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Bitcoin crosses $100,000 as UK-US trade deal is announced

Bitcoin’s passed the $100,000 price point today, the first time it’s hit the symbolic mark since early February. While Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s comments yesterday didn’t make the price budge, President Donald Trump’s post teasing the impending UK-US trade deal and the subsequent announcement have done the trick.

Nic Puckrin, founder of Coin Bureau, said the market cares much more about the rhetoric around tariffs than anything else. “President Trump has just thrown risk assets a big lifeline,” he said.

Meanwhile, Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered Bank, wrote that bitcoin is about to hit a fresh all-time high.

“My specific target of USD120k for Q2 looks very achievable,” Kendrick wrote today.   

Kendrick attributes this to bitcoin’s changing narrative, from correlation to risk assets to “a way to position for strategic asset reallocation out of US assets” and now to being “all about flows.”

“Today’s announcement of US tariff concessions for the UK is great news for the crypto industry, which, like global markets, has been suffering from the uncertainty sweeping US trade tariffs have created,” Charles Wayn, cofounder of Web3 growth platform Galxe, said. “Indeed, this uncertainty halted a crypto bull market many thought would last until at least July, and has particularly impacted altcoins, which have not had the rally the industry and investors had hoped they would have this cycle.”

Bitcoin’s market cap, at $1.98 trillion, also flipped Alphabet’s market cap, at $1.88 trillion, today.

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Payward, parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, puts plans for IPO on hold

Payward, crypto exchange Kraken’s parent company, has paused its plans for an initial public offering until market conditions improve, according to a report from CoinDesk that cited two people with knowledge of the matter. 

Since the firm announced in November its preparation for an IPO of its common stock, the total market capitalization of the crypto industry has shed around $652.2 billion, from $3.2 trillion to $2.5 trillion as of Wednesday, data from CoinGecko shows. 

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions. 

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

The news comes two weeks after Kraken received approval for a master account from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, allowing the crypto exchange to connect to the Fed’s payment infrastructure used by traditional banks and credit unions. 

Last year, Kraken raised $800 million at a $20 billion valuation from institutional investors such as Jane Street and Citadel Securities.

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SEC and CFTC issue new guidance on how securities laws apply to crypto assets

On Tuesday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, together with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, issued an interpretation clarifying how federal securities law applies to crypto assets, a first step toward developing a clearer regulatory framework. 

The interpretive guidance introduces a token taxonomy for different types of cryptocurrencies, with SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins adding that “most crypto assets are not themselves securities.”

Examples of a digital commodity, “a crypto asset that is intrinsically linked to and derives its value from the programmatic operation of a crypto system that is ‘functional,’” include:

The guidance also includes definitions of digital collectibles (such as NFTs), stablecoins, digital tools, and digital securities (such as tokenized real-world assets and stocks).

This is a monumental step in the mainstream adoption of the industry and clears a hurdle in how crypto can operate going forward, according to David Pakman, head of venture investments at CoinFund. “This will allow new token designs with the confidence that their existence does not require registration with the SEC, etc.,” Pakman told Sherwood News.

Despite the clarification efforts from the two organizations, the market capitalization of the crypto industry has dropped about 2% in the last 24 hours as each of the tokens mentioned in the guidance are trading lower in the period, data from CoinGecko shows.

The joint agency action also complements congressional efforts to turn a crypto market structure framework into law. With the goal of providing regulations on the offer and sale of digital commodities, the CLARITY Act passed the House of Representatives last year and is now sitting in the Senate.

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