Since the Federal Reserve (Fed) started its aggressive interest rate hike campaign in March 2022, the Japanese yen has depreciated sharply, registering one of the most severe exchange rate turbulence on record. The volatility has traders from Japan-focused digital assets exchanges turning to bitcoin (BTC), the world's leading cryptocurrency by market value, widely touted as a hedge against traditional finance. The share of bitcoin trade volume on Japanese exchanges rose from 69% to 80% in the...

Stride, the Cosmos-based liquid staking protocol, is scheduled to transition to Cosmos' interchain security (ICS) system powered by ATOM tokens from the existing stride (STRD) token model. "The transition will likely happen on Wednesday between 17:00 UTC and 21:30 UTC at block height 4616678," Stride's contributor Ian Unsworth told CoinDesk. "While Stride has $35 million plus in total value locked, it only has $19 million of economic security via bonded network tokens. Following the ICS...

Deribit, the world's largest crypto options exchange by open interest and trading volumes, will be introducing a new spot trading feature. The exchange, which accounted for 91% of global options open interest of over $13 billion in March, said the new platform would go live on April 24 and offer three pairs – BTC/USDC, ETH/USDC and ETH/BTC. The feature will have zero maker and taker fees, meaning there will be no margin for the exchange. Makers create orders and wait for them to be filled,...

Risk assets erased early gains during the European hours as shares in San Francisco-based First Republic bank nosedived in pre-market trading, reflecting continued investor angst over the banking sector's health. Bitcoin pulled back to $22,000, having nearly tested the 50-day simple moving average at $22,900 during the Asian hours. Futures tied to the S&P 500 fell from 3,971 to 3,887, reversing over a 1.5% gain. European stocks fell over 2%, with banking shares leading the way lower. First...

Liquid staking, which allows users to earn rewards for locking cryptocurrency in a blockchain network while retaining the liquidity of the locked funds, is now bigger than decentralized lending and borrowing. The total value of crypto assets deposited in liquid staking protocols was $14.1 billion as of European trading hours on Monday, making it the second-largest crypto market sector, according to data source DefiLlama. The total value locked in decentralized-finance (DeFi) lending and...