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Crypto Insight
19 hours ago
- Business
- Crypto Insight
Institutions dominating mainstream crypto narratives — fintech exec
Traditional financial institutions are increasingly shaping the narratives in the crypto sector, and are poised to benefit the most from the current trends, according to Arthur Azizov, founder of B2 Ventures, a private 'alliance' of crypto services and financial tech companies. Azizov told Cointelegraph that this market cycle has been dominated by institutional investors, investment vehicles like exchange-traded funds (ETFs), governments, and stablecoin issuers. He also said that big banks will accelerate this trend in the near future, once they have regulatory clarity to interact with crypto, saying it will only be a 'matter of months' between the time these banks receive regulatory clarity and the time it takes them to launch a stablecoin. Azizov added: 'Banks have a substantial user base. They already have their own clients. Those clients are loyal to those banks. And for them to implement crypto into their operations will be relatively easy.' These institutions have already changed the landscape. In the future, it's going to change even more, and I would say it's not good for small startups,' he continued. The increasing presence of institutional investors, banks, and companies in crypto has created tension between these traditional financial institutions and the cypherpunks that started the crypto movement, who advocate for the complete decentralization of the financial system The government is also driving the institutionalization of crypto Governments also have economic incentives to regulate crypto and bring it under the purview of the traditional financial system. 'The narrative is to regulate crypto, not only because it is mainstream, but in order to attract technology companies, attract young talent, and fintech startups, Azizov told Cointelegraph. This increased regulation means a greater focus on anti-money laundering (AML) regulations and know-your-customer (KYC) requirements, he added. AML and KYC are already required for retail crypto consumer applications throughout much of the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region and Europe, and Azizov said he expects this trend to also take shape in the US. The emphasis on consumer surveillance and officially registered accounts runs contrary to the value proposition of decentralized finance (DeFi), which promises permissionless access to a censorship-resistant financial system. Source:
Yahoo
28-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
This Bitcoin OG Says He Has Sold All His BTC: Here's What He Sees As The Better Play
Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Bitcoin analyst Willy Woo, famous for creating on-chain valuation metrics like the Network Value to Transactions ratio and the Supply Shock valuation model, says he has sold all his BTC. 'I sold all of mine,' he said Monday on X, referring to his Bitcoin holdings. When asked why by an X user, Woo said, 'because I can do just as well supporting the picks and shovels of the best emerging asset as it grows,' alluding to Bitcoin startups. Don't Miss: 7,000+ investors have joined Timeplast's mission to eliminate microplastics— — no wallets, just price speculation and free paper trading to practice different strategies. It is not the first time Woo has discussed this strategic pivot, though it is the first time he has revealed that he has dumped all his coins. In an interview with Cointelegraph last week, he said Bitcoin at best had a further 50x upside potential, assuming its market cap could surge to as high as $100 trillion. On the other hand, he said a good Bitcoin venture could yield '100 to 1000x' gains. Woo added that these Bitcoin ventures could also offer downside protection by holding Bitcoin in their treasuries. 'It just makes sense that smart money would go into Bitcoin infrastructure,' he said. 'It is now the picks and shovels series.' However, venture investing is far from an easy business, especially compared to the simplicity of buying and holding or dollar cost-averaging into Bitcoin. 'You have to be strategic for the startup to bring you onto the investment cap table,' Woo said. 'The valuations are very low, typically between four and 20 million for the whole value, and hopefully it becomes a unicorn.' Trending: Grow your IRA or 401(k) with Crypto – . Still, venture investing likely comes more naturally to Woo than the average Joe, as he told Cointelegraph that he was investing in early ventures before the emergence of Bitcoin. 'I've been in the startup space since way before Bitcoin, and I like investing in the next generation of founders,' he said. Highlighting what is possible in the space, Woo pointed to Exodus wallet parent Exodus Movement (NYSE:EXOD). 'In 2016, they did a crowdfunding,' he told Cointelegraph. 'I had a seed round in there, and it was the only wallet that had a really good UX at the time, and it had a good business model as well.' The firm had raised $4 million in the seed round and was listed on the NYSE American in December for nearly $1 Woo told Cointelegraph that it was not previously the case that investing in a Bitcoin venture outperformed investing in Bitcoin, citing Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN). He said if one had invested in the leading cryptocurrency exchange during its 2012 funding round, one would have yielded underwhelming returns by the 2021 IPO compared to holding Bitcoin over the same period. 'You would underperform Bitcoin by 50%, like you would have lost half your Bitcoin,' he said. 'Bitcoin was growing so strong in those early days. But today it's more reliable to outperform Bitcoin with a venture.' Among Woo's picks in this perceived new market phase is Debifi, a platform that allows Bitcoin holders to borrow fiat against their holdings without giving up self-custody. 'The big core part of their technology is a multi-key hardware sort of escrow for all the parties,' he said. 'I like it, because it very much promotes self-custody.' Debifi completed a second seed round in June 2024 but did not disclose how much was raised or its present valuation. Read Next: A must-have for all crypto enthusiasts: . Image: Imagn Images This article This Bitcoin OG Says He Has Sold All His BTC: Here's What He Sees As The Better Play originally appeared on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Crypto Insight
26-07-2025
- Business
- Crypto Insight
Firedancer will speed up Solana, but it won't reach full potential
Solana's next-generation validator client, Firedancer, may not reach full speed on the network it was built for as technical limits push developers to test it elsewhere. One of those developers is Douglas Colkitt, a former high-frequency trader who's testing a hybrid validator setup called Frankendancer on Fogo, a Solana-compatible chain built to remove the constraints that currently prevent Firedancer from reaching its full potential on Solana. Colkitt, a founding contributor at Fogo, said the new blockchain isn't trying to replace Solana but does discard some of Solana's core assumptions, such as globally distributed validator sets, to showcase how far Firedancer can go when speed takes priority over decentralization. The push to run Firedancer outside Solana highlights a deeper split in blockchain infrastructure: the tension between decentralization and speed. These two have long been trade-offs, but more builders are now choosing to prioritize speed. Why Firedancer can't go full speed on Solana yet Jump Trading developed Firedancer, a high-performance validator client aimed at boosting Solana's throughput and reducing latency. But according to Colkitt, Solana's architecture includes technical constraints that limit how fast Firedancer can operate in practice. 'If you have two clients running on the same network, you can only go as fast as the slowest client because otherwise the network risks halting,' he told Cointelegraph. 'It's like driving a Ferrari in city traffic — no matter how fast the car is, you're limited by the speed of the other vehicles around you.' Solana currently supports two main validator client implementations: Agave and Firedancer. Agave is running on about 90% of validators as of Friday. Meanwhile, Firedancer is still in a transitional phase as Frankendancer, a hybrid combining Agave and Firedancer. It accounts for about 10% of validators, up from 7% in April. Frankendancer's hybrid approach allows for a gradual adoption of Firedancer's improvements without risking network stability. Solana's network relies on a globally distributed set of validators. This geographic decentralization strengthens security by preventing any single party or region from gaining excessive control. It also enhances censorship resistance and resilience against localized outages or attacks. This also means that decentralization comes with performance trade-offs. Data and consensus messages must travel long distances, resulting in unavoidable network latency. Even with optimized software like Frankendancer and the fastest hardware, Solana's block time remains around 400 milliseconds. 'Trading firms absolutely need something faster than 400 milliseconds. If you have events like a [Federal Reserve] announcement or nonfarm payrolls, you want to be closer to that data to trade off of it,' Colkitt said. Solana is also working to reduce latency. On Thursday, the Solana Foundation unveiled a roadmap aiming to establish the 'Internet Capital Market' by 2027, targeting millisecond-level control over transaction ordering in smart contracts. Firedancer's real-world test outside Solana Colkitt traces his entry into crypto back to 'DeFi Summer.' He was working on an automated market maker project on Ethereum and its emerging rollups. 'The Ethereum chains weren't sufficient for what we wanted to do,' Colkitt said, explaining why he left the Ethereum ecosystem in search of alternatives better suited for high-frequency trading. 'We spent a lot more time playing politics — which L2 do we go to? How do we get L2 support? — that kind of distracted from building the core products.' This fragmentation held back innovation compared to the simplicity and unified liquidity of early Ethereum, Colkitt said, which was more apparent in Solana. However, Solana is still relatively young. It produced its first block in March 2020. Traditional financial institutions are slower in embracing newer blockchain platforms like Solana, Colkitt said, adding that banks still remain comfortable primarily within Ethereum-compatible ecosystems. On the demand side, Colkitt pointed to projects like Hyperliquid, which push the limits of current blockchain infrastructure. 'Hyperliquid owns 90% plus of the market in decentralized perpetuals trading,' he noted. 'But that kind of ultra-low latency, high-throughput trading experience just doesn't reliably work on Solana today because of block times and network stability.' Fogo, which launched its testnet on Tuesday, uses Solana-based technology to compete with chains like Hyperliquid. Built on the Solana Virtual Machine, it is compatible with projects currently running on Solana. Fogo currently runs on Frankendancer, with plans to transition fully to Firedancer when ready, unlocking the validator client's full potential. When asked about the timeline, Colkitt gave a 'very rough guess' of the end of this year. Fogo is targeting its mainnet launch in September. Firedancer's true potential outside Solana Next-generation low-latency networks like Fogo and Hyperliquid are pushing the boundaries to match the speed demands of modern trading. Projects like MegaETH also promise near-instant transactions, targeting emerging sectors such as decentralized physical infrastructure nextworks that require real-time execution. What unites these chains is a willingness to make trade-offs, dialing back decentralization to scale. Fogo intentionally reduces the geographic distribution of validators to gain this speed advantage. 'What we're doing with Fogo is spinning up validator nodes in a few key global locations — Tokyo, London and New York — to reduce latency between them,' he said. 'By co-locating validators closer together geographically, we can push Firedancer to achieve much faster block times than Solana's globally distributed validator set allows.' This trade-off sets the stage for an important experiment. Firedancer's true potential will likely never be fully unlocked on Solana itself, a network that remains constrained by its global validator set and commitment to decentralization. Instead, the testbed for what ultra-fast, high-performance blockchain infrastructure can truly achieve comes at the cost of decentralization. However, Solana is not standing still. Its recently unveiled 2027 roadmap aims to bring the blockchain closer to traditional finance standards. Source:
Crypto Insight
22-07-2025
- Business
- Crypto Insight
Bitcoin's quantum countdown has already begun, Naoris CEO says
A hacker-turned-defender warns that most of the industry is asleep on crypto's existential threat: quantum computing. David Carvalho, CEO of post-quantum infrastructure firm Naoris Protocol, began hacking at the age of 13, experimenting with spam emails to attract job offers and gain attention from employers. Eventually, that curiosity shifted into formal cybersecurity work, where he used the same skills to defend systems instead of probing them. Today, he builds quantum-resilient systems for decentralized networks and claims that the cryptographic foundations of blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum are dangerously outdated. 'The cryptography behind nearly every chain is as weak as the rest of the world's cryptography,' Carvalho told Cointelegraph. 'Quantum is coming for it all, like meteors came for the dinosaurs.' Though Bitcoin and other blockchain developers often claim there's still plenty of time to adapt, the window may be closing fast. Efforts to implement quantum-resistant signatures are underway, but Carvalho said they're far from widespread or treated with the urgency the threat demands. The quantum threats harvesting Bitcoin data today For years, the idea that quantum computers could threaten Bitcoin felt like science fiction. But real-world developments suggest the threat is shifting from theory to early practice. Governments and tech giants are already preparing for what's known as the 'harvest now, decrypt later' model. US federal agencies, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, have warned since 2022 about the urgency of adopting quantum-resistant algorithms, while a White House memorandum prompted the NSA to advise government contractors to migrate to post-quantum cryptography by 2035. Today's quantum technology still falls short of cracking Bitcoin's SHA-256 hash function or the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) that secures crypto keys. But researchers like Carvalho argue that exponential breakthroughs — especially when paired with AI — could arrive abruptly. State-sponsored actors and cybercriminal groups are already collecting encrypted blockchain data now, hoping to decrypt it once quantum hardware catches up. 'The adversaries collecting encrypted blockchain data right now aren't waiting to attack today,' Carvalho said. 'They're building data sets for tomorrow. When the tech catches up, they'll unlock a decade of secrets in minutes.' Despite these warnings, most of the Bitcoin community doesn't see quantum computing as an immediate threat, and there's no widespread sense of panic. Bitcoin's current cryptography is still considered robust against existing quantum machines, and developers have begun exploring defenses like BIP-360, which proposes quantum-resistant addresses. Projects like Carvalho's Naoris Protocol are also working to help blockchains transition to post-quantum cryptographic standards. Quantum laced with AI is Bitcoin's real apocalypse While most conversations about quantum threats focus on brute-force attacks on cryptographic keys, Carvalho believes the true danger lies in the convergence of quantum computing and artificial intelligence. Together, he argues, they could enable stealthy, asymmetric attacks that don't overwhelm crypto systems with power but dismantle them with precision. 'Everyone's waiting for a countdown that won't come. You won't get a warning that a 10-year-old Bitcoin wallet has been cracked. You'll just see funds moved, and no one will be able to prove how or by whom,' he said. AI is already embedded in cybersecurity — used for intrusion detection, smart contract auditing and anomaly detection. But in the wrong hands, the same tools could be flipped. An AI attacker could automatically scan open-source wallets for edge-case bugs, simulate validator responses and adapt in real time to network behavior. If paired with a quantum computer capable of breaking elliptic-curve private keys, the result wouldn't be a loud breach, but what Carvalho calls a 'silent collapse.' 'This isn't just about stealing coins,' he said. 'It's about eroding trust invisibly. Entire blockchains could be compromised, governance systems spoofed, and no one would know who did it or how.' AI-driven tests have found vulnerabilities in cryptographic libraries that traditional tools overlook. Combine that with adversaries stockpiling encrypted data under the 'harvest now, decrypt later' model, and the groundwork for a systemic breach may already be in place. Carvalho warned that this could mark Bitcoin's true apocalypse if left unaddressed — not a dramatic livestreamed cracking of SHA-256 but a slow, silent erosion of the trust layers that hold the system together. Bitcoin can't defend against weak links For all the talk of Bitcoin's decentralization, its real-world infrastructure remains deeply centralized. Cloud platforms, mining pools and validator networks all present vulnerable chokepoints that quantum-capable adversaries could exploit. If a single cloud provider hosting hundreds of full nodes is compromised, the damage could ripple across the entire network, regardless of how decentralized the protocol itself claims to be. 'Decentralization is great on paper, but if everyone's routing through the same few backbones or trusting a handful of third-party APIs, the game's already lost.' The quantum threat could exploit the blind spots in the systems around it: centralized infrastructure, aging technology and trust assumptions. Some projects are already being prepared. Carvalho's Naoris, for example, draws on national security frameworks to build decentralized systems designed for a post-quantum world. Others are developing quantum-resistant rollups, new key formats and protocol upgrades through Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) or leveraging inherently secure technologies like StarkWare's STARKs. The threat is approaching, but the response is also growing. What remains is whether the crypto ecosystem will act before it's too late. Source:
Crypto Insight
20-07-2025
- Business
- Crypto Insight
Ether preps record short squeeze as analysis sees $4K ETH price ‘soon'
Key points: Ether is currently forging a short squeeze that stands out in crypto history, says analysis. A 10% price increase would see another $1 billion in liquidated shorts. Shorts should now fuel a $4,000 ETH price rebound. Ether is 'making history' as ETH price gains spark a short squeeze for the record books. Fresh analysis from trading resource The Kobeissi Letter issued Friday now sees ETH/USD hitting $4,000 'soon.' Ether shorts risk punishment as ETH eyes 2025 highs Ether price strength has become one of July's crypto market standouts as altcoins slowly begin following Bitcoin higher. As the largest altcoin by market cap, Ether is punishing short positions at a rate rarely seen before, Kobeissi reports. 'Ethereum is making HISTORY: We are currently witnessing one of the LARGEST short squeezes in crypto history,' it summarized in a dedicated thread on X. 'Ethereum has added +$150 BILLION in market cap since July 1st, days after net SHORT exposure hit record highs.' Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView confirms that ETH/USD gained 20% over the past week alone. Local highs of $3,610 on Bitstamp almost match the year-to-date record seen in early January. Compared to its 2025 low, the pair is up over 150%. Now, Kobeissi not only sees $4,000 coming next, but also continuation of the short squeeze. 'If Ethereum rises another 10%, another $1 billion of shorts will be liquidated,' it calculated alongside data from monitoring resource CoinGlass. 'Furthermore, the fact that many of these shorts are leveraged is adding even more pressure. Ethereum could see $4,000 soon.' Bitcoin dominance drops to March lows Bitcoin meanwhile continues to consolidate below the psychologically significant $120,000 mark. At the same time, capital has been reported as flowing into altcoins as traders eye the potential for quicker returns. Bitcoin's dominance of the overall crypto market cap has halted a multi-year uptrend, falling to 61.4% this week — its lowest value since March. '$BTC.D Has only dropped 4.5% from the local highs and we can already see its impact on alts and ALT/BTC pairs,' popular trader Daan crypto Trades observed on X Friday. Daan Crypto Trades pinned the dominance drop on 'outperformance' from ETH and XRP in particular. 'When the market is eventually looking extremely overheated or shaky, capital will flee back into $BTC & Cash/Stables,' he warned, drawing a comparison to late 2024. Source:
