Denis Dariotis, the 22-year-old founder and CEO of cryptocurrency-focused trading software firm GoQuant, remembers the constraints and pressures of maximizing his trading portfolio while he was still in the third grade at school.

“I remember telling my teachers I had to take 10 minutes out of class to check my portfolio when the market opened and closed,” Dariotis said in an interview.

The child trading prodigy recalled how a teacher wanted to see his computer screen and what he was trading. But he shut the laptop saying, “No, I’m afraid that’s private” — an interesting presage of the crypto-focused dark pool app Dariotis released just last month.

Dariotis grew up in Montreal, where his earliest memory of the trading world was being attracted to the symbols flashing green and red on the CNBC morning show his parents had on in the background. It was only a matter of time until he made the connection between the tickers on the TV screen and the money in his piggybank.

From his early days at school, audaciously following the investment thesis of Warren Buffet, the next logical step was getting into computer programming. “When I was about 11 or 12 years old, I took an interest in computer programming, starting with basic web development languages, and then evolving into Python and C++,” he recalls.

Listening to the way Dariotis tells it, his evolution toward building trading infrastructure seems the most natural thing in the world. By the age of 13 he realized he was spending too much time scanning a ton of datasets, and wasn’t there some way to use his computing knowhow to automate that process? That way, he could spend more time on researching trading strategies and getting alpha.

Having been hitherto unaware of quant trading, Dariotis began back-testing strategies and researching different elements of portfolio construction, optimization, risk management and “really getting into the weeds of every element of how quant markets operate.”

It wasn’t long before a breakthrough came: At the ripe old age of 15, Dariotis says he basically licensed his strategies and started consulting for a major Canadian bank, which was his first main client. This was followed by a few other investment managers. Later, at a trading and data science conference in New York, a large hedge fund tried to hire Dariotis on the spot.

“But then they were like, ‘Hang on a second, how old are you?’ And then I was like, ‘I’m 15,’ and they sort of freaked out.”

This was also around the time Dariotis started looking at crypto. The initial realization was how retail-orientated crypto markets are, lacking any real institutional-grade infrastructure. Crypto suffered severely from having fragmented liquidity spread across many venues: centralized and decentralized exchanges, OTC desks.

Having applied his data market toolset to crypto, Dariotis saw latency delays in the manner that trading venues updated order books. He realized the best way to go was to build the whole infrastructure stack.

By January of 2025, GoQuant had bagged a $3 million pre-seed round, plus a $4 million seed round led by crypto trading firm GSR. It now handles over $1 billion in trading volume each day, and employs about 80 staff spread across the U.S., Europe, India, the Philippines and Morocco.

Recent additions to the brand include the GoDark institutional-grade dark pool, and a GoCredit lending platform which has about half a billion dollars of crypto loans in the pipeline.

“We really want to be at the center of how value moves,” Dariotis said. “So we’re largely a tech provider, rather than a financial intermediary, at a point in time where everything is essentially becoming a market: prediction markets, the ‘perpification’ of all sorts of assets, the tokenization of all sorts of assets. Everything is becoming tradable so there is a need for a core platform that connects everything and does so in a performant manner.”

So what’s Dariotis’ advice to other kids who are busily building billion-dollar companies in their bedrooms?

“You have to be flexible, willing to adapt and potentially to pivot,” he said. “We started off just handling data and we could have just stayed in our little data world and probably done very well. You want to avoid creating product silos — even if these could be $100 million businesses on their own — when they have the potential to be worth multiples more by building a whole connected ecosystem.”

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Strategy CEO Phong Le says the company now has “more flexibility than ever” to continue accumulating bitcoin, citing a capital structure built on long-dated debt, opportunistic equity access, and no short-term refinancing pressure.

Speaking on the most recent episode of the “What Bitcoin Did” podcast, Le told host Danny Knowles that Strategy’s ability to raise capital through both debt and equity has become a central part of the firm’s long‑term bitcoin operating strategy. He described capital‑market access as the “magic” behind the company’s ability to consistently add bitcoin to its balance sheet through multiple market cycles.

Le said the firm deliberately engineered its balance sheet to avoid liquidity stress and to maintain room for opportunistic issuance. “Our capital stack is very strong,” he said. “The first debt maturity doesn’t hit until December 2025. It gives us a lot of flexibility to be opportunistic.” The company holds several convertible note tranches that are long‑dated and carry minimal near‑term dilution risk. Le added that Strategy now has “more flexibility than ever” to continue accumulating bitcoin, pointing to its ability to tap both equity and debt markets depending on conditions.

He added that Strategy now has more flexibility than at any point in its history, citing its ability to raise equity through at‑the‑market programs and its track record of issuing zero‑coupon or low‑coupon convertibles. “We’ve shown we can do both. We can choose the timing of both,” he said, noting that the firm can raise capital during strong equity markets or lean on convertibles when rates and market conditions favor long‑duration issuance.

The Washington, D.C.–area firm, which rebranded from MicroStrategy to Strategy in February 2025, holds more than 158,000 BTC on its balance sheet. Le said the company’s shareholder base understands that Strategy’s market identity has shifted from a traditional software company to a hybrid business combining enterprise analytics with a bitcoin‑forward treasury strategy. “Our shareholder base understands who we are,” he said. “We’re the only access point to this strategy in public markets.”

Le acknowledged that some investors still question how Strategy should be valued, especially when bitcoin prices are volatile or trading well below recent highs. But he argued that the company has proven its approach through multiple cycles and that its continued access to capital at favorable terms validates the model. “This strategy works because we know how to use the capital markets well,” he said.

He said Strategy intends to continue deploying excess cash flow from its software business into bitcoin and will monitor capital-market conditions to determine whether equity or debt issuance is more appropriate at a given time. “As long as we’re executing — on software, on bitcoin, and in capital markets — we think the story will remain compelling,” he said.

Class A shares of Strategy (MSTR) closed Friday at $17.18, up 0.88% on the day, but down 41% in the year to date. That compares with a 3.14% decline in bitcoin over the same period.

James Van Straten, a CoinDesk market analyst, said Saturday on X that the market may still test Strategy’s enterprise valuation or drive its stock below the firm’s bitcoin cost basis. “Even though I believe the bottom is in, the market will feel max pain in one of those two scenarios,” he said, adding that once investors see the company ride out its current convertible note structure, “both bitcoin and MSTR will rally hard.”

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Self-custody of assets and financial privacy are both fundamental rights consistent with the pro-freedom philosophy on which the US was founded.

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SÃO PAULO — Crypto payments company Truther plans to launch a card in El Salvador on January 29, via a partnership with Visa, which allows users to spend USDT directly from their wallets without needing to preload funds or rely on custodial services.

The product, revealed during an interview with CoinDesk at the Blockchain Conference Brasil, draws funds from Truther’s self-custody wallet at the moment of purchase. The card will have a 2% fee on currency conversions, and for Brazilian users, it won’t carry the IOF tax on financial transactions. After the launch in El Salvador, the card will be available to all of Truther’s users.

“You don’t charge the card beforehand,” said founder Rocelo Lopes. “If you’re at a hotel and the bill is 30 euros, it deducts the USDT equivalent in real time.”

The move could make stablecoin spending more practical for travelers and crypto users who want to avoid converting to fiat or holding balances on centralized platforms. Unlike traditional crypto cards, which often require users to top up or use custodial accounts, Truther’s integration preserves full user control through a private wallet that runs on the Polygon blockchain, with plans to migrate to the Liquid network for increased privacy, Lopes added.

The Visa partnership builds on Truther’s existing infrastructure, which already processes $40 million in daily volume by connecting stablecoins like USDT to Brazil’s instant payment system PIX. It comes after Visa started piloting stablecoin payouts for creators and gig workers.

QR code-based transactions

The launch in El Salvador, where bitcoin is legal tender, provides a test bed for broader adoption across Latin America and beyond.

Truther is also extending its services beyond Brazil.

Its Swapix API, which facilitates instant crypto-to-fiat conversions tied to local payment systems like PIX, is rolling out in Argentina next, followed by Mexico, Colombia and Russia, Lopes revealed.

These markets were chosen based on the availability of 24/7 payment infrastructure and support for QR code-based transactions, requirements that Lopes said are essential to maintaining real-time settlements. Truther’s self-custody wallet supports BTC, USDT, and its own stablecoin tied to the Brazilian real, built on the Liquid network for enhanced privacy.

By early 2025, it plans to integrate more local stablecoins, including tether gold and an Argentine peso-pegged token. The wallet allows users to spend crypto via QR codes or receive stablecoins without incurring network fees (gas).

The company also hinted that it’s working with traditional banks to integrate stablecoins into their platforms, though Lopes said he couldn’t add additional details. Nevertheless, he predicted stablecoin volumes could triple over the next 12 months, driven by the wave of traditional financial players joining the ecosystem.

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Prediction market Kalshi lost a court case earlier this week when a federal judge ruled that Nevada state regulators and laws had jurisdiction over some of its sports-based events contracts. The case is going to go before an appeals court but if this result holds, it might restrict all prediction markets providers, including companies like Polymarket.

You’re reading State of Crypto, a CoinDesk newsletter looking at the intersection of cryptocurrency and government. Click here to sign up for future editions.

The narrative

A federal judge ruled against Kalshi in its case against Nevada’s gaming regulators, saying that the prediction market provider’s sports-related contracts should be overseen by state gaming commissions.

Why it matters

A part of the appeal of prediction markets providers — Kalshi, Polymarket, all the burgeoning crypto exchange products — is that they’re subject to a single federal regulatory framework and do not need to comply with each state’s bespoke regulatory setup. This week’s ruling by a federal judge in Nevada could complicate that belief.

Breaking it down

In an effort to overly simplify this, Kalshi’s events contracts are swaps, for the purposes of the Commodities Exchange Act and this newsletter, meaning they are products overseen by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and subject to federal jurisdiction — which preempts state supervision.

This was part of Kalshi’s argument when it sued the CFTC in 2023 in an effort to launch its political event contracts. A year later, a federal court agreed.

Kalshi has since expanded into other types of events, including, importantly, sports outcomes. It sued the state of Nevada’s Gaming Control Board and Gaming Commission earlier this year, seeking an injunction to block the state entities from filing an enforcement action against it for offering event contracts tied to sports outcome markets, saying that was an “intrusion into the federal government’s ‘exclusive’ authority to regulate futures derivatives trading on exchanges overseen by the” CFTC. The company won a preliminary injunction, which was dissolved earlier this week.

Nevada, in its initial response, sought to draw a distinction between commodities trading (which it can’t oversee) and gaming (which it does oversee within the state), and further between sports-related bets versus contracts tied to political outcomes.

In this week’s ruling, Judge Andrew Patrick Gordon of the District of Nevada wrote that “event contracts that turn on the outcomes of sporting events are not swaps and thus do not fall within the CFTC’s exclusive jurisdiction,” citing a previous case he had ruled on as well.

“It is absurd to think that Congress intended for DCMs to turn into nationwide gambling venues on every topic under the sun to the exclusion of state regulation and with no comparable federal regulator without ever mentioning that was the goal when Congress added swaps to the CEA in 2010,” the judge wrote.

In its motion for a stay, Kalshi said it would file a notice of appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, pointing to different rulings from various federal courts over the jurisdiction state regulators and laws might have around prediction markets.

Attorneys for the state said on Wednesday that Nevada would hold off on filing any kind of enforcement action pending the court’s decision on Kalshi’s request, but argued that Kalshi had not met the requirements to secure a stay and asked for an expedited schedule.

“[Kalshi] has unreasonably refused to stop its unlawful activities in Nevada, even while Crypto.com and Robinhood have entered into agreements with State Defendants to avoid enforcement pending appeal,” the filing said. “Further, every day it continues operating, it harms the State, its gaming industry, and the public interest.”

A policy analyst with TD Cowen, Jaret Seiberg, said in a client note on Wednesday that this question is likely to fall into the hands of the Supreme Court, because lower courts have been diverging on their conclusions. But even if that happened on an expedited basis, he said it’ll stretch the outcome into 2027, and maybe later.

“Regardless of how it gets to the Supreme Court, we give the states the edge,” Seiberg argued. “Gambling has long been state regulated. This would upend that tradition. It means Kalshi and others face the risk that Congress would intervene in favor of the states even if they are able to win in court.”

Seiberg predicted a potential compromise during the appeals process that opened states’ ability to tax and regulate sports-tied event contracts but agreeing not to force out firms with “designated contract market” status with the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, such as Kalshi.

This week

• We are officially entering the last month of 2025. We’re looking for a markup in the Senate Agriculture and Banking Committees for market structure legislation and a Senate floor vote for CFTC Chair nominee Mike Selig, but none of these have been scheduled as of press time.

If you’ve got thoughts or questions on what I should discuss next week or any other feedback you’d like to share, feel free to email me at [email protected] or find me on Bluesky @nikhileshde.bsky.social.

You can also join the group conversation on Telegram.

See ya’ll next week!

The post State of Crypto: Kalshi and Prediction Markets Face a Setback appeared first on CryptoSpyder.

SÃO PAULO — The crypto ethos is clashing with institutional reality.

During a panel at the Blockchain Conference Brasil in São Paulo, while major industry players discussed compliance and regulation, the crowd went into uproar in defense of privacy and in rejection of centralized oversight. That uproar arose from the words of Vinícuis Brito, an executive at a Brazil-based firm focused on crypto self-custody.

“I’ve recently read in a book a saying that stuck with me. ‘Privacy is the immune system of freedom’,” said Brito. “When they come after your privacy, they’re one step away from your freedom.” His comments came in response to a discussion on the potential use of technological innovations for illicit purposes.

Brito argued that compliance frameworks sold as safeguards against terrorism and human trafficking are instead pretexts for increasing state power.

“At first, they just say it’s about terrorism or trafficking. And of course, everyone agrees with stopping those crimes — I support that too,” he said. “But we know these rules will be used later to go after political enemies. That’s not the purpose.”

Brito warned that Brazil is on track to become a “fiscal hell” by 2027, and said peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies remain the last line of defense. “You can’t stop P2P,” he said. “No one can stop me from exchanging cash for sats [referring to bitcoin’s smallest unit, the satoshi].”

Guilherme Prado, head of Bitget in Brazil, acknowledged while speaking on the same panel that rising Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements and transaction reporting are prompting users to turn to decentralized exchanges (DEXs).

“The DEX market is growing exponentially, precisely because of regulation,” he said, citing the rise of platforms like Hyperliquid and a post-FTX shift toward self-custody.

During the discussion, Juliana Felippe, General Manager at Tools for Humanity, defended biometric verification as a privacy-preserving way to prevent fraud and bot manipulation. But among the audience, the strongest emotional response came from Brito’s warning that surveillance is not a byproduct, but a goal.

“Suddenly, everyone became a suspect and will have to share sensitive data that will expose their privacy over an argument that, in my view, is simply a state argument. That’s not what they want,” Brito added. “They want to end privacy, to, in the future, attack their political enemies or anyone who disagrees with them.”

That message resonated with the crowd, which erupted into cheers.

“The problem with crime isn’t the money used, it’s the criminal,” he said. “Energy should go into arresting people who commit violence, not treating everyone like a suspect. This isn’t about safety. It’s about control.”

The post ‘Privacy Is the Immune System of Freedom’: Crypto Advocacy Sparks Uproar in São Paulo
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Information asymmetry and front-running behaviors are migrating from token markets to institutional products like DATs, warns Shane Molidor of Forgd.

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Gold is beating bitcoin BTC$90,510.38 this year — not just in price action, but in investor confidence. Since the launch of spot bitcoin ETFs in early 2025, many expected a strong and sustained rally in the digital asset. But nearly two years later, gold has quietly outperformed, raising questions about whether bitcoin is truly ready to rival traditional safe-haven assets.

While bitcoin is down about 12% since the launch of the ETFs in January 2024, gold has risen 58% over the same period. For Mark Connors, founder and chief macro strategist of bitcoin investment advisory Risk Dimensions and former global head of risk advisory at Credit Suisse, the answer is straightforward: not yet.

“Bitcoin is still too young,” Connors told CoinDesk in a recent interview. “The buyers that matter — central banks, sovereign wealth funds, large asset allocators — they still prefer gold.”

The reason isn’t just volatility or regulatory uncertainty, though those play a role. According to Connors, the deeper issue is infrastructure and historical precedent. Gold has centuries of trust and established financial channels behind it. Central banks already have gold accounts. Gold is used in trade. Bitcoin, by contrast, still sits outside that system.

“Some of these institutions haven’t exactly called Unchained and said, ‘Can I get a wallet?’” Connors said. “They just aren’t there yet.”

This distinction has become more visible as BRICS nations — including China, India and Russia — have accelerated their gold accumulation. In some cases, they’ve even begun using gold to settle oil trades. That’s a critical role that bitcoin has not yet stepped into. Despite its design as a decentralized, borderless currency, bitcoin isn’t being used for international settlement at scale.

“There’s a trade component to gold that brings real demand,” Connors said. “Bitcoin doesn’t have that yet.”

Bitcoin’s Price Drop Tied to Liquidity, Not Sentiment

The gap in performance between bitcoin and gold has widened in recent months. Bitcoin is down over 30% since its July peak. Gold, by contrast, has posted steady gains, climbing above $4,100 per ounce.

Connors doesn’t attribute this to a shift in sentiment alone. Instead, he points to a broader liquidity squeeze driven by U.S. fiscal policy.

“When the Treasury isn’t spending, there’s less money in the system,” he said. “And bitcoin is hypersensitive to liquidity because of its leverage structure, especially in Asia.”

During the U.S. government shutdown earlier this year, the Treasury’s balance sheet swelled from around $600 billion to nearly $1 trillion. With spending frozen, liquidity dried up across both traditional and crypto markets. But bitcoin felt the pain more acutely.

“We’re all on the same water table,” Connors said. “When the U.S. stops spending, it affects capital flows globally.”

The shutdown may have ended, but the Treasury hasn’t fully restarted spending at scale. That delay, Connors argues, has left markets in a kind of limbo — especially risk assets like bitcoin.

A Longer Road Ahead

The underperformance may not be permanent. Connors sees signs that liquidity could return to the market, especially if the U.S. government begins issuing more Treasury bills to fund deficit spending. He also believes that as trust in fiat currencies weakens — particularly in emerging markets — bitcoin’s appeal as a neutral asset will grow.

Still, he cautioned against assuming bitcoin will replace gold anytime soon. The comparison, he said, may be useful as a reference point, but it doesn’t reflect how large institutions actually allocate capital.

“They’re not flipping a coin between gold and bitcoin,” Connors said. “They’re choosing what fits into their mandates. And gold fits — bitcoin doesn’t yet.”

If anything, the recent divergence shows that crypto’s path to becoming a global reserve asset may be slower than many expected. Not because the technology doesn’t work, but because trust and habit take time to build.

“Gold’s been around forever,” Connors said. “Bitcoin is still growing up.”

The post Why Gold Is Winning Over Bitcoin in 2025: Liquidity, Trade, and Trust appeared first on CryptoSpyder.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs snap a four-week outflow run with $70 million in weekly inflows as Ether ETFs also turn positive and analysts flag a potential Bitcoin bottom.

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Bitcoin BTC$90,510.38 may be acting like a recession is imminent — even if the macroeconomic data suggests otherwise.

In an X post on Friday, André Dragosch, European Head of Research at Bitwise Asset Management, said that bitcoin is currently pricing in the most bearish global growth outlook since the 2022 Federal Reserve tightening cycle and the 2020 COVID-19 crash. Drawing on macro survey data from sources such as Sentix, ISM, and the Philly Fed, Dragosch produced a chart comparing global growth expectations to the macroeconomic signals embedded in bitcoin’s price.

The chart shows a sharp divergence: the black line representing bitcoin’s implied growth outlook has plunged below -1 standard deviation, significantly more pessimistic than the survey-based macro indicator, which remains around neutral. According to Dragosch, this setup resembles past dislocations like March 2020 and November 2022, just before bitcoin staged outsized rallies.

“Bitcoin is essentially pricing in a recessionary growth environment,” he wrote, calling the current risk-reward setup asymmetric. “You’re not even remotely bullish enough,” he added, suggesting a recovery could resemble the sixfold rally seen after the March 2020 Covid shock.

However, sentiment remains fragile.

The CMC Crypto Fear and Greed Index held steady at 20 (“Fear”) on Saturday, matching yesterday’s level and slightly above the year-to-date low of 10, last seen on Nov. 22. For comparison, the index sat at 39 (“Fear”) one month ago, and hit a high of 84 (“Extreme Greed”) in late November 2024.

Bitcoin traded at $90,559 as of 11:30 a.m. UTC on Nov. 29, down 0.8% in the past 24 hours. Year-to-date, the cryptocurrency is down 3% and 28% from its all-time high of $126,080, reached on Oct. 6.

Meanwhile, macro expectations may be shifting.

The CME FedWatch Tool shows traders assigning an 86.4% chance that the Federal Reserve will cut its benchmark rate by 25 basis points to a 3.5%-3.75% range at the central bank’s December policy meeting.

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