Day: June 27, 2023

The first leveraged bitcoin futures ETF is hitting the market as crypto gains new momentum

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Traders will soon have a new way to bet on bitcoin while Wall Street waits to see if the long-awaited spot bitcoin funds are approved by federal regulators. The Volatility Shares 2x Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITX) is set to launch on Tuesday. There are already several bitcoin futures funds on the market, including the $1 billion ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) , but BITX will be the first leveraged ETF in the space. “There’s a big audience that’s already out there for leveraged-type products, and to sort of marry that…

A Crypto Sandbox in a Big Business, Big Bank, Venture Capital Playground

And, while New York City is admittedly a hub for hubris, it’s not so bizarre to imagine the city as a center for crypto too. This was true before the crypto market crash last year and will likely continue amid a period of regulatory uncertainty. New York was one of the first jurisdictions to think seriously about crypto regulation, putting the so-called BitLicense into effect in 2015. Some firms, like Kraken, found the rules onerous and pulled out of the financial hub, but, for many, any amount of clarity was…

Regulatory Clarity and Crypto-Friendly Banks Fuel Blockchain Revolution

Surprise! Wyoming is the top-ranked U.S. hub. Many of CoinDesk’s Crypto Hubs 2023 criteria were measured on a national basis, so all of the U.S. hubs were hampered by a middling crypto regulatory score, a measure in the drivers category and the most heavily weighted criteria – 35% – of the total. This negative was partially offset by the highest crypto adoption score (another drivers criteria) in our sample, however. Given that the regulatory and adoption scores were based on countries, Wyoming broke from the U.S. pack with its high…

The Global Hub for VC Money May Be Cooling on Crypto

Silicon Valley was the second-highest ranked U.S. hub in CoinDesk’s Crypto Hubs 2023. Several of the eight criteria were measured on a national basis, so all the U.S. hubs were hampered by a middling crypto regulatory score, a drivers criteria, which at 35% was the most heavily weighted overall. This poor performance was partially offset by the U.S.’s high crypto adoption score, another drivers criterion, represented 10% of the overall score. Among the U.S. hubs, Silicon Valley generally trailed Wyoming just a hair in opportunities, which is based on per-capita…

Where Remote-Work Bitcoin and Crypto Developers Actually Choose to Live

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Ranked No. 9 overall, Ausin was the 3rd U.S. hub on our list, coming behind Wyoming and Silicon Valley, California. Many of the Crypto Hubs’ criteria were measured on a national basis, so all of the U.S. hubs were hampered by a middling crypto regulatory score, which counted for 35% of the total ranking calculation. This negative was partially offset by the highest crypto adoption score in our sample, weighing 10% of the total. Among the U.S. hubs, Austin had the highest quality-of-life and ease-of-doing-business scores, but trailed Wyoming and…

Berlin: The Center for Decentralized Finance – and Techno Music

When the tech hub of Europe meets a society that prizes financial autonomy, the result is a crypto community that practices the very decentralization it preaches. Case in point: Blockchain Week Berlin, the flagship annual conference of the No. 10 spot in CoinDesk’s Crypto Hubs 2023, is a self-organized, crypto-agnostic community initiative. Source

Fireblocks Expands Cloud Support for Crypto Custody

Fireblocks’ cloud support comes at a time when more and more institutional investors and corporations are joining the crypto space. Blockchain security service provider, Fireblocks, has expanded its cloud service for crypto custody and settlement. According to the announcement, the service will now include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, Alibaba Cloud, Thales, and Securosys. Cloud Computing Meets Crypto Security Fireblocks’ platform uses a combination of security technologies to protect private keys and transactions from cyberattacks, internal fraud and human error. Last year, the company became the first to…

How We Ranked CoinDesk’s Crypto Hubs 2023: Our Methodology

The next challenge was to create the initial sample of hubs we should collect data for. Both of us have worked professionally in the past on rankings that began with a sample of hundreds of metro areas. But our time and resources are not unlimited; we sought to shortcut the process by reaching out to dozens of crypto experts representing media, blockchain clubs, venture funds, founders of layer 1s, 2s and decentralized applications, players in DeFi, ReFi and more. We sought diversity wherever we could: race, gender, sexual orientation and…

A Boutique Hub for Crypto Early Adopters

The only Canadian hub to make it into our final ranking, Vancouver had a strong showing in per-capita opportunity measures including crypto jobs, companies and events, as well as a particularly high score for quality of life, in our enabler category. But like its neighboring U.S., Canada’s crypto regulatory structure score was just middling, sitting at three of a maximum score of five. The regulatory criteria, part of the drivers category, is the most heavily weighted at 35% of the total score. Another drivers criteria, the crypto adoption score, was…