Author: driver789

Rising tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical oil chokepoints, have sent shockwaves through global markets, driving oil price volatility, rattling currencies, and exposing vulnerabilities in cross-border trade flows. The Strait of Hormuz chaos could spark the XRP moment, and Ripple’s new financial era has ignited amid global oil turmoil.  Crypto analyst Pumpius revealed on X that the Strait of Hormuz handles roughly 20% of the global oil flows, but the US and Israel strikes on Iran have slashed vessel traffic by 70%. According to coverage from Reuters and The New York Times (NYT), major…

Cake Wallet has announced the integration of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network into its advanced privacy wallet. The move comes after a series of Bitcoin-specific updates that put Cake at the forefront of mobile wallets across the broader crypto industry.  This is not Cake Wallet’s first inroad into advanced Bitcoin features. Unlike most multi-coin wallets such as Binance’s popular Trust Wallet, Cake has gone a lot further than just supporting basic on-chain addresses. Cake has deployed some of Bitcoin’s more sophisticated technology, such as Silent Payments and Payjoin, powerful privacy technologies that most other blockchains and crypto wallets are not even close…

Hong Kong and Shanghai authorities have agreed to deepen cooperation on using blockchain technology to streamline trade finance and cargo documentation, under a new partnership announced Monday.The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the Shanghai Data Bureau (SDB) and the National Technology Innovation Center for Blockchain (NTICBC) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to deepen collaboration in digitizing cargo trade and finance.The parties will conduct joint research on the benefits of developing a blockchain-based “cross-border platform” for interlinking trade data, electronic bill of lading and financial applications under the HKMA’s Project Ensemble, an initiative launched in 2024 to explore tokenized…

XRP (XRP) risked a further drop below $1 as its bearish technical setup converged with increased inflows to exchanges.Key takeaways:XRP faces overhead resistance at $1.42XRP’s 13% rally to $1.43 between Saturday and Sunday ran into a resistance wall at $1.39-$1.43, causing it to retrace to the current price of $1.34.The cost-basis distribution heatmap shows that a large cluster of supply is within this area, where nearly 1.48 billion XRP were acquired over the last 30 days. This marks an area of stiff resistance for XRP, limiting upside potential. XRP: Cost basis heatmap. Source: GlassnodeThe daily XRP price chart below shows…

BitMine stock price retreated for five consecutive months, reaching its lowest level since June last year as Ethereum and other altcoins slumped. Summary BitMine stock price dropped for five consecutive months. The retreat happened as the Ethereum price crash gained steam. BMNR has formed a falling wedge pattern, pointing to a rebound in March. BMNR stock was trading at $20 on Monday, down substantially from last year’s high of $161. Still, despite this, BitMine continued its Ethereum (ETH) accumulation, a sign that Tom Lee and the team expect a rebound soon. BitMine added 50,928 ETH tokens last week, bringing the…

Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) on Monday reported purchasing nearly 51,000 more ETH tokens last week, increasing its holdings to 4.474 million.”In the midst of this ‘mini crypto winter,’ our focus continues to be on methodically executing our treasury strategy and steadily acquiring ETH and in turn, optimizing the yield on our ETH holdings,” said Chairman Tom Lee.The company said it now has 3,040,483 ETH staked, worth about $6 billion at current prices. Lee said annualized staking revenue stands at $172 million. At full scale, staking rewards could reach $253 million annually based on a 2.86% yield over the last seven…

Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure Ethereum’s long-range protocol roadmap may move faster than many expect as AI tools improve, according to Vitalik Buterin, who pointed to a recent experiment that used agentic coding to assemble an ambitious reference client spanning much of Ethereum’s planned 2030-era architecture. The comment came after developer Jiayao Qi, posting as YQ via X, unveiled ETH2030, an experimental Ethereum client built to target the network’s draft “2030+” roadmap. The project weighs in at 702,000 lines of Go, covers 65 roadmap items across eight phases, passes 36,126 official Ethereum…

Wall Street’s attitude toward Bitcoin has flipped from euphoric to deeply skeptical after last year’s crowded long trade unraveled, according to Galaxy Digital head of research Alex Thorn. In an interview on What Bitcoin Did, Thorn said the shift has less to do with conspiracy theories or a single bearish catalyst than with exhausted demand, heavy long-term holder selling, and a market now struggling to find a fresh narrative. Thorn pushed back on claims that firms such as Jane Street are to blame for Bitcoin’s weakness, calling that line of thinking “Twitter cope.” He argued that most of the outrage…

Crypto investment products recorded their first weekly inflows since January, snapping a five-week outflow streak totaling roughly $4 billion.Crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) attracted $1 billion last week, led by $882 million into Bitcoin (BTC) funds, according to a Monday report from CoinShares.“From a macro standpoint, it is difficult to attribute the shift in sentiment to a single catalyst,” said James Butterfill, CoinShares’ head of research.He said the reversal likely reflected prior price weakness, a break below key technical levels and renewed accumulation by large Bitcoin holders.“At a more anecdotal level, recent client discussions have been almost entirely focused on identifying…

Sony Bank said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with stablecoin issuer JPYC Inc. to study whether the Japanese yen-pegged stablecoin JPYC can be connected more directly to the bank’s deposit rails.In a statement Monday, the companies said they will study real-time account transfers that would allow users to purchase JPYC instantly from their Sony Bank accounts through the JPYC EX platform, eliminating the need for manual bank transfers. Sony Bank said its Web3-focused subsidiary, BlockBloom, will play a central role in designing how the bank link, stablecoin rails and potential consumer services would work in practice.The agreement comes as…