Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says the crypto exchange will indeed add support for the Lightning Network, one of the biggest endorsements yet for the blockchain that makes bitcoin (BTC) a more realistic option for payments by dramatically speeding up transactions. The company had said in early August that it was looking into Lightning support. On Wednesday, Armstrong said on X (formerly Twitter) that this review was over and Coinbase has “made the decision to integrate Lightning” The team did...

U.S.-based crypto exchange Coinbase is in talks with Canadian banking giants, trying to convince them to support the crypto ecosystem in that nation, which the company recently entered as it grapples with regulatory uncertainty in its home country. In an interview with CoinDesk, Lucas Matheson, the director of Coinbase’s Canada operations, said that he’s been having conversations with Canada’s tier one banks. He didn’t identify them by name, but Canada’s largest banks are collectively known...

Billionaire private equity titan David Rubenstein believes Bitcoin (BTC) is here to stay thanks to growing institutional interest as evidenced by BlackRock’s application for a spot bitcoin ETF, as well as general global demand for a form of money that can’t be controlled by governments. “A lot of people around the world want to be able to trade in a currency that their government can’t know what they have and they want to be able to move it around rightly or wrongly and so I don’t think...

Elon Musk's X is reportedly looking for a financial-data giant to build a trading hub on the app. Musk said on X that "no work is being done on this to the best of my knowledge." Elon Musk’s soon-to-be super app X, formerly known as Twitter, is looking for a financial-data giant to build a trading hub inside the app, news outlet Semafor reported, citing documents and people familiar with the matter. According to the documents, X sent a request to financial-data providers in recent weeks...

Coinbase Borrow, a program that allowed customers to receive fiat loans of up to $1 million against as much as 30% of their bitcoin (BTC) holdings, will be shutting down over the coming months as the company focuses its resources on products that “customers care about most,” a spokesperson told CoinDesk Thursday. Customers who hold loans through the program will have until November 20, 2023 to pay back any outstanding loan balances. “We have notified impacted loan holders and are taking extra...