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Crypto Industry Gets Chance to Make Its Case to U.S. Congress

The crypto industry got a chance to make a full-throated appeal for Congress to finally intervene and set legal standards for digital assets businesses in the U.S. during a hearing Tuesday in front of the House of Representatives subcommittee that focuses on digital assets.
Under the Republican-led subcommittee’s title «A Golden Age of Digital Assets,» the industry representatives showed up in the hearing with momentum at all levels of the federal government, including from the White House, whose crypto czar was the one to first utter the «golden age» phrase. Just over two years after the devastation of collapsing crypto lenders and the criminal implosion of FTX in 2022, the industry has proven its sharp recovery with a slate of lawmakers clearly on-board for the legislation the industry has been calling for.
«Under the Trump administration, we will course correct by creating a workable pathway for responsible digital asset companies to set up operations here in the United States,» said Representative Bryan Steil, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the subcommittee that’s an offshoot of the House Financial Services Committee.
Republicans on the panel decried the «unpredictable and hostile approach» to crypto of former President Joe Biden’s administration (as Steil put it), with an executive branch that’s already reversing some of those past policies at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Securities and Exchange Commission. But the holy grail for the industry is a wide-reaching bill like the one passed in the House in the previous session of Congress.
«There are many issues to debate over the next several years, but we need to move now and put that basic foundation in place,» said Jonathan Jachym, a lawyer and global head of policy at U.S. exchange Kraken.
Among the hearing’s witnesses was Timothy Massad, a former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission when it first flagged bitcoin (BTC) as a commodity. He cautioned the lawmakers not to push too hard into the details as they craft their digital assets market-structure legislation, because he said the CFTC and the SEC are more expert in the minutiae it’ll require, and the agency leaders should be the ones to work out the technical aspects.
This was the first hearing of the digital assets panel during this new Congress, but other committees in both chambers have already been digging into crypto-heavy issues, such as debanking. Earlier on Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell agreed that debanking is a problem worth exploring, and he also agreed that the Fed wouldn’t be chasing a central bank digital currency on his watch.
While Republicans and the industry witnesses bashed the Biden administration’s track record, Dems took the opportunity to criticize President Donald Trump for embracing crypto for his personal gain by backing memecoin $TRUMP, which they characterized as a «crypto scam» that presents a dangerous conflict and may violate the constitutional provision against federal officials seeking profit from their office.
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CoinDesk 20 Performance Update: Index Drops 2.5% as Nearly All Constituents Decline

CoinDesk Indices presents its daily market update, highlighting the performance of leaders and laggards in the CoinDesk 20 Index.
The CoinDesk 20 is currently trading at 4248.74, down 2.5% (-109.09) since 4 p.m. ET on Monday.
One of 20 assets is trading higher.
Leaders: AVAX (+0.6%) and BCH (-0.8%).
Laggards: UNI (-9.9%) and LINK (-7.0%).
The CoinDesk 20 is a broad-based index traded on multiple platforms in several regions globally.
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Pantera-Backed Solana Treasury Firm Helius Raises $500M, Stock Soars Over 200%

Helius Medical Technologies (HSDT) announced on Monday it’s raising more than $500 million in a private financing round to create a Solana-focused treasury company.
The vehicle will hold SOL, the native token of the Solana blockchain, as its reserve asset and aims to expand to more than $1.25 billion via stock warrants tied to the deal, the press release said.
The financing was led by Pantera Capital and Summer Capital, with participation from investors including Animoca Brands, FalconX and HashKey Capital.
Shares of the firm rallied over 200% above $24 in pre-market trading following the announcement. Solana was down 4% over the past 24 hours.
The firm is joining the latest wave of new digital asset treasuries, or DATs, with public companies pivoting to raise funds and buy cryptocurrencies like bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) or SOL.
Helius is set to rival with the recently launched Forward Industries (FORD) with a $1.65 billion war chest backed by Galaxy Digital and others. That firm confirmed on Monday that has already purchased 6.8 million tokens for roughly $1.58 billion last week.
Helius’ plan is to use Solana’s yield-bearing design to generate income on the holdings, earning staking rewards of around 7% as well as deploying tokens in decentralized finance (DeFi) and lending opportunities. Incoming executive chairman Joseph Chee, founder of Summer Capital and a former UBS banker, will lead the firm’s digital asset strategy alongside Pantera’s Cosmo Jiang and Dan Morehead.
«As a pioneer in the digital asset treasury space, having participated in the formation of the strategy at Twenty One Capital (CEP) with Tether, Softbank and Cantor, Bitmine (BMNR) with Tom Lee and Mozayyx as well as EightCo (OCTO) with Dan Ives and Sam Altman, we have built the expertise to set up the pre-eminent Solana treasury vehicle,» Cosmo Jiang, general partner at Pantera Capital, said in a statement.
«There is a real opportunity to drive the flywheel of creating shareholder value that Michael Saylor has pioneered with Strategy by accelerating Solana adoption,» he added.
Read more: Solana Surges as Galaxy Scoops Up Over $700M Tokens From Exchanges
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American Express Introduces Blockchain-Based ‘Travel Stamps’

American Express has introduced Ethereum-based ‘travel stamps’ to create a commemorative record of travel experiences, as part of the firm’s revamped travel app.
The travel experience tokens, which are technically NFTs (ERC 721 tokens), are minted and stored on Coinbase’s Base network, said Colin Marlowe , VP, Emerging Partnerships at Amex Digital Labs.
The travel stamps, which can be collected anytime a traveler uses their card, are not tradable NTF tokens, Marlowe explained, and neither do they function like blockchain-based loyalty points – at least for the time being.
“It’s a valueless ERC-721, so technically an NFT, but we just didn’t brand it as such. We wanted to speak to it in a way that was natural for the travel experience itself, and so we talk about these things as stamps, and they’re represented as tokens,” Marlowe said in an interview.
“As an identifier and representation of history the stamps could create interesting partnership angles over time. We weren’t trying to sell these or sort of generate any like short term revenue. The angle is to make a travel experience with Amex feel really rich, really different, and kind of set it apart,” he said.
The Amex travel app also includes a range of tools for travels and Centurion Lounge upgrades, the company said.
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