Crypto

Blockchain-based versions of US stocks are drawing growing investor activity, with onchain wallets and cross-venue trading expanding rapidly. Kraken’s tokenized equities platform, xStocks, has surpassed $25 billion in total transaction volume less than eight months after launch, underscoring accelerating adoption as tokenization gains traction among mainstream investors. Kraken disclosed Thursday that the $25 billion figure includes trading across centralized exchanges and decentralized exchanges, as well as minting and redemption activity. The milestone represents a 150% increase since November, when xStocks first crossed $10 billion in cumulative transaction volume. The xStocks tokens are issued by Backed Finance, a regulated asset provider that creates 1:1 backed tokenized representations of publicly traded equities and exchange-traded funds. Kraken serves as a primary distribution and trading venue, while Backed is responsible for structuring and issuing the tokenized instruments. Read more

Rather than reacting to market drops, Paul Atkins signaled regulators are prioritizing crypto frameworks over price stabilization efforts.

“Silicon Valley” actor T.J. Miller joked that an AI bot “replaced” him as this week’s ETH Denver host, amid actual growing job fears.

Analysis by Bitcoin services company River forecasts a transaction surge as individuals and businesses experiment with AI agentic payments. Monthly transaction volume on the Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network, a secondary layer for BTC that enables payment use cases, surpassed the $1 billion milestone in November 2025, according to a report from Bitcoin financial services company River. Transaction volume on the Lightning Network hit an estimated $1.1 billion in November, across 5.2 million transactions, according to a report shared by Sam Wouters, River’s director of marketing. The report said: However, the total transaction count in 2025 is lower compared with 2023, when monthly Lightning transactions peaked at 6.6 million in August of that year, which River attributed to experiments with micropayments in gaming and messaging apps. Read more

Bitcoin is on course to lock in another negative month, but one analyst says major differences in the current market structure could be a sign of a pending trend reversal. Bitcoin (BTC) is forming what may prove to be a fifth consecutive red monthly candle, which would be the longest losing streak since 2018. The silver lining is that data suggests that March may prove to be a profitable month for BTC. Historical price data from CoinGlass confirms Bitcoin is now facing its fifth consecutive red month, down 15% this month after closing the previous four months in the red. The last time this happened was in 2018, when it entered a bear market after reaching record highs in 2017.  Read more

The average bitcoin ETF investor now sits on a 20% paper loss, leaving the market vulnerable to capitulation selling if prices slide further, a Wintermute trader said.

Google AI music generator Lyria 3 is now available on the Gemini app. It works—mostly—but the competition has a big head start.

Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, continued its price struggles as traders weighed two stress-tinged signals from the US financial ecosystem. This week, there was a sudden $18.5 billion Federal Reserve overnight repo operation, and Blue Owl Capital has decided to permanently halt redemptions from a retail-focused private credit fund. In another era, either […] The post Bitcoin eyes new liquidity as the Fed’s $18.5 billion repo spike reignites money printer chatter appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Paul Atkins and Hester Peirce spoke at ETHDenver on Wednesday on the future of regulation at the SEC and its response to crypto market volatility. Paul Atkins, chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the agency’s crypto task force head, Hester Peirce, said Wednesday they would support efforts to clarify how “tokenized securities interact with existing regulation,” better positioning industry developers. Speaking to attendees at the ETHDenver conference on the future of regulation, Atkins and Peirce addressed concerns about volatility in many cryptocurrency prices and how the agency plans to move forward with digital asset regulation amid a potential market structure bill in Congress. In response to “falling crypto prices of late,” likely referring to the price of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) falling by more than 28% and 40%, respectively, in the previous 30 days, Atkins said: Read more

A transaction-level analysis of 92 community banks found $78.3 million in net deposits moved to Coinbase over 13 months, with money market accounts losing most outflows. New analysis from banking data company KlariVis found that 90% of community banks in its sample had customers transacting with Coinbase. Across 53 banks where transaction direction could be determined, $2.77 flowed to the crypto exchange for every $1.00 returning, resulting in a net $78.3 million deposit shift over 13 months. The study reviewed 225,577 Coinbase-related transactions across 92 community banks and found that transfers were heavily concentrated in money market accounts, where 96.3% of identifiable transaction volume represented funds leaving banks for the exchange. "In general, community banks can be defined as those owned by organizations with less than $10 billion in assets," the Federal Reserve says on its website. Read more

The Bollinger Bands indicator has narrowed to its tightest level on record, a rare technical setup that analysts say is a sign of a pending directional move. A key volatility indicator for Bitcoin (BTC) has narrowed to its tightest measurement on record, a pattern that was followed by a multimonth rally in previous bull and bear markets. Will the Bollinger Bands indicator call the market bottom again? Analyzing the monthly Bitcoin chart, crypto analyst Dorkchicken noted that BTC’s Bollinger Bands are currently at their “tightest” level on record. Such conditions have repeatedly led to bullish breakouts, with the only prior downtrend from similar conditions occurring in 2022, during the drop to $16,000 from $20,000. Bollinger Bands measure price volatility, and extreme compression often leads to a sharp expansion. The analyst added that there are higher odds of an upside trend once expansion begins. Read more

The ETF invests exclusively in short-term US Treasurys and is structured for potential use by stablecoin issuers under US reserve requirements. US-based exchange-traded funds issuer ProShares has launched a money market ETF designed to qualify as an eligible reserve asset under the GENIUS Act, positioning it for potential use by stablecoin issuers. The ProShares GENIUS Money Market ETF, trading under the ticker IQMM, invests exclusively in short-term US Treasurys. Unlike conventional government money market funds, it uses a floating net asset value (NAV) based on market pricing and trades intraday on an exchange. According to an announcement on Wednesday, the structure includes same-day settlement and dual NAV features designed for institutional reserve management. Read more

Quiet networks and idle supply point to social demotivation, which often appears before sentiment and price narratives flip.

Sharplink is shaking up its branding as it reports additional Ethereum holdings and a rising number of institutional investors.

XRP is attracting institutional money and a burst of bullish positioning, even as much of the crypto industry remains stuck in a risk-off tape. According to a CoinShares report, XRP is the best-performing crypto token this year, attracting around $150 million in fresh capital, while Bitcoin and Ethereum have registered cumulative outflows of around $1.5 billion. The […] The post XRP sentiment hits a 5-week high as money rotates away from Bitcoin and Ethereum appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Trump administration officials held a similar event last week to discuss stablecoin yield within a market structure bill under consideration in Congress. Update (Feb. 19 at 7:21 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include a statement from the Crypto Council for Innovation. The White House has held another meeting between representatives from the cryptocurrency and banking industries on a market structure bill under consideration in the US Senate, seeking to iron-out differences on stablecoin yield provisions, among other issues. In a Thursday Fox News interview, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said that the company’s chief legal officer, Stuart Alderoty, attended the meeting with White House officials earlier in the day. The CEO’s comments came after unconfirmed reports that the Trump administration would follow its Feb. 10 meeting on the CLARITY Act, a bill to establish digital asset market structure. That meeting did not result in a deal on stablecoins.  Read more

Crypto gaming metaverse platform The Sandbox is rolling out its Season 7 content push, making it easier than ever for players to jump in.

In the latest of a series of meetings hosted at the White House, bankers and crypto policy experts met to break down the wall halting the market structure bill.

Heavy outflows haven’t erased the success of spot Bitcoin ETFs, which still hold $53 billion in cumulative inflows, according to Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas. US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) may be seeing heavy outflows lately, but the broader picture tells a different story. According to Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, cumulative net inflows into Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs peaked at $63 billion in October and now stand at about $53 billion, even after months of redemptions. “That’s NET NET +$53b in only two years,” Balchunas wrote on X, sharing data compiled by fellow analyst James Seyffart. Read more

Consulting giant Accenture is monitoring senior staff logins to AI tools and tying career advancement to adoption rates—all while AI threatens to eliminate jobs.