Etoro, which is based in Israel, is not a big player in the U.S. crypto market. It has only 240,000 customer accounts compared to Coinbase’s 100 million. But the SEC agreement is significant for the clues it offers about how the regulator views the key legal question of which digital assets are not securities, and therefore outside its supervision, lawyers contacted by CoinDesk said.
“The election gambling contracts pose significant public interest risk,” the CFTC’s lead attorney said during Thursday’s hearing. “The Commission noted serious concerns about potential adverse effects on election integrity, or the perception of election integrity, at a time where confidence in election integrity is incredibly low. These contracts would give market participants a $100 million incentive to influence either the market or the election, which could very certainly undermine confidence in election integrity. This is a very serious public interest threat.”
“Progress on relaxing regulations – particularly the repeal of SAB 121, which imposes stringent accounting rules on banks’ digital asset holdings – will continue in 2025 no matter who is in the White House,” wrote Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, adding that progress would just take longer under a Harris presidency.
At press time, bitcoin changed hands at around $58,000, representing a 2.5% over 24 hours, according to CoinDesk data. Ether (ETH), the second largest cryptocurrency by market value, traded 1% higher at $2,350, with an estimated leverage ratio of 0.35.
A third of consumers said they thought the BTC price would be below $60,000 by year-end, and only 12%-14% thought it would cross $70,000. Bitcoin was trading around $58,200 at publication time. For the longer term, perceptions were mixed: 40% of respondents said they thought BTC would thrive in the coming years, while 38% said they expected it to disappear.
The offering, which can also provide fixed yields of an annualized 10%, allows users to deposit LBTC, a liquid-staking token issued by restaking startup Lombard, in a Pendle pool made by Ethereum layer-2 network Corn. Data shows the pool has attracted over $13 million in user deposits since going live. It matures on Dec. 26.
“The average buy-sell ratio suggests stronger buying pressure on Kraken and Coinbase, with ratios of 250% and 123%, respectively, compared to near-parity on Bybit and Binance, which have ratios of 99% and 97%,” Hosam Mahmoud, research analyst at CCData told CoinDesk in an interview.
Today’s CPI data show inflation growth continued to ease in August. That could be good news for crypto, says Scott Garliss.
Since last year, Indonesia jumped four places to third as one of the fastest-growing crypto markets. Within the Central & Southern Asia and Oceania (CSAO) Region, Indonesia has the highest year-over-year growth at nearly 200% and the highest cryptocurrency value received, at approximately $157.1 billion.
Huma’s payment-finance platform aims to address the liquidity needs of trade financing using blockchain technology for faster settlement.
