DL News

Since Donald Trump’s election as president in November, venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz has become a force in US politics.

The latest example: A 50-page policy recommendation outlining crypto regulation goals for the Security and Exchange Commission.

The letter is in response to an invitation from SEC’s Commissioner and Crypto Task Force Chair Hester Peirce, who in February invited stakeholders for their recommendations on forming crypto policies.

A16z said its approach would provid

US Bitcoin exchange-traded funds defied two months of gloom and notched four consecutive days of inflows.

BlackRock’s IBIT fund leads the pack, pulling in $219 million on Tuesday, single-handedly pushing the entire US spot Bitcoin ETF market into positive territory, according to JPMorgan analysts.

Net inflows for ETFs amounted to $210 million on March 18, while Bitwise added $12 million on March 19.

The four-day streak of positive flows blows fresh air into a beleaguered ETF market.

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The chances of an XRP exchange-traded fund being approved surged after the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped its case against Ripple, which developed the token to facilitate cross-border payments.

Not only have bets on Polymarket pushed the chances of an approval to 84% from 77% on Wednesday, but analysts like Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas also say the odds are improving.

“Honestly, based on how the SEC has dropped all these lawsuits — and I heard the one with Ripple i

Mohamed El-Erian isn’t all that impressed with the US crypto reserve.

“So far it’s not as big a deal as people had hoped for,” the investing titan told a crowd at Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit Wednesday.

“It becomes a big deal when people say, ‘Instead of holding dollar reserves, I’m going to hold bitcoin reserves.’ … That, we haven’t seen so far.”

But it could happen as the US continues to wield the dollar and the worldwide payment system as a weapon against hostile countries, he said.

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Lido is at a crossroads.

The $17 billion liquid staking protocol has already become the leading player in its field, having captured 27% of the Ethereum staking market.

But a new proposal aims to pump that share and fight off competition from startups and rival services from industry giants like Binance and Coinbase.

The cooperative that governs the protocol is voting on a $10 million grant funding request with the goals of increasing Lido’s market share to over 30%, getting more institutions

Is Binance scaling back up in the US?

It’s an intriguing question given the fact that Binance, the world’s top crypto exchange, largely decamped from the US in 2023 in connection with violating banking law and paying a $4.3 billion penalty.

And yet the crypto world is abuzz with speculation Binance may be angling for a full-scale return given the relaxed regulatory climate under the Trump administration.

DL News caught up with Steven McWhirter, Binance’s global policy lead, to talk about the

Move over Ethereum and Bitcoin, Solana exchange-traded funds are now coming to market.

Volatility Shares is launching two ETFs that track Solana futures. These are the first of their kind for Solana, the sixth largest crypto network in the world. The token surged 8% to $134, with a market value of $68 billion.

The Florida-based fund also offers a 2x leveraged Bitcoin futures ETF and a 2x leveraged Ethereum futures ETF.

“Until now, if you wanted Solana exposure, you had to jump through a bunch

Crypto and equities markets jumped on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve opted to hold rates steady.

Investors breathed a sigh of relief after the US central bank remained on course to make two cuts to interest rates this year.

The move was expected: before Wednesday’s announcement, investors had put the chance of a rate drop at about 1%, according to the CME’s FedWatch tool.

Following the Fed’s statement, Bitcoin increased 1.3%, to $85,623, in mid-afternoon trading New York time, and Ethere

Bettors just gave Canadian Liberal Party candidate Mark Carney higher chances than his rival of winning the upcoming election to become prime minister.

Carney’s rival, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, was once the clear favourite on the betting platform Polymarket.

That was until US President Donald Trump threatened the long-time US ally with tariffs as well as pushing for the country to become an American state.

Canadian backlash has prompted, among other things, a boycott of US g

Bettors are bullish about XRP exchange-traded funds.

On Wednesday, the chances that the Securities and Exchange Commission will approve XRP ETF applications this year jumped from 77% to 79% on Polymarket after Ripple announced that the regulator has dropped its case against it.

“This is it — the moment we’ve been waiting for. The SEC will drop its appeal — a resounding victory for Ripple, for crypto, every way you look at it,” Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said in an X post on Wednesday.

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“It’s over.”

That’s the message from Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse as he announced that the Securities and Exchange Commission’s long-running lawsuit against the XRP developer will be dropped.

“This is it — the moment we’ve been waiting for. The SEC will drop its appeal — a resounding victory for Ripple, for crypto, every way you look at it,” Garlinghouse said in an X post.

“It seems very clear to me that this case was doomed from the start,” Garlinghouse said in a video shared on X.

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As the US increasingly squares off against China, one group is fighting to leave open the door to more business from the Asian nation — Arkansas Bitcoin miners.

On March 13, the Arkansas Cryptomining Association, which represents Bitcoin miners in the Natural State, accused Arkansas, its attorney general, and the head of its Oil and Gas Commission, of unlawfully discriminating against Chinese people and their US partners.

The federal lawsuit is a response to a law Arkansas passed last year whe

Raydium’s native RAY token soared more than 12% on Wednesday after the decentralised exchange revealed it was developing a new token launch pad.

Dubbed LaunchLabs, it will allow anyone to spin up cryptocurrencies on Solana, Infra, a pseudonymous contributor behind Raydium, said on X.

Though the venture will go head-to-head with Pump.fun, a buzzy token launchpad behind a slew of controversial memecoins on Solana, Infra cast LaunchLabs in a different light.

They said the platform would “mimic”

Well that was quick.

Just 16 months after the cryptocurrency market reversed a grinding slide and reached all-time highs in the “euphoria zone,” the bull market is collapsing.

And the reason is simple: Donald Trump.

At least, this is what myriad market metrics indicate as the new administration’s protectionism spooks investors.

“Every onchain metric signals a bear market,” said Ki Young Ju, the CEO CryptoQuant, a crypto analytics firm.

“With fresh liquidity drying up, new whales are selling

Solana is reeling from a dramatic backlash after posting a promotional video titled “America is Back ― Time to Accelerate,” only to take it down nine hours later.

Both industry reps and pundits railed against its overt political themes that seemed to ridicule gender identities and attack news organisations.

“The ad was infantile and should be considered a marketing mistake,” Mateusz Kara, CEO of crypto payment company Ari10, told DL News.

Solana Foundation representatives did not respond to a

The XRP army is buzzing.

Supporters of the Ripple-linked cryptocurrency are hoping its price is about to explode.

They have reason to be bullish.

The altcoin’s price is up almost 250% since this time last year, whales spend hundreds of millions to buy it, and bettors on prediction market Kalshi give it a 48% chance of outperforming Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a smattering of other cryptocurrencies this year.

People are curious about the altcoin Ripple developed to facilitate cross-border payments

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DeFi is at a dead end.

There’s only a finite number of degens willing to take on the risks of trading onchain and grappling with clunky wallet interfaces, something the ecosystem’s stalling growth attests to.

In response, Coinbase has forged a deal with DeFi lender Morpho to let its customers access Bitcoin loans without having to so much as touch a non-custodial wallet.

Aave, the biggest DeFi lending protocol with $28 billion of deposits, is looking not to retail investors but

Tom Duff Gordon has been raking in the frequent flyer miles.

As Coinbase’s vice president of international policy, he’s responsible for trying to sway lawmakers from London to Brussels to Delhi on favourable crypto rules.

And given the dizzying pivot by the US since the election of President Donald Trump, Gordon says he’s as busy as ever.

“It’s a phenomenon,” he told DL News on the sidelines of Policy Week, an event bringing together lawmakers and members of the crypto sector in Sydney, Austr

Bitcoin may have lost some of its sheen in the last eight weeks, but for Alexis Sirkia, the asset’s value proposition hasn’t changed.

In fact, investors are getting a stunning deal on the $1.6 trillion cryptocurrency.

“The value of Bitcoin is still the same,” the co-founder of market maker GSR and founder of crypto clearing house Yellow told DL News.

“It’s still $100,000, now there’s just a 20% discount because of risk and uncertainty.”

Uncertainty reigns

Despite President Donald Trump’s ab

A version of this story appeared in our The Guidance newsletter on March 17. Sign up here.

Five Democrats.

Of all the surprising things that happened in the crypto regulatory scene last week, the decision by five Democratic US senators to vote with Republicans on advancing a stablecoin bill tops the list.

The move was striking given how synonymous crypto has become with President Donald Trump,

Trump and his family haven’t just launched a flurry of crypto businesses, including a memecoin. The