The comments came during Bessent’s Congressional testimony on Wednesday in a tense exchange with California Representative Brad Sherman. United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent testified before Congress on Wednesday and reiterated that the US will retain Bitcoin (BTC) acquired through asset seizures but will not direct private banks to purchase more BTC in the event…
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Fireblocks, an institutional-grade crypto infrastructure company, announced on Wednesday that it will integrate Stacks, a decentralized finance (DeFi) layer for the Bitcoin protocol, to give institutional clients access to lending and yield-bearing opportunities. The integration bypasses the 10-minute Bitcoin block time by leveraging the Stacks blockchain, which has an average block time of about 29…
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The hashrate of FoundryUSA, a digital asset advisory firm with the world’s largest Bitcoin (BTC) mining pool, has curtailed its hashrate by about 60% since Friday in response to the severe winter storm impacting large swaths of the United States. “Bitcoin hashrate on FoundryUSA alone is down by nearly 200 exahashes per second (EH/s), or…
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The biggest threat to the Bitcoin network is “ambitious opportunists” who want to push through protocol changes, according to Michael Saylor, the co-founder of Bitcoin (BTC) treasury company Strategy. Saylor’s comments sparked a debate online. Bitcoin maximalist Justin Bechler said the comments were directed toward software developers pushing for non-monetary use cases on Bitcoin, such…
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The biggest obstacle to Bitcoin (BTC) being used as a payment method is tax policy, not scaling technology that reduces settlement times and transaction costs, according to Pierre Rochard, a board member for Bitcoin treasury company Strive. “Here’s a metaphor: the best athlete can win against the worst athlete 100% of the time, if the…
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The number of Bitcoin (BTC) nodes signaling support for Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 110 (BIP-110), a temporary soft fork limiting the amount of data included in each transaction at the consensus level, rose to 2.38%. 583 out of 24,481 nodes are running BIP-110, and the primary node software implementation for running the soft fork proposal is…
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The expanded prohibition on stablecoin yield in the CLARITY Act makes the US dollar less competitive than the Digital Yuan, Scaramucci said. The prohibition on yield-bearing stablecoins in the CLARITY Act puts the US dollar at a competitive disadvantage to China’s Digital Yuan, a yield-bearing central bank digital currency, according to Anthony Scaramucci, founder of…
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Overregulation of the crypto industry would negatively impact markets and gut decentralized finance (DeFi), according to Michaël van de Poppe. The failure of the CLARITY crypto market structure bill to advance in the United States Congress is positive for crypto markets and the industry, according to market analyst Michaël van de Poppe. Van De Poppe…
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Brian Armstrong, the CEO of crypto exchange Coinbase, denied reports that the White House is considering pulling support for the CLARITY Act, a crypto market structure bill, and also denied rumors that the administration is “furious” with Coinbase. “The White House has been super constructive here. They did ask us to see if we can…
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Steak ‘n Shake, a fast-food restaurant chain that accepts Bitcoin (BTC) payments at its stores, announced on Friday that its BTC corporate treasury grew by $10 million in notional value. “All Bitcoin sales go into our strategic Bitcoin reserve,” the company said, adding that adopting BTC as a treasury asset has led to a flywheel…
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