Though Grayscale Investments is busy with its push to bring a bitcoin ETF to market, the firm’s latest partnership is a bid to attract investors wanting to go beyond spot crypto exposure.

The crypto-focused asset manager has joined forces with index provider FTSE Russell in a bid to build indices across various crypto sectors, the company said Tuesday. 

These sectors — currencies; smart contract platforms; financials; consumer and culture; and utilities and services — “formalizes our specialized view of the crypto landscape,” Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein said in a statement. 

The partnership is set “to make this framework actionable in the form of indices,” he noted…

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Over the past 24 hours, XRP’s XRP/USD price rose 8.56% to $0.58. This continues its positive trend over the past week where it has experienced a 17.0% gain, moving from $0.49 to its current price. As it stands right now, the coin’s all-time high is $3.40.

The chart below compares the price movement and volatility for XRP over the past 24 hours (left) to its price movement over the past week (right). The gray bands are Bollinger Bands, measuring the volatility for both the daily and weekly price movements. The wider the bands are, or the larger the gray area is at any given moment, the larger the volatility.

XRP’s trading volume has climbed 230.0% over the past week along with the…

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Jonathan Farnell, Binance U.K. CEO and head of its payment service Bifinity, has departed from the company, marking the latest in a series of high-profile exits from the leading crypto exchange.

What Happened: As Farnell’s LinkedIn profile indicated, he left the company in September 2023. Separately, he had stepped down from a senior compliance role at Binance Europe in June.

Farnell joined Binance in May 2021, and in 2022 he became CEO of Eqonex, which went into voluntary liquidation in November 2022, CoinDesk reports.

Buy-and-sell service Binance Connect, formerly known as Bifinity, ceased operations in mid-August as Binance planned to place a higher focus on its main products and…

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A sector-wide digital asset rally has pushed the prices of bitcoin, ether and other top cryptocurrencies higher — upwards of 14% in the past 24 hours — and liquidated hundreds of millions of dollars worth of short positions from traders betting on a pullback.

According to Coinglass, $323 million in short positions were liquidated in the past 24 hours, compared to $103 million in long positions. 

Binance accounts for the majority of the liquidations, with $141 million liquidated — 73% of which were short positions. Bitcoin (BTC) traders were by far the hardest hit, with $233 million in positions liquidated. 

Source: Coinglass

The liquidations come amid an industry-wide rally…

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Macro and macroeconomic conditions joined forces this week to create what appears to be a perfect storm for bitcoin’s price. 

The price of bitcoin surged above $34,000 Tuesday for the first time since May 2022 as US bond yields hit a 16-year high and ongoing optimism about the prospects of a bitcoin ETF continued to grow. 

Bitcoin (BTC) rallied nearly 14% in less than 24 hours between Monday and Tuesday, largely fueled, analysts say, by news that a spot bitcoin ETF may be here soon. 

The iShares Bitcoin Trust was listed on the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, which clears Nasdaq trades, on Monday, Bloomberg Intelligence ETF analyst Eric Balchunas announced, sending…

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The fervor surrounding cryptocurrencies continues to grow, with North America spearheading institutional activity in the crypto sector.

A research report by Chainalysis reveals that 76.9% of North America’s cryptocurrency transaction volume is spurred by transfers of $1 million or more.

This institutional dominance, paired with an even split in on-chain activity between decentralized finance (DeFi) and centralized exchanges, underscores the region’s strategic position in the global crypto ecosystem.

Benzinga’s Future of Digital Assets conference on Nov. 14 will delve deeper into these dynamics, shedding light on the evolving landscape and fostering an understanding of the crypto sector’s…

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Decentralized crypto derivatives exchange dYdX has taken a key step towards launching its decentralized v4 by open-sourcing its code.

DYdX first revealed its intentions to transition from being an Ethereum layer-2 to becoming an appchain using the Cosmos SDK in June last year.

By open-sourcing its code, the dYdX team is hoping to receive community feedback and come to a consensus between its third-party validators and node operators before launching the dYdX mainnet.

According to information on DeFiLlama, dYdX currently has a total value locked (TVL) of $364 million, and the protocol’s token commands a market cap of $404.35 million. It has a fully diluted valuation of $2.27 billion…

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The recent rally in Bitcoin’s price over the last week can be attributed to several factors:

Optimism Around Bitcoin ETF Approval:

The cryptocurrency markets, especially Bitcoin BTC/USD, have experienced a boost due to optimism surrounding the potential approval of a Bitcoin Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) in the US​.

The speculation around the Bitcoin ETF has been building up, with a notable instance on October 16th when a false news report regarding the approval of a Blackrock ETF led to a brief price jump.

Financial institutions are showing increased interest in providing access to Bitcoin investing to their clients through ETFs. The expectation of a fully-fledged…

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US crypto-related stocks soared Tuesday morning, echoing bitcoin’s price move above $35,000 earlier in the day. 

Coinbase led the pack, with its stock trading more than 14% in the green as of the time of writing. MicroStrategy, the top US corporate holder of bitcoin, climbed around 13%. 

Block, which sells bitcoin via Cash App, is up roughly 4.8% as of the time of writing.  

Share prices for bitcoin mining companies are also rebounding after high temperatures this summer pushed many of them to slow their operations. 

CleanSpark shot up roughly 18% on Tuesday, with Marathon Digital advancing as much as 20%. Hut 8, a particularly beleaguered miner, increased just over 10% after the…

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