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CFTC commissioner urges US crypto policy reforms

The CFTC’s Summer Mersinger advocated structured crypto regulations and urged the industry to engage with the incoming US administration.

Speaking at the North American Blockchain Summit on Nov. 21, CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger discussed the need for standard US crypto-related policies through notice and comment regulation.

The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has played a role in implementing the current “regulation by enforcement” strategy alongside the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under the outgoing administration, as evidenced by recent charges against Uniswap Labs.

Mersinger also said recent litigation against a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) required the CFTC to seek a court verdict for entity classification. In this case, the CFTC wanted to classify the DAO as a corporation or association:

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Bitcoin unfazed by $14B option expiry setting $110K BTC target

A perfect storm is brewing for Bitcoin

Reflexivity squared: How Bitcoin ETF options could lead to explosive price movements.

Opinion by Mehdi Lebbar, co-founder of Exponential.fi.

Bitcoin (BTC) is the world’s most reflexive asset today. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission recently approved options for several Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Once issued, these options lead to gamma squeezes, acting like reflexivity. Together, that’s reflexivity squared, leading to unprecedented price movements. 

The launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs was already a landmark event for the financial world. In their first month, BlackRock’s and Fidelity’s Bitcoin ETFs attracted unprecedented inflows, each accumulating $3 billion — setting records for ETF launches. 

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Bitcoin unfazed by $14B option expiry setting $110K BTC target

Wrapped Bitcoin in DeFi: Evaluating wBTC, cbBTC and tBTC

Explore how trade-offs between centralization, security, and adoption are shaping wrapped Bitcoin protocols.

Bitcoin (BTC) is the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and an emerging store of value asset. However, its limited programmability has historically restricted its utility in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. Wrapped Bitcoin tokens help address this limitation and facilitate the transfer of Bitcoin’s value to platforms that are faster and more expressive. 

However, recent developments have cast a shadow on the reliability of bridged Bitcoin (BTC) tokens. The node infrastructure of renBTC, once a popular BTC bridge, was undermined by its financial dependence on Alameda Research and the project shut down in 2022. WBTC, the largest bridged BTC token, faces scrutiny due to its centralized custodianship, which has been compounded by the recent involvement of Justin Sun in the project. 

These concerns have sparked interest in how bridged Bitcoin protocols operate. To that effect, Cointelegraph Research has undertaken a comparative analysis of four prominent Bitcoin bridging solutions—wBTC, renBTC, cbBTC and tBTC. The article provides readers with an in-depth dive into the respective architectures, market performance, recent developments and future prospects.

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Bitcoin unfazed by $14B option expiry setting $110K BTC target

Sky, formerly Maker, launches USDS stablecoin on Solana

Sky is offering $500,000 in USDS rewards for early adopters and stablecoin liquidity providers.

Decentralized finance lending and borrowing protocol Sky, formerly known as Maker, has deployed its USDS stablecoin on Solana in an effort to tap into the blockchain’s growing decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. 

Sky said in a Nov. 19 X post that its USDS was “the first major DeFi-native stablecoin on Solana” and would allow new ways for lending, borrowing, and trading across Solana’s “top DeFi platforms.”

“Today’s launch marks the first step in Sky’s strategy to increase Solana’s DeFi liquidity and [total value locked],” it added. Sky said in the future, pending governance approval, it would roll out its SkyLink crosschain bridge for USDS and sUSDS, its “savings” version of the stablecoin. 

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Bitcoin unfazed by $14B option expiry setting $110K BTC target

Cardano-Bitcoin bridge may be first step to true Bitcoin DeFi

The new bridge lets users withdraw Bitcoin even if most Cardano nodes become malicious.

The upcoming Cardano-Bitcoin bridge, based on the Grail protocol, may be a first step toward providing decentralized finance (DeFi) applications that are secured by Bitcoin, documents from the bridge’s underlying protocol reveal.

On Oct. 24, Emurgo, the development team backing Cardano, announced that it was developing the bridge in partnership with Grail’s developer, BTCOS.

In an X post on the following day, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson clarified that the network will eventually host DeFi applications secured by Bitcoin, adding that, “With babel fees, Bitcoin developers can develop Hybrid Cardano/Bitcoin applications in Aiken and pay their transaction fees in bitcoin.”

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Bitcoin unfazed by $14B option expiry setting $110K BTC target

Trump policies could take DeFi, BTC staking mainstream: Redstone co-founder

Trump’s administration could push DeFi from niche to mainstream, with crypto advocates eyeing potential pro-crypto policy shifts.

Donald Trump’s return to office in 2025 has sparked speculation throughout the crypto industry surrounding how his administration may influence digital finance.

Marcin Kaźmierczak, co-founder and chief operations officer at RedStone, suggested in an interview with Cointelegraph that the new Donald Trump administration “could drastically propel” the expansion of decentralized finance (DeFi).

Kaźmierczak also explained that Bitcoin (BTC) price surges “typically” trigger increased DeFi service activity, stating that “as BTC escalates, it doesn’t just climb in isolation; it lifts the entire DeFi sector.”

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Bitcoin unfazed by $14B option expiry setting $110K BTC target

Trump’s World Liberty Financial taps Chainlink as oracle provider

World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token is only available to accredited investors inside the United States and non-US residents.

President-elect Donald Trump’s decentralized finance platform, World Liberty Financial, has announced an integration with Chainlink’s price feeds to provide real-time, tamper-proof data to the DeFi project.

According to a Nov. 14 announcement, World Liberty Financial will leverage Chainlink oracles on the Ethereum mainnet to power the platform’s launch — based on an Aave v3 instance. Following the integration, Eric Trump, Web3 ambassador at World Liberty Financial and the son of the president-elect, had this to say:

World Liberty Financial’s choice to integrate Chainlink as an oracle provider follows yet another successful pilot test with the SWIFT interbank messaging system and further growth of the Chainlink ecosystem.

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Bitcoin unfazed by $14B option expiry setting $110K BTC target

PancakeSwap launches Telegram Swap Bot for crypto trading access

PancakeSwap’s new Telegram bot lets users trade over 3,000 tokens from the app, highlighting DeFi’s growing accessibility.

PancakeSwap, one of the largest decentralized exchanges (DEXs) on the BNB Chain, has introduced a Telegram bot that enables users to trade cryptocurrencies directly from the messaging app.

The bot currently supports trading for over 3,000 tokens, making decentralized finance (DeFi) transactions potentially more accessible to a wider audience familiar with Telegram.

The Telegram Swap Bot will enable users to trade tokens on PancakeSwap v2, v3 and stableswap on the BNB Chain.

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Bitcoin unfazed by $14B option expiry setting $110K BTC target