Bitcoin life insurance innovator Meanwhile Group has come out with a private credit fund denominated in Bitcoin (BTC). The closed fund will offer investors a “conservative” yield in Bitcoin and lend funds in BTC to institutional counterparties at the managers’ discretion. 

Meanwhile Advisors are targeting a 5% yield on the Meanwhile BTC Private Credit Fund term. By vetting loan recipients, the fund “effectively mitigates” the risk associated with retail platforms that provide loans predominantly to individuals, the company said in a statement.

Related: Coinbase launches crypto lending platform for US institutions

Fund participants will invest U.S. dollars that will be converted…

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Cryptocurrency exchange Binance’s unit in Abu Dhabi has pulled an application with the Emirate’s financial regulator, a move it claims was unrelated to the firm’s November settlement with authorities in the United States.

In a statement to Cointelegraph on Dec. 7, a Binance spokesperson said the exchange had chosen not to move forward with an application with Abu Dhabi’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority following an assessment of its “global licensing needs.” The agreement, withdrawn by BV Investment Management in November, would have allowed Binance to manage a collective investment fund.

The spokesperson said Binance’s decision was “unrelated” to a $4.3 billion…

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Jito, the Solana-based liquid staking protocol, opened an airdrop for users to claim 90 million of its JTO governance tokens starting Thursday morning — an amount worth around $165 million at the time of publication. 

Jito sent tokens based on how much of its JitoSOL liquid staking token the addresses held and lent to DeFi protocols, alongside rewards for validators and MEV searchers. According to the protocol’s developers, the JTO tokens will be used to govern the DAO and treasury for the staking platform. 

Jito lets users stake their Solana (SOL) in exchange for the protocol’s JitoSOL token, which can then be traded or used as collateral — similar to how Lido’s staked…

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Investing app Robinhood has expanded its crypto trading offering to the European Union, though analysts note it is entering a crowded market. 

The platform supports 25 cryptocurrency assets. Customers receive a monthly bitcoin rebate, based on a percentage of their total trading volume, as announced by the company on Thursday.

Owen Lau, executive director at Oppenheimer & Co., called the EU “a competitive market” — noting existing players serving the region include Bybit, OKX, Kraken, Coinbase, eToro, Crypto.com and Binance.  

But after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX last year and Binance’s settlement with the US Department of Justice, some customers may look to move…

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When industry insiders talk about a future where quantum computers are capable of solving problems that classical, binary computers can’t, they’re referring to something called “quantum advantage.”

In order to achieve this advantage, quantum computers need to be stable enough to scale in size and capability. By-and-large, quantum computing experts believe the largest impediment to scalability in quantum computing systems is noise.

Related: Moody’s launches quantum-as-a-service platform for finance

The Harvard team’s research paper, titled “Logical quantum processor based on reconfigurable atom arrays,” describes a method by which quantum computing processes can be run with…

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Bitcoin (BTC) has experienced a remarkable 15.7% price surge in the first six days of December. This surge has been heavily influenced by the anticipation of an imminent approval of a spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States. Senior Bloomberg ETF analysts have expressed a 90% probability for approval by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which is expected before Jan. 10.

However, Bitcoin’s recent price surge may not be as straightforward as it seems. Analysts have failed to consider the multiple rejections at $37,500 and $38,500 during the second half of November. These rejections have left professional traders, including market makers, questioning the market’s…

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Polychain Capital and Hack VC led the $18 million Series A funding round of Babylon Chain, a protocol working on Bitcoin (BTC) staking, bridging the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem with the Bitcoin blockchain. 

According to the Dec. 7 announcement, the funds will be used to support the development of Babylon’s Bitcoin Staking protocol, which enables proof-of-stake (PoS) networks to stake BTC, adding liquidity and security to emerging chains.

For context, a PoS chain is a type of blockchain that relies on participants to validate transactions. To be a validator and create new blocks, a participant must stake the chain’s native token. The security and integrity of a PoS chain…

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Much has been said of Solana’s recovery since the whole Sam Bankman-Fried thing. But one of the network’s primary rivals, Avalanche, is also having a bit of a moment.

Blink and you might have missed it: Avalanche (AVAX) has flipped bitcoin cash (BCH), polygon (MATIC), polkadot (DOT), tron (TRX) and chainlink (LINK) over the past two weeks.

At $9.8 billion, AVAX is now a top-10 cryptocurrency by market cap (if you don’t count Lido Staked ETH), its highest rank all year. 

In US dollar terms, AVAX has jumped 150% year to date — almost all of it over the past month. Bitcoin (BTC) has returned slightly more, with BTC’s rallies largely credited with turning crypto into a sea of…

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