Bitcoin liquidates shorts as seesaw BTC price moves accompany changing geopolitical signals. Bitcoin (BTC) saw flash volatility on April 19 as geopolitical turmoil in the Middle East spilled into financial markets. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed new seven-week BTC price lows of $59,630 hitting after the April 18 daily close. These accompanied renewed tensions between Iran and Israel — a particularly sensitive topic for Bitcoin this month, which fueled a major drawdown from $70,000. Read more ..read more

Gambaryan’s lawyer, Mark Mordi, criticized the prosecution for failing to file a response to the additional affidavit submitted with his bail application. A Federal High Court in Abuja has once again postponed the bail application hearing for Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan, who remains in custody at the Kuje correctional center.  Originally set for April 18, the court has rescheduled the hearing for April 22, according to local news agency Nairametrics. After being previously adjourned until April 18, the court has further stalled the bail application hearing, to April 22, local news ..read more

The U.S. FBI found that the Akira ransomware group has been targeting businesses and critical infrastructure entities in North America, Europe and Australia since March 2023. Akira, a year-old ransomware group, breached more than 250 organizations and extracted approximately $42 million in ransomware proceeds, top global cybersecurity agencies alerted. Investigations conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found that Akira ransomware has been targeting businesses and critical infrastructure entities in North America, Europe and Australia since March 2023. While th ..read more

Denelle Dixon believes the success of blockchain protocols will hinge on the ability of traditional finance to move value on and off-chain. Blockchain protocols must allow financial assets to move seamlessly across traditional and on-chain infrastructures to achieve mainstream adoption. Denelle Dixon, CEO of Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), hammered home this crucial point in conversation with Cointelegraph during Paris Blockchain Week.  “From the beginning, we’ve focused on making money move like email, but we really understood that to do that, you needed the on- and off-ramps and ..read more

The SEC filed an amended suit against Justin Sun after the Tron founder sought to dismiss the suit last month claiming the regulator had no jurisdiction. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has rejigged its lawsuit against Tron founder Justin Sun claiming he’s “traveled extensively” throughout the country — thus giving it jurisdiction. The regulator argues it has “personal jurisdiction” over Sun, Tron and two other businesses he controls as they “purposefully took actions in and directed toward the United States,” it wrote in an April 17 amended complaint to a Manhattan feder ..read more

The new neural technology that Meta is developing will be “pretty wild,” said Zuckerberg, adding its first application will be for AR glasses. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has hinted his firm is making progress on its first “consumer neural interfaces,” non-invasive wearable devices that can interpret brain signals to control computers.  However, unlike Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip, Zuckerberg explained that these devices wouldn’t be something that “jacks into your brain” but something wearable on the wrist that can “read neural signals that your brain sends through your nerves to your h ..read more

Crypto analyst Will Clemente believes Coinbase is “the biggest kind of venture style bet in public markets” since Tesla. Coinbase (COIN) shares have plummeted 16% over the past five days, mirroring broader volatility in the crypto and stock markets, though one analyst suggests that investors may not be seeing the potential buying opportunity. “The street isn’t really pricing in the crypto native revenue that I think a lot of the crypto natives understand,” crypto analyst Will Clemente said in a recent Unchained Crypto podcast. “I think Coinbase is the biggest kind of venture-style bet in publ ..read more

Ethereum saw first-time profits only last year and if it can keep pace with its 2024 first-quarter results, it could see $1 billion in yearly income by the end of the year. Blockchain network Ethereum is on the path to $1 billion in annualized profits after it netted income of $365 million in Q1, coming alongside a year-on-year quarterly revenue growth of 155%. The network’s 2024 first-quarter income is a nearly 200% bump from the $123 million profit in Q4 2023, according to an April 17 report from The DeFi Report analyst Michael Nadeau. Ethereum’s fee revenue — earned through users paying fo ..read more

The average value transacted on Degen Chain is rather small at $0.27, however, compared to Ethereum and Base at $1,867 and $170, respectively. Degen Chain, a new Ethereum layer-3 network, has recorded the highest transaction per second (TPS) count in the Ethereum ecosystem over the last 24 hours. Degen’s TPS count increased 62% over the last day to notch 35.7 TPS — beating out the blockchain it was built on, Base, at 29.7 TPS, according to L2BEAT. Arbitrum One, Ethereum and zkSync Era rounded out the top five. Read more ..read more

Protocols such as Lido and EigenLayer have been behind the DeFi TVL resurgence. Decentralized finance total value locked (TVL) almost doubled in the first three months of this year compared to the previous quarter, partially driven by Ethereum liquid restaking initiatives, according to recent research.  DeFi total value locked surged from a Q4 2023 low of $36 billion to peak at almost $97 billion in the first quarter of 2024, according to DefiLlama. Since the beginning of the year, it has increased by 81% to a two-year high of $98 billion last week. Messari reported slightly higher TVL f ..read more