Author: GT

BANGKOK (AP) — The price of XRP (XRP-USD) jumped more than 6% Thursday after the CEO of cryptocurrency company Ripple said U.S. regulators have dropped its four-year-old case against the company. The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Ripple and two of its executives in late 2020 after they raised $1.4 billion by selling XRP crypto coins. The SEC under the Biden administration held that digital assets like cryptocurrences should be regulated like securities, such as stocks, and should be considered commodities like gold or oil. Securities generally face stricter regulations. The Trump administration is easing those rules. CEO Brad Garlinghouse…

Ribbit Capital, a venture firm known for its fintech investments, is raising $500 million for a new fund, a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed on Wednesday. The new capital appears to be a part of the Palo Alto-based venture firm’s latest flagship fund, titled Ribbit Capital Y, the SEC filing suggests. In 2023, Ribbit Capital raised $800 million, reportedly for its tenth flagship fund, Ribbit Capital X. The venture firm has invested in (and exited) some of the world’s biggest fintech startups, including Nubank, Affirm, and Robinhood. In addition to backing North American startups, the…

A federal judge Tuesday found the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner when terminating contracts with three nonprofits. The judge issued a temporary restraining order that requires the EPA and Citibank to give nonprofits access to funds in their accounts. The restraining order is the latest development in a lawsuit brought by three nonprofits that were recipients of grants from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a part of the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law in 2022. The EPA asked Citibank to freeze the accounts over alleged concerns about waste, fraud, and conflicts of interest.…

Over the long term, the cryptocurrency industry has steadily accumulated value, but it has been a wild ride. With the prices of Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) already down by 22% from their all-time high of $109,358 (reached on Trump’s inauguration day, Jan. 20), buying these assets at the wrong time could expose your portfolio to tremendous volatility. Let’s explore what the rest of the year might have in store. Bitcoin’s latest rally is demonstrably linked to the Trump Administration. Despite falling sharply from all-time highs, prices for the digital currency are still up by more than double since President Trump’s election…

Telegram founder Pavel Durov said today that the service now has more than 1 billion active users. This number is up from last year’s reported 950 million monthly active users. Durov also noted that the company registered $547 million in profits last year. He had announced the company’s profitability in December but hadn’t provided any numbers at that time. The founder, who recently returned to Dubai after clearance from France, also took a jab at Meta-owned rival WhatsApp and called it a cheap imitation. “Ahead of us stands WhatsApp — a cheap, watered-down imitation of Telegram. For years, they’ve desperately…

As the April tax deadline approaches for more than 340 million Americans, crypto taxes are once again in the spotlight. But what’s different this year? Starting this year, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will require brokers — such as crypto exchanges, hosted wallet providers, and payment processors who handle crypto transactions — to report them on Form 1099-DA, a new form specifically for digital asset transactions. Kell Canty, CEO of Ledgible, tells TheStreet Crypto: “Starting for calendar year 2025, brokers must issue a 1099-DA with gross proceeds on sales of digital assets to go out in early 2026. This is…

Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has added image generation capabilities to its API. Only one model is available in the API at the moment, “grok-2-image-1212.” Given a caption, the model can generate up to 10 images per request (limited to five requests per second) in JPG format, priced at $0.07 per image. For comparison, AI startup Black Forest Labs, with which xAI partnered last year to launch image generation on Musk’s social network X, charges around $0.05 per image. Another popular image model provider, Ideogram, charges $0.08 on the higher end. In its documentation, xAI notes that the API doesn’t…

Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) CEO Michael Saylor believes that Bitcoin at $80,000 is a “historic entry point.” He made the observation while speaking to CNBC on March 17. Saylor reasoned that at this price point, Bitcoin has been stripped of all the risk. He seemed assured that Wall Street, banks, and the United States government will embrace Bitcoin eventually. The Bitcoin maximalist attributed the current slump in the market to concerns around the tariff war. But once the conditions get better, “Bitcoin will rip forward with a vengeance,” he argued. Saylor doubled down on the “suitability” of Bitcoin, riding on President Donald…

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber made a splash at SXSW last week, showing up at her keynote event in a T-shirt that subtly poked fun at Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. Or, at least it seemed like it was subtle. But so many people appreciated the jab that users convinced Bluesky to reproduce and sell Graber’s shirt — even though it was an esoteric Latin language reference written in black ink on black fabric. Rose Wang, Bluesky’s COO, said that the company made more money in one day of T-shirt sales than in two years of selling custom domains. “That’s it. Pivoting…

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas believes the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is likely to approve a wave of new crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs), including those tied to Solana, Dogecoin, XRP, and HBAR. Speaking with TheStreet Roundtable host Scott Melker, Balchunas estimated the odds of approval for these ETFs at over 75%. “We’re really bullish on Solana, HBAR, and even Dogecoin,” he said. “Honestly, based on how the SEC has dropped all these lawsuits — and I heard the one with Ripple is pretty much being negotiated now — once those get dropped, the security thing doesn’t mean anything.”…