2023-11-07 22:00

The crypto trading platform for EU will open in "coming weeks," said the company. Robinhood (HOOD), the popular trading platform, plans to start EU crypto trading and U.K. brokerage operations in the coming weeks. "With an experienced team in place, we will soon launch brokerage operations in the U.K.," Robinhood said in its third-quarter earnings statement on Tuesday. "As another step in global expansion, we are also planning to launch crypto trading in the EU following our U.K. launch," the firm added. Robinhood said during the summer, that it was looking to hire staff in the U.K. as it plans to expand into the region. The move comes as some crypto firms have suspended serving U.K. customers thanks to new promotions rules that require crypto firms to provide clear risk labels and implement system changes came into effect on Oct. 8. Robinhood also said in its earnings statement that its crypto-related revenue for the third quarter fell 55% to $23 million from the same quarter one year earlier. In June, Robinhood ended support for all tokens named as securities in the SEC lawsuits against crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase. Those tokens were Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC) and Solana (SOL). The trading platform currently offers trading for 15 different cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), dogecoin (DOGE) and avalanche (AVAX). Company shares were lower by 5.8% in post-market action as Q3 revenue came in shy of analyst estimates and guidance disappointed as well. For the year, HOOD is higher by about 18% versus the S&P 500's 14% advance. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/11/07/robinhood-to-expand-crypto-trading-into-eu-plans-to-start-uk-brokerage/

2023-11-07 20:47

Capital rotation from bitcoin to altcoins accelerated further but steady inflows into BTC funds compensated, one analyst noted. Bitcoin spiked Wednesday afternoon nearly 3% to $35,500 in a short squeeze, while solana led altcoin gains. Widening crypto rally lifted total cryptocurrency market cap to $1.3 trillion, its highest since May 2022. K33 analyst recommends "aggressive accumulation of bitcoin" for November. Bitcoin (BTC) jumped to $35,500 Tuesday as the widening altcoin rally and risk-on sentiment in traditional markets lifted the total cryptocurrency market's value to a 16-month high. A quiet and modestly lower session was upended mid-afternoon as bitcoin quickly spiked nearly 3% from $34,600, with some suggesting a short squeeze in the derivatives markets as the reason. At press time, bitcoin was trading at $35,600, up nearly 2% over the past 24 hours. Solana (SOL), toncoin (TON) and Crypto.com's Cronos ecosystem token (CRO) gained 5%-10% during the same period, helped by continued capital rotation into altcoins. Binance's BNB, Ripple's XRP, Cardano's ADA and dogecoin (DOGE) gave back some gains from earlier this week, retreating 3%-4%. Ether (ETH) remained flat at around $1,900 Wednesday, but one analyst suggested not going to sleep on the world's 2nd-largest crypto, noting increased blockchain activity could push its price to $3,000. The CoinDesk Market Index (CMI), a basket of 189 cryptocurrencies, was up 1%. With the crypto rally now fully expanded past just bitcoin, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization topped $1.31 trillion Tuesday, TradingView data shows. That's the highest reading since late May 2022, marked by the implosion of the Terra ecosystem. Increasing risk-on sentiment on traditional markets also supported the digital asset space. Safe haven asset gold sank to its lowest price in three weeks, while West Texas Intermediate crude oil (WTI) plummeted 4% to its weakest level since July. The Nasdaq 100 advanced 1.1%, now on a seven-day winning streak. What's next for bitcoin (BTC)? As bitcoin's price stays increasingly compressed in the range between $34,000 and $36,000, capital rotation into altcoins is creating a "mini altcoin season," a K33 Research report noted. It's a typical behavior on the crypto market that traders take profits after a sizable BTC rally and put the proceedings in smaller, riskier tokens. At the same time, K33 pointed out, accelerating inflows into bitcoin-related funds provides support for BTC's price. "It’s hard, nearly impossible, not to remain bullish," K33 senior analyst Vetle Lunde said. "An ETF verdict is nine weeks away, and institutional traders provide the only significant heater witnessed in the derivatives market." "November represents yet another solid month for aggressive accumulation of bitcoin, with an extended plan to distribute, reduce exposure, and reallocate to altcoins once the cat’s out of the bag," Lunde added. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/11/07/bitcoin-squeezes-to-355k-as-mini-altcoin-season-lifts-crypto-market-cap-to-13-trillion/

2023-11-07 17:27

The Ethereum blockchain settled $250 billion of transactions last week, the highest since mid-March, underpinning ether's bullish outlook. Ether (ETH) broke out from its downtrend and could head towards $3,000 as the recent altcoin frenzy revitalized network activity, Markus Thielen, research head of Matrixport, noted in a report this week. "Revenues for the Ethereum ecosystem are bottoming out from depressed levels; this could signal a tradeable bottom for ETH," said Thielen. Ethereum's weekly revenue – which is the income from the network's transaction fees, also known as gas – recently rose above $30 million for two consecutive weeks, up from a yearly low of $12 million hit in early October, Token Terminal data shows. "A tactical bullish trade could have merit for as long as weekly Ethereum fees stay above $30 million," Thielen added, setting a $3,000 price target based on technical chart patterns. The bullish outlook marks a pivot from Thielen's bearish views on ETH in September, where he cited deteriorating network revenues and user activity. Indeed, ether early in October declined to a 7-month low, while its relative valuation against bitcoin (BTC) tumbled to a 15-month low. Alongside a major rally for bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market since, ETH has bounced roughly 20%, recently changing hands at $1,870. Ether (ETH) turns deflationary Capital rotation from bitcoin to altcoins helped spur user activity on Ethereum, which is the foundation of many decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols and decentralized exchanges (DEXs), IntoTheBlock pointed out. The network settled $250 billion of asset transfers last week, the most in value since the mid-March regional banking crisis and up from $105 billion in late August, per IntoTheBlock data. As a result of soaring activity on Ethereum, blockchain data shows that more ETH was burned than added to its supply over the past week, turning the token deflationary after two months of being inflationary. The rising on-chain activity signals that fundamentals of the crypto market are improving, according to Lucas Outumuro, research head at IntoTheBlock. "Improving on-chain activity and growing spot-driven inflows point to strong demand driving crypto's rally," Outumuro said. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/11/07/ether-could-hit-3000-as-soaring-network-activity-turns-token-deflationary/

2023-11-07 17:15

The blockchain indexing protocol released a new roadmap to add features, in one of the project's biggest upgrades since a $50 million fundraising in 2022. The Graph, a protocol for indexing and querying data stored on blockchains, plans to add AI-assisted querying with large language models as part of a suite of new features disclosed Tuesday. The "New Era" roadmap outlines one of the biggest upgrades for the project since a $50 million fundraising last year. Other planned features include "the introduction of Firehose and Substreams" along with verifiable data and provision of files and archive data," according to the press release. Firehose is a new technology for increasing the speed of indexing blockchain data, while Substreams "enables developers to write Rust modules, composing data streams alongside the community, and provides extremely high-performance indexing by virtue of parallelization, in a streaming-first fashion," according to a blog post. "The roadmap also presents a solution to accessing Ethereum’s archive data (for when EIP-4444 goes live)," according to the press release. According to officials with the project, The Graph has been called the "Google of Web3" for its indexing capabilities – essentially feeding data stored on blockchains to developers for use in their applications. "Incredible innovations are being worked on that will fundamentally change how people interact with Web3 data," Eva Beylin, director of The Graph Foundation, which supports growth on The Graph Network, said in the release. The Graph, through its web of “delegators” and “indexers,” allows web3 developers to view blockchain data without trusting centralized intermediaries for the data’s accuracy. In June, The Graph began the final phase of its migration from Ethereum ot the layer 2 scaling solution Arbitrum. The Graph enables developers to query data from 40 networks and raised $50 million in a 2022 funding round, which saw participation from Tiger Global, Blockwall Digital, Fenbushi Capital, FinTech Collective and Reciprocal Ventures. https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/11/07/the-graph-known-as-google-of-web3-plans-ai-assisted-querying/

2023-11-07 16:53

Michael Hsu, the acting chief of the U.S Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that oversees banks, is excited about the possibilities of tokenization to solve settlement problems. Tokenization of assets could be the answer to the risky complexities of settling the movement of funds and securities, said Michael Hsu, the acting head of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. "Tokenization is focused on solving an actual problem, and that problem is settlement." Hsu said at the DC Fintech Week event in Washington. "This is boring back-office stuff, but it's super, super important." Any time an asset changes hands in the financial world, the transaction typically passes through multiple entities and checks of its validity before it's cleared and settled to officially land in the hands of the recipient. At any of those layers – most of which carry their own expenses that may be added to what the customer pays – the transaction has some risk of failure. "Tokenization holds the promise to collapse that and to simplify it, if it's done right," he said. His OCC is so engaged on the idea of the tokenization of real-world financial assets and liabilities that it's hosting a Feb. 8, 2024, all-day discussion on the topic at its Washington headquarters. But when it comes to the rest of the crypto space, Hsu remains suspicious. "There seems to be more and more of a divide between crypto on one hand and tokenization," he said. Crypto, he said, "tends to be driven by the hope for speculative gain.""It still remains replete with frauds, scams and hacks," Hsu said. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/11/07/us-banking-watchdog-hsu-says-tokenization-promising-but-crypto-full-of-fraud/

2023-11-07 14:55

While the overall crypto market remains down from its highs during the bull run of 2021 and 2022, there are several bright spots. Here, according to CoinDesk Indices, are the ones to watch. In the wake of FTX and other scandals, crypto has been suffering through a winter of legendary coldness. But many traders now say the worst is over and that a new period of upward momentum is upon us. Where might traders think of putting their money at the moment? For CoinDesk’s Trading Week, we asked our sister company, CoinDesk Indices, to do some analysis. Here are three areas that are currently seeing strong growth, compared to the CoinDesk Market Index (CMI), which measures performance across the entire market (or very close to it). Solana Surges Solana has experienced disproportionate gains compared to other major cryptocurrencies. Registering a 64% increase over the past month, SOL has outperformed Bitcoin's 25% rise and Ethereum's 8.4% gain. This latest rally brings SOL’s year-to-date gain to nearly 300%. However, Solana's position in the market remains complicated by the fact that a substantial chunk of SOL supply is locked in the FTX bankruptcy estate. Awesome Oracles Although the recent rally is felt across the asset class, with 156 of the 189 assets in the CoinDesk Market Index returning positively over the past month, some kinds of assets have outperformed others. The Computing Index, which contains protocols dedicated to decentralizing data sharing, storage, and transmission, stands out. This can be partially attributed to the outsized return of oracle networks, including ChainLink (up 47% month-on-month), Band Protocol (up 21% month-on-month), and Tellor (up more than 2x month-on-month). The surge in oracle platforms coincides with growing enthusiasm surrounding the tokenization of real-world assets. Momentous Memes Meme coins, which have been on a general downtrend for the past several months, saw a resurgence. On October 23, as optimism around the launch of a spot Bitcoin ETF, Bitcoin saw its highest returning day in 2023. Over the same time period, ELON and PEPE were among the top performing assets overall, gaining 23% and 20% respectively. That by far surpasses BTC’s 10% gain. https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/11/07/sol-memes-btc-digital-assets-that-currently-outperform-the-market/