Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped below $100,000 for the first time in six days following US President Donald Trump signing an executive order to impose import tariffs on goods from China, Canada, and Mexico.

The imposed tariffs have already triggered retaliation from the three countries, and the crypto industry is divided on how this will affect the broader market.

According to a Feb. 1 statement from the White House, “Trump is implementing a 25% additional tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico an

Crypto exchange Coinbase has acquired Spindl, an onchain advertising and infrastructure platform, as part of a broader push to expand the reach for projects built on its Ethereum layer-2 network Base.

“Coinbase has acquired Spindl, an onchain ads and attribution platform (re)building the ad tech stack onchain, to improve the onchain discovery problem for onchain builders,” Coinbase said in a Jan. 31 statement.

Aiming to replicate Facebook ads success, but onchain

In a Jan. 31 X video, Base cr

Top Stories of The Week

Binance claims no special relationship with Hamas, argues to dismiss lawsuit

A federal judge has not yet issued a ruling on a motion to dismiss a lawsuit, filed by families of victims affected by the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, against cryptocurrency exchange Binance and its former CEO, Changpeng CZ Zhao.

On Jan. 30 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, lawyers representing Binance presented oral arguments in connection with the companys moti

El Salvador purchased two additional Bitcoin (BTC) on Feb. 1. The country typically acquires one Bitcoin per day as part of its Bitcoin strategic reserve initiative but has been purchasing BTC at an accelerated pace.

According to the government's Bitcoin tracker, El Salvador currently has a total of 6,055 BTC, valued at over $612 million, and purchased over 50 BTC in the last 30 days alone.

The country recently rescinded its legal tender law requiring businesses to accept BTC as payment to sec

As debates surrounding the collection of biometric data and digital ID systems continue to foment, Evin McMullen, co-founder of Privado ID — a decentralized blockchain ID system — told Cointelegraph that offering financial incentives for personal data violates informed consent.

According to the executive, individuals in emerging market economies are particularly impacted by financial incentives in return for providing biometric data to firms. McMullen added:

"Paying people directly for biometr

Dr. Corey Petty, the chief insights officer at Logos — an initiative focused on developing decentralized peer-to-peer infrastructure for a network state — told Cointelegraph that network states will one day rival established countries and governance structures.

According to Petty, blockchain technology provides individuals with the three necessary components to establish self-governing, sovereign communities in cyberspace, which include trustless ownership, enforceable legal structures, and dec

Opinion by: Andrey Kuznetsov, co-founder of Haqq Network 

Real-world asset (RWA) tokenization was one of the top crypto narratives in 2024. Almost every tokenized asset class saw remarkable growth throughout the year, with tokenized Treasurys surging by 179% and private credit by 40%. 

The overall market cap of these assets also increased by 32%, growing even faster than the overall crypto market. Global investment giant VanEck forecasts that the RWA market will surpass $50 billion by the end

Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS, is experimenting with blockchain technology to modernize digital gold investments for retail investors.

The Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS), with over $5.7 trillion in assets under management, has completed a proof-of-concept for its fractional gold investment product, UBS Key4 Gold, on the Ethereum layer-2 (L2) network ZKsync Validium.

By leveraging ZKsync, UBS aims to address scalability, privacy and interoperability for the retail-facing product’s global exp

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is moving to comply with European crypto regulations by preparing to delist five stablecoins, including Tether’s USDt.

Kraken will fully delist USDt (USDT) on March 31 to comply with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), according to an official announcement by the exchange.

Alongside USDT, the exchange will gradually remove support for PayPal USD (PYUSD), Tether EURt (EURT), TrueUSD (TUSD), and TerraClassicUSD (UST) in the European mar

What is a sandwich attack?

Sandwich attacks are a form of market manipulation that targets users on decentralized exchanges, exploiting price movements to profit off of a victim’s trade.

It is a type of front-running exploit in which an attacker places two orders around a victim’s trade in a way that profits from price slippage.

In a typical sandwich attack, a malicious actor watches the transaction mempool for large trades that might affect the price of a cryptocurrency. 

After being identi

Ethereum needs stronger blockchain activity, new use cases, and collaboration with public and private interests to regain investor confidence and reclaim its previous all-time high, analysts told Cointelegraph.

Ether (ETH) has been in a downtrend for nearly six weeks, falling below the $4,000 psychological mark on Dec. 16, 2024. The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency declined more than 20% since, trading at $3,260 at the time of writing, Cointelegraph Markets Pro data shows.

ETH/USD, 1-day

Bitcoin (BTC) has made history after BTC/USD achieved its first six-digit monthly close ever.

BTC/USD 1-month chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Bitcoin monthly close smashes records

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView confirms that on Jan. 31, Bitcoin closed its latest monthly candle at $102,400 on Bitstamp.

The move came despite a last-minute BTC price drop due to macroeconomic volatility and gave bulls their first close above the $100,000 mark.

Source: Joe Consorti

Bitcoin bears may find it harder to remain confident in a near-term price dip, according to crypto analyst who points out that the pro-crypto macro environment signals new all-time highs are likely by the end of March.

“The air is getting very thin for bears right now. We expect Bitcoin to hit fresh highs by the end of the quarter,” crypto exchange Swyftx lead analyst Pav Hundal told Cointelegraph.

Volatility levels return to the US election period

Hundal pointed out that the Bitcoin (BTC) ma

The official account of Solana-based memecoin dogwifhat (WIF) has addressed concerns surrounding the “Sphere Wif Hat” initiative — a crowdfunding campaign launched by token supporters nearly a year ago to get the token’s logo on the Las Vegas Sphere. 

Despite the fundraiser raising $700,000 within days of launching on March 10, it has yet to come to fruition.

Timeline ‘agreed upon,’ no-go will lead to refunds

Dogwifcoin said in a Jan. 31 X post that the Wif Sphere organizers “have been in ong

Asset management firm 21Shares has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a spot Polkadot exchange-traded fund (ETF).

In a Jan. 31 SEC filing, 21Shares stated its intention to list the 21Shares Polkadot (DOT) Trust on the Cboe BZX exchange, with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase acting as the DOT custodian.

It comes just four years after 21Shares launched a similar product in Switzerland. In Feb 2021, the asset manager launched the world’s first Polkadot ETP. The D

The United States is currently following in the footsteps of El Salvador, according to Michele Crivelli, the founder of NexBridge, a digital asset firm specializing in real-world asset tokenization.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Crivelli stressed the importance of an independent regulatory body for crypto regulation and said the US was taking the right steps with the newly commissioned Working Group on Digital Asset Markets. Crivelli said:

“The United States is doing something that El Sa

The stablecoin market capitalization reached a record high following a period of consistent growth since mid-2023, according to data from Alphractal. 

The data analysis platform reported on Jan. 31 that the stablecoin market cap rose 73% from $121.18 billion in August 2023 to reach an all-time high of $211 billion, while USDC (USDC)  has been gaining an edge over other stablecoins.

Stablecoin market capitalization. Source: Alphractal

Analyzing the market capitalization of other stablecoins, e

Binance’s rise to the pinnacle of global cryptocurrency exchanges has been wrought with legal challenges, multibillion-dollar fines and the arrest of its co-founder. Just when it appeared that the dust was settling, French prosecutors dropped a money-laundering bombshell on the exchange. 

A Jan. 28 Reuters report claimed that the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office was investigating Binance over allegations of money laundering and drug trafficking. Less than 24 hours later, a Binance spokesperson

Grayscale Investments has launched an investment fund for Dogecoin (DOGE), the most popular memecoin by market cap, the asset manager said on Jan. 31.

Grayscale Dogecoin Trust offers investors exposure to “the native coin of the Dogecoin network, an open-source peer-to-peer digital currency originally derived from Litecoin, which itself originated from Bitcoin,” Grayscale said. The trust is only available to institutional investors.

Dogecoin operates on a proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain network

Tether, the issuer of the dollar-pegged USDt (USDT) stablecoin, saw record-breaking profits of $13 billion in 2024 and now has a larger-than-ever stockpile of US government bonds, according to a Jan. 31 announcement. 

Tether’s US Treasury portfolio is now worth approximately $113 billion, the company said. The growth in the company’s Treasury holdings reflects the growing popularity of the USDT stablecoin, which Tether says is backed 1:1 with liquid US dollar-denominated assets.

The total mark