While the approval of a spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) will likely spike the price of Bitcoin, some analysts are concerned it won’t be enough to fully thaw the markets from its winter chill. 

On Oct. 24 Bitcoin staged its largest single day rally in over a year, surging more than 14% on the news that the ticker of BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF — IBTC — had been listed on the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) website, something markets understood as a positive step forward for the funds’ application.

The surge turned out to be even stronger than that of oOct. 16, when Cointelegraph’s incorrect tweet that suggested a spot Bitcoin ETF had been…

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The Hong Kong government says the recent $165 million alleged scandal involving crypto exchange JPEX won’t  stifle its Web3 vision for the region.

In a Nov. 2 keynote at Hong Kong Fintech Week, the region’s Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Christopher Hui said the saga hasn’t affected the government’s plan.

“We’ve been asked many times whether JPEX will affect our determination to grow the Web3 market — the answer is a clear ‘no.’”

Hui was referring to the financial scandal involving the Dubai-based exchange JPEX, where 2,500 locals allege they were allegedly defrauded, prompting the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) to warn that JPEX was…

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Solana (SOL) has posted 30-day gains of nearly 81%, and has rallied over 30% in the past week amid the testnet launch of the blockchain’s loawaited scaling solution Firedancer.

SOL reached over $41 on Nov. 2 touching highs it hasn’t seen since August last year, Cointelegraph Markets Pro data shows.

Long touted as an “Ethereum killer” — SOL has vastly outperformed its rival Ether (ETH) which posted under 11% gains in the past month.

Three-month SOL price chart with gains up nearly 81% in 30 days. Source: Cointelegraph Markets Pro

SOL-related investment products have also seen millions of dollars worth of inflows over the past weeks according to CoinShares. SOL is, however, still…

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Business intelligence firm MicroStrategy has notched a paper gain of $900 million on its stack of 158,400 Bitcoin, spurred by optimism over the potential approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

The Michael Saylor-founded firm added 6,067 Bitcoin (BTC) since the third quarter, including another 155 in October, according to MicroStrategy’s Nov. 1 results filing.

In October, @MicroStrategy acquired an additional 155 BTC for $5.3 million and now holds 158,400 BTC. Please join us at 5pm ET as we discuss our Q3 2023 financial results and answer questions about the outlook for #BusinessIntelligence and #Bitcoin. $MSTR https://t.co/w7eRUcGobi

— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) November… Read more on Cointelegraph

Historically, a Santa rally happens in the weeks leading up to Christmas when a collective sense of goodwill bleeds into equity markets. This is typically a seasonal blip and nothing to write home about. But this year, we could see a far more significant rally as the United States Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission and BlackRock line up to deliver a bonanza of holiday cheer.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) finished its penultimate meeting of 2023 on Wednesday, and it decided to hold interest rates steady. As we know, U.S. inflation has been tamed from a high of 9.1% in June 2022 to its current level of 3.7% thanks to the Fed’s aggressive interest rate…

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Hacked cross-chain protocol Multichain has confirmed some transactions, and its backlog of queued transactions has declined to only a single transaction, according to data from Multichain’s explorer tool. Blockchain data confirms that some of the transactions have been confirmed on the destination chain, while others show as confirmed in the Multichain explorer but not on the destination chain.

Browsers with the Metamask wallet extension currently show a warning when users attempt to view the Multichain explorer, due to the fact that the protocol has been hacked. However, it can be viewed with a browser that does not have a Web3 wallet installed. Cointelegraph does not recommend…

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Ether (ETH) price has declined by 14.7% since its peak at $2,120 on April 16, 2023. However, two derivatives metrics indicate that investors have not felt this bullish in over a year. This discrepancy warrants an investigation into whether the recent optimism is a broader response to Bitcoin (BTC) breaking above $34,000 on Oct. 24.

One possible reason for the surge in enthusiasm among investors using ETH derivatives is the overall market’s excitement regarding the potential approval of a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States. According to analysts from Bloomberg, the ongoing amendments to the spot Bitcoin ETF proposals can be seen as a “good sign” of progress…

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The defense began making their final plea to the jury Wednesday afternoon in Manhattan as Sam Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial nears its end. 

“The government has tried to turn Sam into some kind of villain, some kind of monster,” lead defense attorney Mark Cohen began during closing arguments Wednesday. 

One of the few areas of agreement between both prosecution and defense appears to be that witnesses have been inconsistent. As might be expected, they subsequently disagree on which side is being dishonest. 

“The government’s core case” is based entirely on “witness testimony that is not consistent,” Cohen argued. 

The defense added a new point to their argument…

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