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 This time, however, the penny stocks have been replaced by on-chain memes financialized in ways that make it seem like anyone can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

The power-hungry AI revolution is already spiking global demand for energy. That's putting a bigger focus on nuclear energy, and with it — according to one venture capital company — the need for better ways to trade the fuel that makes fission possible.

For crypto-focused VC firm Portal Ventures, the answer was downright radioactive. The firm is leading a $1.7 million round in Uranium Digital, a startup that tokenizes uranium ore for easier trading than was ever possible in the highly regulated

This is the second in a series of stories examining the crypto industry's high-stakes 2024 foray into politics and campaigning. The first explored the <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/news-analysis/2024/12/02/crypto-cash-fueled-53-members-of-the-next-u-s-congress" target="_blank">electoral track record</a> of Fairshake PAC's strategy.

While politicians battled each other across the 2024 U.S. electoral map, the crypto industry ran an unprecedented test of a 14-year-old Supreme Court decision th

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/indices/" target="_blank">CoinDesk Indices</a> presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/indices/cd20/" target="_blank">CoinDesk 20 Index</a>. The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 3895.67, up 1.7% (+65.05) since 4 pm on Wednesday.

Seventeen of 20 assets are trading higher.

Leaders: LINK (+15.9%) and UNI (+8.6%).

Laggards: HBAR (-0.4%) and BTC (-0.4%).

The <a href="https:

Solana Foundation's former stablecoin lead Anna Yuan has left the mothership to build her own startup catering to the fast-growing crypto subsector.

The company building Perena, a stablecoin trading infrastructure project, raised "around $3 million" in a pre-seed funding round led by Borderless Capital, Yuan told CoinDesk in an interview last month.

Perena isn't solely focused on launching another stablecoin. Instead, it's creating on-chain systems that allow the seemingly endless droves of ot

Investor demand, onchain metrics and network activity are setting up ether (ETH) to reach a $5,000 level for the first time, CryptoQuant analysts said in a report.

Ether spot ETFs posted a 13-day inflow streak on Wednesday to reach nearly $2 billion in cumulative net inflows. The funds attracted their first billion from July to early December, but SoSoValue data shows that they needed only five trading days to capture the next billion.

Total daily transactions hovered around the 6.5 million to

By Omkar Godbole (All times ET unless indicated otherwise)

The crypto market is looking to maintain the <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/12/11/bitcoin-crosses-above-101-k-as-xrp-ai-tokens-lead-crypto-rally" target="_blank">bullish momentum ignited by</a> Wednesday's U.S. CPI report, which matched estimates and cleared the path for another <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/a-cautious-fed-on-track-for-one-last-2024-cut-followed-by-a-slowing-down-in-2025-144848267.html" target=

Bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, is fighting a big milestone trying to sustain a $2 trillion market cap and a $100,000 price.

Once bitcoin has conclusively overcome these milestones, there may be clear skies ahead. Bitcoin has rallied over $30,000, since Donald Trump won the U.S. election in November, which coincided with many coins leaving exchanges, but primarily BTC leaving in large chunks.

Glassnode data shows that transactions worth more than $10 million

Shares of bitcoin miner Hut 8 (HUT) <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/HUT/" target="_blank">jumped nearly 12%</a> in pre-market trading amid social media speculation that it is building a data center with Facebook owner Meta Platforms (META).

The shares climbed to just under $30 as of 10:00 UTC. The <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/WGMI/" target="_blank">CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF</a> (WGMI), which offers broad exposure to the BTC mining sector, rose about 3% higher.

Bitcoin (BTC) traders could be in for another thrilling ride. A key technical indicator that presaged November's price surge is positioned precisely as it was then, signaling a potential volatility explosion ahead.

That indicator is the Bollinger bandwidth, a tool used to gauge impending changes in market jumpiness. For bitcoin, the bandwidth has narrowed to less than 10%, a level not seen since Nov. 4, the day before the U.S. elections. The largest cryptocurrency subsequently surged to $100,00

The Pudgy Penguins NFT collection is keeping Web3 hopes afloat in a sea of dead NFT projects and a generally muted collectibles market.

The <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/learn/what-are-nfts-and-how-do-they-work/ " target="_blank">non-fungible token</a> set became the world’s second <a href="https://nftpricefloor.com/?temp=7d" target="_blank">most-valued</a> NFTs on Wednesday, with the minimum — or floor — price for any of the 8,888 comic penguins topping $100,000 and flipping the collection

Assetera, a Polygon-powered MiFID-licensed trading venue for blockchain-based securities in Europe, has listed Backed Finance's tokenized assets, offering non-U.S. investors to gain exposure to trackers linked to some of the most sought-after U.S. companies.

The initial launch includes tokenized trackers tied to the Nasdaq-listed Coinbase (COIN), one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, the chip-maker Nvidia (NVDA), a bellwether for all things artificial intelligence (AI) and risk asse