CoinDesk Crypto

Crypto miners in Russia have been unscathed so far by the war in Ukraine, but sanctions could soon indirectly squeeze their businesses.Last August, Russia was the world’s third-biggest bitcoin (BTC) mining country after the U.S. and Kazakhstan, according to the Cambridge Ce

When you’re deep in DeFi and watching it grow as it is, it’s easy to forget your own myopia. But DeFi’s recent growth has yet to translate into mass adoption.

Ever seen “The Revenant”? To my memory, the last crypto bear market was a little like that.Alejandro Iñárritu’s 2015 Best Picture Oscar nominee is a bleak, grueling retelling of the legend of Hugh Glass, an enduring 19th century American frontiersm

With the advent of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and blockchain-based financial applications, questions arise as to how the financial sector will develop in the future and what this means for global capital markets. Smart financial contracts play a central role in this.

The federal government is coordinating its approach to digital assets, with different agencies and departments tasked with writing reports.You’re reading State of Crypto, a CoinDesk newsletter looking at the intersection of cryptocurrency and government. Click here to sign

Last week, the defunct music platform LimeWire announced a comeback under new management.Yes, LimeWire is back – but as a marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) rather than a file-sharing service. And with a team that has nothing to do with the early-aughts classic you

The last several years have seen the rise of a new generation of investors: digitally-native, connected and younger retail investors that have learned to capitalize on massive behavioral changes in the market.

zkSNACKs, the company behind the Wasabi wallet, will bar certain bitcoin (BTC) transactions from its service that facilitates privacy-enhancing transactions known as CoinJoins, according to a tweet under the Wasabi Wallet Twitter handle.The zkSNACKs coordinator will start refusin

Last July, payments startup/giant (can you be both?) Square announced that it would be developing a hardware cryptocurrency wallet. The prospect of a wallet designed by the same folks who build the world’s fastest-growing point-of-sale technology promised exciting advances

This past fall, I wrote about the idea that, while much of the rhetoric around cryptocurrencies has to do with “decentralization” as a guiding ethos, the NFT sector is in fact already extremely centralized.Specifically, it’s centralized on the sales side. Accord

The bill includes several straightforward consumer protections as caveats for banks that wish to carry out these programs, noting that some of the restrictions are already present in the current legal code.

The media presents a macro geopolitical view of how the Russian-Ukrainian War is developing, so it is important to consider the human element of this conflict and how everyday citizens’ lives are being impacted.Imagine waking up one day to the news that a major neighboring

After another incredible (albeit virtual) display of vibrant and distinctive voices at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, all eyes are on the studios as they open their wallets to swoop in and hitch their wagon to the next Moonlight.

It is a logical evolution for Web 3 platforms to incorporate native artificial intelligence (AI).AI is influencing every software category so Web 3 shouldn’t be an exception. But there are fundamental, technical roadblocks about Web 3 stacks for the adoption of AI technolog

The Russia invasion of Ukraine is the first crypto war. The digital asset front follows only the actual fighting in importance.Crypto has been a major focus throughout events, including the Ukraine government’s requests for bitcoin and ether, the Ukraine DAO, both sides&rsq

North American crypto miners mined a lower number of bitcoins in February compared to the previous month, mainly because February is a shorter month and because some mining operations had to curtail operations due to winter weather, according to data compiled by CoinDesk. A highe

A layer 1 blockchain called Juno is on the verge of doing something radical: taking away tens of millions of dollars’ worth of a holder’s tokens using an on-chain vote by other users.Juno, a smart-contract layer 1 in the Cosmos ecosystem, was allegedly the victim of a

Developers have long been working on making Bitcoin more private because every bitcoin (BTC) transaction ever sent is stored in the blockchain, which anyone can see. Last week, Bitcoin privacy programmer Chris Belcher released an alpha version of Teleport, an implementation of pr

A month after complaining its founders were “doxxed,” the company behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club is flipping the script on its customers.On a mysterious new website, Yuga Labs is asking users to provide sensitive personal information – everything from passport

Hello readers, David Z. Morris here, pleased to be filling in for Michael this Friday.This week saw the unveiling of the Biden administration’s promised executive order on cryptocurrency regulation. By most accounts, the order appears to be cautious and balanced, largely a