First Mover Americas: Coinbase Acquires Stake in Circle
The latest price moves in crypto markets in context for August 22, 2023.

This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.
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Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (COIN) bought a minority stake in stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Financial. The two companies also dissolved their Centre Consortium partnership, which issued USD Coin (USDC), the world’s second-largest stablecoin. As part of the move, Circle will bring issuance and governance of USDC fully in-house. Also, six more blockchains will gain native support for USDC, which is pegged at $1, bringing the total number of supported blockchains to 15. Coinbase and Circle, in a blog post and interviews with CoinDesk, did not disclose the size of the stake acquired by Coinbase. Coinbase did not give Circle cash for the stake, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The U.S. Department of Justice and Sam Bankman-Fried filed competing sets of jury instructions for the October trial of the FTX founder a day before he is set to be arraigned on a new superseding indictment. Prosecutors filed the document, titled "the government's requests to charge," late Monday, adapting from various previous sets of jury instructions including past statements from Judge Lewis Kaplan, the Southern District of New York judge overseeing Bankman-Fried's case. The FTX founder faces seven different charges, ranging from wire fraud, securities fraud and commodities fraud conspiracy to money laundering allegations, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
Social platform Friend.tech, which lets holders buy "shares" of people who hold an account on X, formerly known as Twitter, and grants the buyers certain privileges, has surged to more than 100,000 addresses since its Aug. 10 launch according to a database created by Yearn Finance developer @Bantg. The database, listed briefly on GitHub and now withdrawn, apparently listed the crypto wallet addresses and linked X accounts. The growth correlates with the huge revenues made by the platform since the launch, with over $25 million in fees generated, according to DefiLlama. A Dune Analytics dashboard corroborates the finding, pegging the number of unique users to at least 80,000, with 15,000 users added since Sunday.
Chart of the day

- The chart shows spread between bitcoin’s next month and front month futures contracts trading on the CME and bitcoin’s spot market price.
- The spread remains elevated after last week’s 10% slide.
- Historically, negative spread has marked interim and bear market bottoms.
- Source: TradingView.
- Omkar Godbole
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Exchange Review - March 2025

CoinDesk Data's monthly Exchange Review captures the key developments within the cryptocurrency exchange market. The report includes analyses that relate to exchange volumes, crypto derivatives trading, market segmentation by fees, fiat trading, and more.
需要了解的:
Trading activity softened in March as market uncertainty grew amid escalating tariff tensions between the U.S. and global trading partners. Centralized exchanges recorded their lowest combined trading volume since October, declining 6.24% to $6.79tn. This marked the third consecutive monthly decline across both market segments, with spot trading volume falling 14.1% to $1.98tn and derivatives trading slipping 2.56% to $4.81tn.
- Trading Volumes Decline for Third Consecutive Month: Combined spot and derivatives trading volume on centralized exchanges fell by 6.24% to $6.79tn in March 2025, reaching the lowest level since October. Both spot and derivatives markets recorded their third consecutive monthly decline, falling 14.1% and 2.56% to $1.98tn and $4.81tn respectively.
- Institutional Crypto Trading Volume on CME Falls 23.5%: In March, total derivatives trading volume on the CME exchange fell by 23.5% to $175bn, the lowest monthly volume since October 2024. CME's market share among derivatives exchanges dropped from 4.63% to 3.64%, suggesting declining institutional interest amid current macroeconomic conditions.
- Bybit Spot Market Share Slides in March: Spot trading volume on Bybit fell by 52.1% to $81.1bn in March, coinciding with decreased trading activity following the hack of the exchange's cold wallets in February. Bybit's spot market share dropped from 7.35% to 4.10%, its lowest since July 2023.
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需要了解的:
- Ethena's USDe becomes fifth stablecoin to surpass $10 billion market cap in just 609 days, while Tether's dominance continues to slip.