The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day |
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Ripple CEO Bats for 'Crypto' Reserve |
Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of crypto company Ripple Labs, supports the idea of a U.S. digital asset reserve encompassing multiple tokens and not just bitcoin (BTC) or XRP.
"I own XRP, BTC, and ETH, among a handful of others – we live in a multichain world, and I’ve advocated for a level-playing field instead of one token versus another. If a govt digital asset reserve is created - I believe it should be representative of the industry, not just one token (whether it be BTC, XRP or anything else)," Garlinghouse said on X. Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump said his administration will evaluate whether to create a national digital asset stockpile, having backed the idea in the lead-up to the November elections.
The crypto market anticipates that a potential reserve would include bitcoin, the leading digital asset by market value and the one with the highest level of institutional adoption. Currently, traders active over decentralized betting platform Polymarket only see a 17% chance of Trump greenlighting the project in the first 100 days of his administration.
Garlinghouse, however, is against the maximalism that promotes BTC as the only deserving candidate for a potential national reserve.
"Maximalism remains the enemy of crypto progress, and I’m very glad to see fewer and fewer folks ascribe to this outdated and misinformed thinking," Garlinghouse said.
Ripple uses XRP to facilitate cross-border payments and remittances. XRP changed hands at $3.09, having tanked nearly 10% to $2.65 on Monday, CoinDesk data show. |
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Ondo Tokenized Treasuries Join XRP Ledger |
Ondo Finance, a tokenized real-world asset platform, is bringing its $185 million U.S. Treasury token to the enterprise-focused XRP Ledger network to expand the offering for institutions, the companies said Tuesday.
The Ondo Short-Term US Government Treasuries (OUSG) token is backed by BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) and allows qualified investors to mint and redeem tokens around the clock near instantaneously using the Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin. The deployment is set to go live within the next six months, Ondo Finance said in a blog post. Both Ripple, the development firm closely related to the XRP Ledger, and Ondo Finance committed seed investments in the token on the XRP Ledger for initial liquidity. They did not reveal the size of the allocations.
ONDO, the governance token of Ondo Finance, advanced 4% on the news.
Tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) is a rapidly growing industry that involves representing traditional finance assets such as bonds, credit and funds on a blockchain. Participants do so in pursuit of faster settlements and increased efficiency compared with traditional banking plumbing. Tokenized versions of U.S. Treasury notes spearheaded the trend, and have more than quadrupled over the past year to become a $3.5 billion asset class, rwa.xyz data shows.
“The 24/7 intraday settlement enabled by tokenized assets like OUSG marks a transformative shift in capital flow management, breaking free from traditional trading hours and slow settlements," Markus Infanger, a senior vice president of RippleX, an XRP Ledger development firm, said in a statement. "These low-risk, high-quality liquidity options not only provide better accessibility for investors but also introduce greater stability to blockchain-based markets.
OUSG follows OpenEden's TBILL as the second tokenized treasury product available on XRP Ledger. OUSG previously was available on Ethereum, Polygon and Solana. |
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Coinbase Approved in Argentina |
Crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) said it received regulatory approval to offer services to users in Argentina.
The company received a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) registration from Argentina’s National Securities Commission (CNV), it said in a blog post on Tuesday. The expansion is part of the exchange’s mission to increase economic freedom globally. In 2023, Coinbase launched its services in Brazil as a first push into the Latin American region.
Roughly 5 million Argentinians use crypto on a daily basis, Coinbase said, and 76% of adults see crypto as a solution to some of their financial frustrations, including high inflation and transaction costs. Operations will be led by Matìas Alberti, who previously worked in the fintech field at Buenbit and Clara.
Coinbase shares were little changed at the start of Nasdaq trading. They have added 8% this year to $277.84 at press time, roughly tracking the price of bitcoin (BTC). |
MOVE Jumps on WLFI Purchase |
The native token of Movement, an Ethereum layer-2 network built using the Facebook-created MoveVM coding language, jumped on Tuesday after Donald Trump-backed World Liberty Financial purchased tokens. There was also a fresh report that Movement is among the blockchain networks in discussions with the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The MOVE token spiked as much as 20% to $0.89 on the news before paring some of the gains, still up 13% during the day at press time. "Our papers have never hit the DOGE desk," Rushi Manche, co-founder of Movement Labs, told CoinDesk. "Our growth team has never met them, so there's a lot of speculation in the rumors." However, "in the next few months, it's the people and blockchain firms that are able to be part of the government — be part of this new political movement — that are the ones that'll win in five years," he added. The rumors started swirling just after World Liberty Financial, which is backed by President Donald Trump and his family, acquired a total of $2 million worth of MOVE tokens in several batches during the U.S. morning hours, with the first transaction occurring at 14:22 UTC, blockchain data by Arkham Intelligence shows. The gains happened as an X post by well-followed crypto sleuth dbnews at 14:48 UTC reported that Movement is involved in discussions to bring blockchain technology to the government. Elon Musk, the tech entrepreneur who heads the Department of Government Efficiency and is tasked with finding ways to cut government expenses, is reportedly exploring blockchain tech for operations, including tracking federal spending, securing data, making payments and managing buildings. Bloomberg reported last week that DOGE representatives have reportedly held conversations with leaders from several public blockchains.
"We are proud to be the first altcoin, first modern blockchain platform, and first alternative vm under the new administration," Manche said in an X post. "MOVE is Made in America."
Just minutes before MOVE price's rally accelerated on the second headline, open interest for the token spiked to near 55 million contracts from around 44 million on Coinbase, which means traders initiated derivatives positions en masse ahead of the move, well-followed pseudonymous crypto trader TheFlowHorse pointed out in an X post.
The chain of events raised some eyebrows among the crypto community, with several market participants alleging potential insider trading or grifting.
Manche stated that the Movement Foundation, the development organization supporting the network, did not send tokens to anyone including World Liberty Financial. "There weren't any deals — any back door deals. It was purely just market buying," Manche told CoinDesk. |
The Takeaway: AI Agents and Crypto |
By Justin Banon, founder of Boson Protocol: Web3 technologies are poised to transform the world of commerce just as Web2 revolutionized access to information. The result will be a vast, open, liquid digital marketplace where all physical goods can be listed and traded seamlessly. In the early days of the internet, information was siloed within proprietary networks. Over time, the zero marginal cost of distribution, combined with consumer demand for accessibility, led to the open, searchable internet we enjoy today. Commerce, however, has been slower to evolve due to inherent complexities. Unlike information, physical assets require trust between parties, the ability to mediate disputes and reliable settlement mechanisms. These needs have historically been met through centralized intermediaries, which silo e-commerce into closed, proprietary systems. But Web3 technologies, powered by blockchain, have introduced a new paradigm. Smart contracts automate settlement processes, while the tokenization of physical assets creates the necessary open, public infrastructure for representing ownership and trade. This removes the need for centralized intermediaries, enabling trustless transactions between parties. Much like decentralized finance (DeFi) has unbundled traditional financial systems with "money Lego" applications, decentralized commerce protocols will act as "commerce Legos" to build an open, interoperable market for goods.
AI-powered commerce agents are central to the adoption and functionality of decentralized commerce. These agents enable seamless integration, discovery, and execution on decentralized protocols, transforming how goods and services are traded in an open and trustless marketplace. Their capabilities can be grouped into two main functions: aggregating supply and demand, and facilitating trade across platforms, both of which are supported by additional features that enhance decision-making and user experience. At the core of decentralized commerce is the need to unify fragmented data. AI agents address this by sourcing and normalizing product data from siloed websites, marketplaces and platforms, and uploading it to decentralized protocols to create a unified and accessible marketplace. Simultaneously, they analyze buyer intent by examining consumer behavior, search patterns and explicit demand signals from multiple platforms. By combining supply and demand aggregation, these agents ensure that buyers and sellers can find each other efficiently, reducing friction and optimizing liquidity in the marketplace. Intelligent supply-demand matching further refines this process by connecting products with buyers based on price, quality, location and preferences, automating the process to streamline transactions. Once supply and demand are matched, AI agents can? facilitate transactions using decentralized protocols. This includes managing escrow services, automating payments through smart contracts and coordinating logistics for physical goods, ensuring a seamless and trustless trading experience. Additionally, these agents bridge decentralized commerce protocols with traditional e-commerce platforms, enabling cross-platform interoperability. AI agents also provide actionable insights by analyzing global trends, pricing and consumer preferences. This market intelligence helps sellers and buyers make informed decisions, enabling competitive positioning and improving trade strategies. By continuously adapting to changes in market dynamics, AI agents empower participants to navigate decentralized commerce effectively. Together, these functions position AI agents as the driving force behind decentralized commerce by fostering transparency, efficiency and liquidity in a global marketplace. By bridging data silos, automating transactions and enhancing decision-making, they create a robust foundation for a decentralized economy that is accessible, scalable, and inclusive.
The synergy between crypto and AI will be central to the transformation of commerce into a decentralized, trustless ecosystem. Crypto needs AI to simplify its inherently complex systems, making decentralized protocols more accessible to users.
AI overlays crypto’s intricate user interfaces with natural language interfaces, enabling seamless interactions. For example, instead of manually navigating blockchain wallets and smart contracts, users can simply request that an AI agent purchase an item on their behalf. The AI agent then executes the transaction by interfacing directly with crypto protocols, abstracting the technical complexities from the user.
Conversely, AI needs crypto to provide the verifiable, deterministic execution of commerce transactions that ensures trust in autonomous operations. Decentralized commerce protocols, powered by blockchain, offer tamper-proof and transparent transaction records. This verifiability is crucial as AI agents take on more significant roles in facilitating and automating commerce, ensuring that actions are not only efficient but also provable and trustworthy.
Together, these technologies unlock the full potential of decentralized ecosystems. AI’s ability to process information and act autonomously, combined with crypto’s capacity for secure and transparent execution, creates a powerful foundation for a new era of decentralized commerce. This synergy will drive adoption, streamline transactions and foster trust in global markets.
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