Finance

In the past two months, I’ve attended the Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town conference in South Africa and the African Bitcoin Conference in Kenya. I’ve also visited Bitcoin circular economies in both of these countries including Bitcoin Ekasi, Afribit Kibera and Bitcoin Witsand. These experiences have opened my eyes to the fact that developers, community leaders…

The Frankfurt skyline at dusk on a November day. Helmut Fricke | Picture Alliance | Getty Images The German economy shrank by 0.2% quarter-on-quarter in the three months ending in December, according to preliminary data released by Germany’s statistics office Destatis on Thursday. The figure is adjusted for price, calendar and seasonal variations. Analysts polled…

Jeffrey Gundlach speaking at the 2019 SOHN Conference in New York on May 6, 2019. Adam Jeffery | DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach said Wednesday he expects only one rate cut for 2025 — two reductions at most — as the Federal Reserve patiently awaits incoming data to assess the state of the labor market and inflation….

Trump Media is expanding into financial services, including investment vehicles, the firm announced Wednesday. Shares of the Truth Social parent company, which trade under the ticker DJT, jumped 6.8% on Wednesday. President Donald Trump indirectly owns 114,750,000 shares of the company, held in a revocable trust. The financial services division will be known as Truth.Fi,…

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday he has not spoken to President Donald Trump since the newly inaugurated president told business leaders he would demand the central bank lower interest rates. Speaking after the Fed’s decision to hold interest rates steady, Powell said he has had “no contact” with the president since Trump’s remarks…

The Federal Reserve held its key interest rate in check Wednesday, reversing a recent trend of easing policy as it examines what is likely to be a bumpy political and economic landscape ahead. In a widely anticipated move, the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee left unchanged its overnight borrowing rate in a range between…

In the intricate dance of global finance, few metrics are as telling as the M2 money supply—a measure of global liquidity. Currently sitting at a staggering $97 trillion and climbing, this figure encapsulates the vast flow of cash, deposits, and near-money circulating across the global economy. For Bitcoin investors, this metric is far more than…

Something has fundamentally changed in this ecosystem. A big shift in the core ethos of things. Regardless of what you think about politics in the wider world, Bitcoin itself as a network and protocol was something explicitly designed to function in a hostile environment, in an environment where politics and governments are actively antagonistic towards…

Follow Aaron on Nostr or X. The news got buried in part due to Trump’s inauguration and subsequent rumblings of a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR), but developer b10c recently published research showing that F2Pool — a mining pool representing ~11% of hash power on the Bitcoin network — is censoring OFAC-sanctioned transactions… again. In case you…

CME Group, the world’s leading derivatives marketplace, has announced plans to introduce options on its Bitcoin Friday futures starting February 24, pending regulatory approval. These new contracts will be the first cryptocurrency options from CME Group to be financially settled, with expirations available each business day, Monday through Friday. Financially-settled options, also known as cash-settled…