A version of this story appeared in our The Guidance newsletter on November 11. Sign up here. Edward Robinson is DL News’ Story Editor. The opinions expressed in this op-ed column are his own.

Howdy. Ed here. In just the last few weeks, the crypto regulatory story has been turned on its head.

“Regulation by enforcement” is dead. And the industry’s wish list is very much alive.

Crypto, which raised almost $200 million to influence the 2024 US election, is poised to land its holy grail — a besp

Bitcoin’s $100,000 cliffhanger remains unresolved.

Despite rallying 45% to reach $99,600 since Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election on November 5, Bitcoin has been unable to cross the six-figure milestone.

However, analysts expect it’s only a matter of time as traders have a lot of money riding on it happening before the end of 2024. On Polymarket, a bet that Bitcoin will pass the six-figure mark before the end of the year put the odds at 82% and is worth $4.5 million.

On cr

MicroStrategy’s plan to become a de facto “Bitcoin bank” will catapult its market cap to $135 billion.

That’s according to a note from research firm Bernstein that sees the software company hitting a price target of $600 per share, which would push up its current $95 billion market cap by 42%.

MicroStrategy is currently the 103rd most valuable company in the US, according to CompaniesMarketCap.

“MicroStrategy has positioned itself as a pioneer in the adoption of Bitcoin as a treasury reserve

Crypto dollars have never been more valuable.

Alongside Bitcoin hitting new highs, stablecoins across all issuers are now worth a record $190 billion, according to DefiLlama.

Tether makes up more than 70% of the market, but top stablecoin products from Circle and Ethena have all grown by more than 10% over the last month.

“We’ve seen a massive increase in stablecoin transactions on our platform,” Varun Paul, market infrastructure and senior director of CBDCs at Fireblocks, told DL News.

“It

Ripple’s Chief Legal Officer, Stuart Alderoty, proposed some “table stakes” for the next SEC Chair to address the agency’s contentious relationship with the crypto industry.

The recommendations follow Gary Gensler’s announcement that he will step down on January 20, as Donald Trump takes office.

His advice includes ending all non-fraud crypto litigation immediately, including the SEC’s multi-year suit against Ripple.

A federal court ruled earlier this year that while Ripple violated securitie

The UK has slated the release of its regulatory framework for cryptocurrency and stablecoins for early 2025.

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, which assumed power earlier this year, has pledged to create a single, streamlined regime for digital assets.

But for an industry hungry for clarity, many wonder if this new approach is enough to keep the UK competitive.

“We’re behind the rest of Europe, and then other jurisdictions in Asia and the Middle East,” said Ian Taylor, board adviser to CryptoUK, l

Crypto-backed lending has long been touted as a promising use case for digital assets. However, most attempts have struggled to gain mass adoption due to challenges in trust, regulation, and market volatility.

Now, Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and newly appointed Commerce Secretary under Donald Trump’s administration, is betting on its future.

The firm plans to launch a Bitcoin-backed lending programme with Tether’s support, starting at $2 billion and potentially growing into tens

Donald Trump has selected Scott Bessent as his new Treasury Secretary — a man who sees crypto as a natural fit for free markets and economic freedom.

Bessent, a veteran hedge fund manager and trusted Trump adviser, has backed the president-elect’s vision for digital assets.

This vision could potentially include a national Bitcoin reserve and a crypto presidential advisory council.

In a July interview, he praised Trump’s pro-crypto stance while taking aim at the Democrats’ approach to the indu

Crypto advocacy group Coin Center shared a cautiously optimistic outlook on the future of US crypto regulation following the recent elections.

While it expects progress in securities and banking regulation, it warns of enduring threats in the surveillance and tax-reporting domains.

In his analysis, research director Peter Van Valkenburg foresees clearer rules governing centralised markets and stablecoin issuers under a potentially more crypto-friendly administration.

“At the agency level, the

Ethereum is becoming a joke.

Crypto watchers have ridiculed the world’s second biggest cryptocurrency for failing to reach new records like Bitcoin and Solana have. Social media is awash with people making fun of the slow growth of Ethereum this year.

At about $3,300, it’s still almost a third of the price away from recapturing the $4,878 all-time high of November 2021.

However, there are signs that the leading altcoin is about to start moving after languishing around the $3,000 mark for week

A version of this story appeared in our The Roundup newsletter on November 22. Sign up here.

Happy Friday! Ed here.It’s no longer a pie-in-the-sky forecast — it’s reality.

On Friday, the price of Bitcoin stood on the cusp of hitting $100,000.

For years, bulls such as Arthur Hayes had unabashedly predicted Bitcoin would cross the six-digit threshold even as sceptics scoffed at the idea, especially after FTX went belly up in late 2022 and poleaxed credibility in crypto.

The sceptics were wrong

Crypto built a campaign finance juggernaut. And it’s just getting started.

“This election showed that crypto as an industry, but also the community, has a tremendous amount of influence,” Kristin Smith, CEO of crypto lobby group Blockchain Association, told DL News.

Industry-backed political action committees spent approximately $133 million on the 2024 elections, according to data compiled by crypto researcher Molly White.

Crypto’s next focus? Midterm elections in 2026, when 33 of the 100 se

MicroStrategy, the biggest corporate Bitcoin holder, is attracting a wave of short-sellers who are betting that its stock rally has reached a peak.

Investors are questioning whether MSTR, which has surged over 600% this year, has any more gas left in the proverbial tank.

“MicroStrategy’s trading volume has completely detached from Bitcoin fundamentals,” Citron Research said in a Thursday tweet. “MSTR is overheated.”

With Bitcoin now less than 1% away from breaking $100,000 for the first time,

It finally happened.

Solana’s price reached a record $262 on Friday morning, but experts say it could climb even higher.

The world’s fourth biggest cryptocurrency — after Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether — hit the all-time high three years after breaking its previous record.

While the price has slumped below $260 since, traders will likely pile into Solana out of fear of missing out, and drive the price as high as $700, Philippe Bekhazi, CEO and Co-Founder crypto trading firm XBTO, told DL News.

As Bitcoin’s price hits new records, Crypto.com is tapping its bursting cash coffers to aggressively expand beyond its core market of digital coins.

A slew of new acquisitions reveals an energetic campaign to roll out trading for Tesla shares and gold for the crypto exchange’s 100 million users early next year.

That includes American users, plunging the exchange into an even more cutthroat market than crypto: fintech.

“We don’t shy away from competition,” Eric Anziani, Crypto.com’s president

FTX expects to start repaying jilted customers in March, the bankrupt crypto exchange said Thursday.

An exact date will be shared at the end of December, after FTX has finalised agreements with companies that will help it distribute the $16.5 billion it has collected over the past two years.

“While we continue to take actions to maximise recoveries, we are full steam ahead to reach arrangements with our distribution agents and return proceeds to creditors and customers as quickly as possible,”

Gary Gensler, the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, will resign on January 20, the day Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States, the regulator said in a post on social media Thursday.

Gensler, a former Goldman Sachs executive and head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President Barack Obama, took charge of the SEC in April 2021. His term was set to end in 2026.

His controversial tenure of almost four years was marked in part by his

On Wednesday morning, a middleschooler launched a memecoin called Gen Z Quant — or Quant.

As the token rallied, the child sold a large portion of his stash, pocketed $30,000, and crashed the memecoin’s price.

Traders were incensed, and the middleschooler’s memecoin went viral. Soon enough, hangers-on launched their own coins to piggyback off of the virality of the “Quant kid.”

Kid makes a coin then dumps on people for $30k while live-streaming 😭pic.twitter.com/LoanyydtYX

— TTI (@TikTokInves

All eyes are on Solana as Bitwise becomes the latest player to file to launch exchange-traded funds tracking the fourth largest cryptocurrency.

Bitwise’s CEO announced the plans on X, which puts the investment firm alongside VanEck, 21shares, and Canary Capital in planning to debut the ETFs. The move comes as a recent survey by CoinShares found that nearly 20% of fund managers said Solana has one of the most compelling growth outlooks in crypto. A similar number of investors are already allocat

Chill Guy, a memecoin that soared to a $500 million market value, is in jeopardy.

Phillip Banks, the digital artist who created the character used for the memecoin, said he plans to issue takedown requests for “for-profit related things” over the coming days.

“Just putting it out there, Chill Guy has been copyrighted, like, legally,” Banks said in a November 21 X post.

It’s not clear if Banks’ copyright applies to the image of the Chill Guy character, the name Chill Guy, or both.

In any case