Digital Currency

Flows into digital asset investment products declined by roughly $79 million to $21 million during the seven-day period through March 26, the lowest since October, according to a new report by CoinShares, a digital asset investment firm. Slowing investor appetite for cryptocurrency funds reflects sideways price action in bitcoin (BTC). The cryptocurrency has traded between $50,000 and $60,000 over the past week. “Investor appetite for digital assets has waned in recent weeks as volatility remains high and the price trades sideways,” CoinShares wrote in the report. “We have recently witnessed a significant reduction…

Cryptocurrency company Ripple has acquired a large stake in an Asia-based cross-border payments specialist in order to meet the growing customer demand. Ripple said Tuesday that it has agreed to acquire a 40% stake in Tranglo for the purpose of expanding its RippleNet On-Demand Liquidity service, according to a press release. Tranglo is a cross-border money and prepaid credit transaction hub providing businesses and individuals the ability to transfer payments globally, according to its website. Southeast Asia’s payments landscape is “highly fragmented,” Ripple said in the release. Each country possesses its…

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is pursuing yet another case of a blockchain company allegedly selling unregistered securities. According to court documents filed Monday, peer-to-peer content distribution network LBRY is being accused of selling “millions of dollars worth of unregistered securities to investors” beginning in 2016. The securities regulator is seeking a permanent injunction against LBRY from selling further tokens in addition to a disgorgement of “ill-gotten gains” plus prejudgement interest. The SEC says the securities were sold in the form of LBRY Credits (LBC), which were communicated to investors as…

Cryptocurrency was invented by a guy who liked message boards. Then a young developer who thought decentralization could go even further kicked off a world computer with a white paper and some emails. The big wins in crypto are going to come from the punks, the hippies, the malcontents and the contrarians. What I’m saying is: In this very bullish season, don’t be enraptured by the suits. This article is excerpted from The Node, CoinDesk’s daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news. You can subscribe to get the full newsletter here. We see the…

While institutional investors around the world are just getting their heads around bitcoin (BTC, -1.43%), asset managers in crypto-friendly Switzerland are heading into staking on next-generation blockchain networks. Announced Friday, Zurich-based investment firm Tavis Digital has partnered with Singapore-based Persistence, a bridge for traditional firms into undiscovered realms such as token staking and decentralized finance (DeFi). Tavis Digital is a spin-off of Tavis Capital, an asset manager regulated by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) with about $1.07 billion in assets under management. Nimble and financially sophisticated countries like Switzerland and…

Thinking about buying some non-fungibles? Maybe you’re even thinking about investing? Maybe you still can’t wrap your brain around the idea of digital art being sold for $69 million, but you’re open-minded, you’ve done your homework and you think the rewards outweigh the risks. And maybe this is money you can afford to lose, so what the hell? [Obligatory disclaimer: Nothing that follows is financial advice. Investing in NFTs – or anything in crypto – is packed with risk and you can lose everything. Proceed with caution.] But if you’re trying to get your…

This week, you could be forgiven for thinking bitcoin has ceded ground at the epicenter of the crypto zeitgeist to non-fungible tokens (NFT). Bitcoin’s price dropped to its lowest level since March 8, after failing to consolidate gains made on yet another Elon Musk tweet. Meanwhile, NFT stories were everywhere again. Another Beeple art piece sold for $6 million to raise funds for the Open Earth Foundation’s efforts to fight climate change, and both The New York Times and Time Magazine announced sales of their own NFTs. It’s also true that bitcoin continues to attract attention in financial troubled…

On February 8, CME Group officially launched Ether futures. ETH futures went live just a little more than three years after CME Group began offering Bitcoin futures. In this interview, CME Group Global Head of Equity Index and Alternative Investment Products Tim McCourt discusses the origins of ETH futures, what convinced them that the time was right for the product to go live, how institutional investors’ attitudes towards Ethereum (and crypto as a whole) have changed, and how the response from the market has been. When did you start thinking…