Binance Chief Executive Officer Richard Teng has demanded the release of Tigran Gambaryan, the cryptocurrency exchange’s executive, who has been detained in Nigeria since late February on allegations of illegal transaction profits. Teng’s blog post on Tuesday highlighted the tension between the Nigerian government’s crackdown on cryptocurrency operations and the safety of international corporate staff. Gambaryan has a history of fighting financial crime in his previous role as a U.S. Internal Revenue Service agent and his efforts in freezing and seizing over US$2.2 billion in assets in collabo ..read more

DMarket emerged as the top-ranking non-fungible token (NFT) collection on Monday, with a daily sales volume of US$842,038, which represents a 1% uptick from the day prior. The collection had a total of 36,900 transactions, involving 4,304 unique buyers and 3,555 sellers. DMarket is a Mythos-based collection that represents in-game items for popular games like Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2, both of which feature in top esports competitions. The International 2021, a Dota 2 tournament held in Bucharest, Romania, had a prize pool of US$40 million, the largest in esports history. DMarket’s market-le ..read more

The crypto sector attracted US$1.02 billion in venture capital funding in April 2024 across 161 investment rounds, according to Rootdata. This is the second consecutive month funding surpassed the billion-dollar threshold. That brings the amount invested in crypto ventures thus far in 2024 to US$3.67 billion. Blockchain infrastructure companies alone amassed over US$1.7 billion this year. The industry recorded over US$9 billion throughout last year. April’s investment landscape was highlighted by notable contributions from major investors, including BlackRock’s US$47 million investment in toke ..read more

The Bitcoin network recorded its one billionth transaction, according to data from Clark Moody’s Bitcoin dashboard. Bitcoin transactions and their corresponding fees have been a key discussion point among industry participants in recent weeks, in part, due to the introduction of Bitcoin Ordinals and Runes. The latter, a fungible token protocol launched in tandem with the latest Bitcoin halving last month, raised transaction fees to an all-time record during its debut. The halving reduces miners’ rewards by 50% roughly every four years, with the latest quadrennial event cutting them from 6.25 B ..read more

Bitcoin surged past US$62,000 on Friday, as data from the United States Labor Department reported the unemployment rate rising to 3.9% last month. In April, the U.S. economy’s job growth decelerated, with the creation of 175,000 non-farm jobs falling short of the 243,000 jobs forecasted. The Federal Reserve’s decision to keep interest rates steady has contributed to the softening of the U.S. dollar and Bitcoin’s rebound. Bitcoin, which fell to as low as US$56,800 this week, traded at US$61,678 at 2:30 p.m. ET, according to CoinGeck. Bitcoin’s rebound follows multiple positive developments for ..read more

NodeMonkes surged to the top of the non-fungible token (NFT) market on Thursday with over US$1.62 million in sales. The sales spike on Thursday pushed NodeMonkes’ all-time sales volume to US$210.72 million, as it flipped $SATS BRC-20 NFTs to become the top Bitcoin collection. NodeMonkes also snapped a six-day streak of under US$1 million in sales after recording US$934,294 the day before, CryptoSlam data shows. The second-highest performing collection of the day is CryptoPunks, with a daily sales volume of US$1.33 million, a 488% leap from the day before. CryptoPunks’ all-time sales volume now ..read more

Tether, the company behind the widely-used stablecoin USDT, has reported a record US$4.52 billion net profit for the first quarter of 2024, a 61% increase from the previous quarter. The substantial earnings were primarily driven by the company’s investments in US Treasury bonds and the appreciation of its Bitcoin and gold reserves, according to the firm’s Q1 attestation. As of March 31, 2024, Tether’s net equity has surged to US$11.37 billion. The company’s strategic allocation of over US$90 billion in US Treasury bonds has been a significant contributor to the profit leap. The financial perfo ..read more

MicroStrategy, the world’s largest corporate Bitcoin holder, has unveiled MicroStrategy Orange, a decentralized identity protocol built on the Bitcoin blockchain. Announced at the Bitcoin for Conference by the company’s CEO Michael Saylor on Wednesday, the platform aims to provide secure, tamper-proof digital identities without relying on additional blockchain layers, processing thousands of identifiers within a single Bitcoin transaction. MicroStrategy Orange capitalizes on the security features of the Bitcoin network, specifically using Ordinal-based inscriptions to store and manage DIDs. Th ..read more

Ethereum closed Wednesday’s non-fungible token (NFT) sales as the top blockchain in the market, with US$6.87 million, CrptoSlam data shows. The platform witnessed a slight decrease in total transactions to 14,840, compared to 14,987 the previous day, yet it maintained a high level of activity with 4,229 unique buyers and 3,304 unique sellers. Ethereum closed its worst monthly NFT performance since October 2023. In April, Ethereum recorded US$241 million in sales, which is more than half of the US$489 million it had in March, according to CryptoSlam data. Bitcoin was Wednesday’s second-ranked p ..read more

Bitcoin price dropped to as low as US$56,600 on Wednesday leading to the FOMC meeting, where the central bank left its interest rates unchanged at 5.25% and 5.5%. “Inflation has eased over the past year but remains elevated. In recent months, there has been a lack of further progress toward the Committee’s 2 percent inflation objective,” the Fed said in a press release on Wednesday. In March, inflation accelerated in the U.S. with the consumer price index rising from 3.2% in February to 3.5% on an annual basis, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Standard Chartered projects a further ..read more