Stephen Alpher

Stephen is CoinDesk's managing editor for Markets. He previously served as managing editor at Seeking Alpha. A native of suburban Washington, D.C., Stephen went to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, majoring in finance. He holds BTC above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.

Stephen Alpher

Latest from Stephen Alpher


Finance

Crypto wallets for AI agents are creating a new legal frontier, says Electric Capital

As AI agents grow more autonomous, developers are already giving them crypto wallets, allowing software to hold assets, pay for services, trade tokens and even hire other agents. The technical pieces are falling into place. The legal ones are not.

CoinDesk

Finance

Payments giant Stripe reportedly mulling PayPal acquisition. Here is what it means for crypto

Bloomberg reported that Stripe — which has growing stablecoin and blockchain ambitions — is exploring a deal for the embattled fintech.

PayPal logo on iphone screen (Marques Thomas/Unsplash)

Tech

Bitwise's Hunter Horsley says AI Is ‘unstoppable freight train’ for crypto, while Haun’s Monica urges caution

As artificial intelligence races ahead, some crypto executives believe it could become the force that finally pushes blockchain infrastructure into widespread use. Others aren’t convinced the leap is so straightforward.

Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley and Anchorage Digital co-founder Diogo Monica @ NEARCON 2026 (Margaux Nijkerk/ CoinDesk)

Finance

Crypto isn't losing to AI, its just 'capitalism doing its job,' says Dragonfly

Comparisons between AI’s explosive consumer adoption and crypto’s trajectory misunderstand the nature of the products, Dragonfly's Haseeb Qureshi told CoinDesk in an interview.

Haseeb Quershi (Dragonfly) at Consensus Hong Kong

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Markets

Prediction market firms could be making $10 billion in yearly revenue by 2030, Citizens Bank says

The bank said rising volumes, tighter market structure and early institutional engagement are pushing prediction markets beyond their gambling roots toward a new asset class.

Kalshi will have a prediction contract weighed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. (Jesse Hamilton/CoinDesk)

Markets

Bitcoin retakes $64,000, crypto miners rally, as AI-related software rout eases

Sellers are taking a breather as bitcoin's Fear & Greed Index plunged to levels never seen before.

Bitcoin Treasuries

Finance

Kraken rolls out crypto-style, 24/7 perpetuals trading for tokenized U.S. stocks

The crypto exchange is bringing U.S. stocks closer to the crypto world, letting users trade derivatives of tokenized stocks around-the-clock and with 20x leverage.

Kraken

Markets

Adam Back's BSTR moving forward with public listing plans, hopes for April approval

Back remains optimistic despite the brutal price action in bitcoin and BTC treasury companies.

Adam Back, CEO Blockstream (CoinDesk/Personae Digital)

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Markets

'If you’re not accumulating bitcoin at this stage, then when,' asks prominent analyst

Time, not price, is probably going to be more frustrating for bulls from here, wrote James Check, but bitcoin has been mostly de-risked at this point.

Tug of war (Shutterstock, modified by CoinDesk)

Finance

NEAR Launches Near.com super app, touting AI capabilities and confidential transactions

The company is betting that the next big wave in crypto will come from its convergence with AI.

NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin (Margaux Nijkerk/ CoinDesk)