But guess what? Fed fund futures remain confident

Disclosure: The author of this story owns shares in MicroStrategy (MSTR).

Since Donald Trump won the U.S. election on Nov. 5, bitcoin (BTC) has soared from $67,000 to around $100,000. This has coincided with a huge rise in bitcoin's total trade volume which has now surpassed $100 billion.

According to checkonchain data, bitcoin futures trading volume hit an all-time high of around $120 billion on Nov. 17, almost doubling since the U.S. election. However, since then futures trade volume has pla

In today’s issue, Kelly Ye from Decentral Park Capital takes us through the relationship between AI and blockchain and how this combination will drive these growing technologies' adoption and use cases.

Then, Alec Beckman from Advantage Blockchain answers questions about how AI, blockchain and crypto work together in Ask an Expert.

–S.M.

You’re reading Crypto for Advisors, CoinDesk’s weekly newsletter that unpacks digital assets for financial advisors. Subscribe here to get it every Thursday.

Societe Generale said it carried out a blockchain-based repurchase agreement with the Banque de France in what it called the first such tokenized transaction with a euro-zone central bank.

The lender's digital assets-focused subsidiary, SG-Forge, deposited as collateral some bonds issued in 2020 on the public Ethereum blockchain in exchange for central bank digital currency (CBDC) issued by the Banque de France on its DL3S blockchain, it said in a press release.

With the European Union's Marke

MicroStrategy (MSTR), the software company founded by Michael Saylor, is not the only large-scale corporate buyer of bitcoin (BTC), JPMorgan (JPM) said in a Wednesday report. Crypto miners are also adopting the accumulation strategy.

The shift to building up bitcoin holdings is driven by growing pressure on profitability, which stems from the reward halving in April and a rising network hashrate, the report said. Hashrate is the total computational power used to mine and process transactions on

A Polygon DAO community cohort is considering a proposal to use its more than $1 billion of idle stablecoin reserves, currently held on the Polygon PoS Chain bridge to capture yields, per a pre-proposal governance post.

“The PoS Bridge currently holds around $1.3B of stablecoins, which makes it one of the largest, but also idle, holders of stablecoins onchain,” the pre-proposal reads. “At the current benchmark lending rate for the 3 major stables this is an opportunity cost of around $70M annua

Bitcoin (BTC) is not the only one setting milestones. HyperLiquid, the leading on-chain perpetuals trading protocol operating on its custom-built layer 1 blockchain, is setting impressive records, too, with the platform seeing more activity in ether (ETH) than bitcoin.

The cumulative perpetuals volume on the platform has surged past $500 billion, registering a staggering 15-fold year-to-date rise, according to DefiLlama.

The platform has seen an average daily volume of over $5 billion in the p

Donald Trump-backed World Liberty Financial just increased its holdings of Chainlink’s LINK token.

The project purchased another $1 million worth of LINK late Thursday, data shows, for the second straight day, increasing its LINK stash to $2 million worth of tokens. It additionally brought $246,000 worth of Aave’s AAVE, taking total token holdings to $1.2 million.

LINK is now World Liberty Financial’s fourth-largest holding after ether (ETH), bitcoin (BTC) and tether (USDT).

Backed by the Tru

Appearing set for a run to a new record high earlier on Thursday, bitcoin (<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin" target="_blank">BTC</a>) fell sharply in U.S. afternoon trading as tumbling bond markets took a toll on risk assets.

The positive price action came as President-elect Donald Trump <a href="https://x.com/Crypto_McKenna/status/1867221868131864642" target="_blank">said</a> "we're going to do something great with crypto" while ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exc

Haliey Welch, widely recognized as “Hawk Tuah,” transformed her fleeting viral fame into a formidable media empire. With a burgeoning social media presence (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/hawktuah_/?hl=en" target="_blank">230K followers on Instagram</a>), lucrative brand partnerships, and the successful podcast Talk Tuah, Welch appeared to be transitioning from internet personality to business mogul.

That was until the 22-year-old launched her memecoin, $HAWK. Now Hawk Tuah isn’t flying so

The ranks of cryptocurrency developers held steady in 2024, as some recent entrants left the industry while veterans mostly stuck around, according to a <a href="https://www.developerreport.com/developer-report" target="_blank">report</a> released Thursday by Electric Capital.

The total developers working in crypto worldwide was basically flat, declining a statistically insignificant 7% from a year earlier, and the number of monthly active developers went to 23,613 in November, the report said.

Congressman French Hill will be the next chair of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, Punchbowl News reported Thursday.

The Arkansas Republican was named to the role Thursday by the party's Steering Committee, which named the leaders of the various committees ahead of the 119th Congress's start next year. Hill will succeed North Carolina's Patrick McHenry, who will retire after 20 years in Congress and multiple terms leading Republicans on the Financial Services Committee.

Hill ha

Memecoins, whether people want to accept it or not, have become big business. Without delving into statistics, anyone immersed in the crypto space this year can confirm that memecoins have dominated conversations. Critics often argue that memecoins are just a rehash of Jordan Belfort’s “Wolf of Wall Street” era — a world of unregulated securities and insider trading. This time, however, the penny stocks have been replaced by on-chain memes financialized in ways that make it seem like anyone can

Solana's nearly $500 million <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/learn/what-is-defi/" target="_blank">decentralized finance</a> (DeFi) derivatives market is getting a new participant, one that's looking to take a slice of all the other venues' pies.

Ranger Finance is an aggregator service that wants to be for perpetual futures what Jupiter is to spot swaps: Solana traders' de-facto homepage for an entire category of on-chain trading.

"We want the Solana ecosystem to compete with your massive dec

Avalanche, the layer-1 blockchain that is upgrading its technology platform, has raised $250 million in a token sale led by Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly and ParaFi Capital.

More than 40 investment firms participated in the deal.

The sale follows the project's Avalanche9000 upgrade <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/25/avalanche-blockchains-largest-ever-upgrade-goes-live-on-testnet" target="_blank">went live in a testnet environment</a>. The overhaul aims to make it cheaper to conduct

Real-world asset tokenization firm Securitize appointed Michael Sonnenshein, formerly CEO of asset management company Grayscale Investments, as chief operating officer.

"There is massive demand for tokenization, and I am thrilled to join Securitize at such a pivotal moment for the company and the industry," Sonnenshein said in a Thursday <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/michael-sonnenshein-joins-securitize-as-chief-operating-officer-302330093.html" target="_blank">statement</a>

Activist investor Starboard Value has made a large investment in bitcoin miner Riot Platforms (RIOT) and is pushing for changes in the company's business model, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/activist-starboard-value-takes-stake-in-bitcoin-mining-company-riot-82b3796f?mod=hp_lead_pos10" target="_blank">The Wall Street Journal reported</a>, citing people familiar with the matter.

Starboard has been pushing Riot to convert some of its bitcoin mining sites into data centers that c