GSR Markets UK, a subsidiary of the global cryptocurrency trading firm GSR, has received regulatory approval from the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), allowing the company to operate as a licensed crypto asset business. According to a news release, the approval makes GSR the first crypto liquidity provider to achieve dual regulatory authorization from both…

The Solana network has surpassed Ethereum and Base combined in 24-hour decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume, according to data from DefiLlama. According to DefiLlama, daily trading volume across Solana-based DEXs neared $3.8 billion on Jan. 6, versus $1.7 billion for Ethereum and $1.2 billion for Base, Ethereum’s most popular layer-2 scaling network. The growing trading volume…

Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) is being hailed as a significant step forward for the cryptocurrency industry despite concerns about potential overregulation during its initial rollout. MiCA is the world’s first comprehensive regulatory crypto framework, which went into full effect for crypto-asset service providers on Dec. 30. While concerns regarding regulatory overreach persist, the…

Mining company MARA, formerly known as Marathon Digital, lent out 7,377 Bitcoin to third parties in 2024, according to a Jan. 3 announcement from the Bitcoin miner. Vice president of investor relations at MARA Robert Samuels provided more information about MARA’s Bitcoin lending activity but did not cite specific numbers. According to Samuels, MARA’s Bitcoin…

A Donald Trump-led Bitcoin rally — expected to occur in the days leading up to his Jan. 20 US presidential inauguration — could wane toward the end of the month as the Federal Reserve publishes its first interest rate decision of the year. In a Jan. 5 report, 10x Research’s founder Markus Thielen predicted a “positive start”…

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says a temporary “pause” to worldwide available compute could be a way to “buy more time for humanity” in case of a possibly harmful form of AI superintelligence. In a Jan. 5 blog post following up his November 2023 post advocating the idea of “defensive accelerationism” or d/acc, Buterin said super intelligent AI could be…