Author: driver789

The National Bank of Kazakhstan plans to allocate up to $350 million from the country’s gold and foreign exchange reserves toward investments tied to digital assets, marking one of the most significant steps by a central bank to gain exposure to the crypto sector. Governor Timur Suleimenov said the initiative will focus on companies and financial instruments connected to cryptocurrency markets rather than direct purchases of assets like Bitcoin. The investments are expected to include shares of technology firms involved in digital asset infrastructure as well as index funds whose performance tracks crypto-related markets. The allocation represents a small portion…

Nevin Shetty was convicted of wire fraud related to secretly moving $35 million in funds from a Seattle startup to his own crypto platform in 2022 to use for DeFi investments.A Seattle judge has sentenced the former chief financial officer of a local startup to two years in prison following his conviction for wire fraud related to a cryptocurrency business.In a Thursday notice, the US Justice Department said Nevin Shetty would serve two years in prison after he “secretly moved approximately $35 million in company funds to a cryptocurrency platform he controlled as a side business.” He moved the funds…

TLDR: Ethereum daily ETH ($1,984.56 · Live) burn reached $1.2B in February 2026, still outpacing the 0.8% annual inflation rate. Validator APR held at 4–5% in March 2026, marginally above the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield of 4.2%. After removing L2 batch submissions, spam transactions account for only 4% of real network activity. Active Ethereum addresses surged 117% year-over-year, led by real users on Arbitrum, Base, and zk-EVMs. Ethereum metrics challenge bearish claims as network burn continues to outpace supply in early 2026. A short report from Culper Research raised concerns about fee compression, spam activity, and validator sustainability. However, on-chain…

Bitcoin briefly pushed toward $74,000 this week, buoyed by a string of bullish developments that have tied the crypto industry ever closer to traditional finance. Some market observers began calling this a bullish rally, with one analyst even saying that the new run ‘has legs.’Yet the rally didn’t last. By the end of the week, the largest cryptocurrency had slipped back below $69,000, losing $110 billion in market cap.The pullback came despite what might otherwise have been considered one of the most positive stretches of institutional news for the sector in months.Morgan Stanley named Bank of New York Mellon as…

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin backs a controversial shift from Casper FFG to Minimmit, betting that making censorship harder matters more than preserving textbook fault‑tolerance as ETH trades near $2,000. Summary Vitalik proposes replacing Ethereum’s two‑round Casper FFG finality gadget with Minimmit, which finalizes blocks in a single round. The trade‑off: fault tolerance drops from 33% to 17%, but censorship resistance and recovery from bugs or attacks arguably improve. The debate lands as ETH hovers around $2,000, with markets weighing whether faster, more resilient finality can justify a premium in a choppy macro tape. Vitalik Buterin has put his weight behind…

Keshav is currently a senior writer at NewsBTC and has been attached to the website since June 14, 2021. Keshav has been writing for many years, first as a hobbyist and later as a freelancer. He has experience working in a variety of niches, even fiction at one point, but the cryptocurrency industry has been the longest he has been attached to. In terms of official educational qualifications, Keshav holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics from one of the premier institutes of India, the University of Delhi (DU). He started the degree with an aim of eventually making a career…

Utexo, a startup building Bitcoin-native stablecoin settlement infrastructure, announced a $7.5 million seed round co-led by Tether, Big Brain Holdings, and Portal Ventures.  The round also included participation from Franklin Templeton, Maven11 Capital, Fulgur Ventures, Alchemy VC, Ethereal Ventures, Auros Ventures, Arcanum Capital, Paper Ventures, Axia8, FlowTraders, Plan B, Gate Ventures, Sats Ventures, and strategic angels including operators from Ledger, Hyperion, BTC Turk, Echo, Legion, and SOLV. The company was founded to address a longstanding gap in the cryptocurrency ecosystem: enabling USDT to settle natively on Bitcoin with robust, production-ready payment rails. Tether’s  CEO, Paolo Ardoino, said that Bitcoin has…

Pakistan’s parliament passed the Virtual Assets Act, 2026 on Wednesday, cementing the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), a government agency, as the country’s digital asset regulator.The framework gives PVARA, established in July 2025, the authority to enforce licensing requirements and oversight over digital asset service providers, according to an announcement from the regulator.PVARA is also tasked with setting and enforcing anti-money laundering provisions and international sanctions compliance under the new legislation. PVARA Chairman Bilal Bin Saqib said:“With no objection certificates (NOCs) already issued and banking rails being developed in coordination with the State Bank of Pakistan, we are now…

Cracks in the global private credit market are rattling investors, raising concerns the stress could spill into crypto markets.Bloomberg reported Friday that BlackRock’s $26 billion private credit fund has begun limiting withdrawals amid rising redemption requests. The move follows similar stress at Blue Owl, which sold $1.4 billion in loans last month to meet withdrawals and reportedly has exposure to a collapsed U.K. property lender.Shares of major asset managers including BlackRock (BLK), Apollo Global Management (APO), Ares Management (ARES) and KKR slid 4%-6% Friday, extending their 2026 rout.Read more: Blue Owl liquidity crisis has investors bracing for 2008-style falloutIf redemption…

Bitcoin’s derivatives market is showing where the next major price reactions could occur. A liquidation map tracking leverage positions on the Binance BTC/USDT perpetual market highlights clusters of highly leveraged trades positioned above the current market price. This arrangement provides clues about how the next Bitcoin price move could unfold, how much short traders can be liquidated in the next sweep, and what could probably happen after. Massive Short Liquidation Wall Sits Around $71,800 Bitcoin has spent the past 24 to 48 hours trading above $70,000, offering an early glimpse into how price action may unfold for the leading cryptocurrency…