Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Investments news
- Bitcoin (BTC)-focused financial services firm NYDIG said it has completed a USD 1bn funding round that values the company at USD 7bn. The round was led by growth equity firm WestCap, with participation from prior leads Bessemer Venture Partners and FinTech Collective, as well as strategic partners and existing investors Affirm, FIS, Fiserv, MassMutual, Morgan Stanley, and New York Life. The capital will be used to further develop NYDIG’s institutional-grade Bitcoin platform using recent upgrades to the Bitcoin protocol with capabilities such as bitcoin and Lightning payments, asset tokenization, and smart contracts, the firm said.
- Academy Award-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow recently participated in a USD 200m debt and equity financing round for TeraWulf, a crypto mining company that aims to use 100% zero-carbon energy, per Fox Business. As part of its debt and equity financing, TeraWulf entered into an approximately USD 123.5m three-year senior secured term loan and issued newly issued shares of common stock to the lenders.
- Consumer blockchain project Lum Network has announced it has raised a USD 4m private sale round. The project is building an on-chain review system that will enable businesses to provide trusted reviews by timestamping them and immutably storing them on the Lum Network blockchain.
- VC-backed startup Danvas announced its brand launch as well as the close of a USD 7m seed round. Participants in the round included Greycroft, Lerer Hippeau, Waverley Capital, VaynerFund, UTA Ventures, BDMI, and angel investors Rich Greenfield and Jason Nazar, said the press release. Danvas aims to launch in Spring 2022. Danvas’ screens possess a fully dimensional interactive design that brings NFT art to life and will reinforce the authentic ownership of the artwork, they said.
- Global investment technology and advisory company Wilshire announced the formation of the Wilshire Digital Asset Advisory Group in order to deliver an industry standard Digital Assets Taxonomy System (DATS). The Advisory Group, led by Blythe Masters, founding partner at investment firm Motive Partners, will review DATS classification decisions on a quarterly basis as the digital asset market continues to evolve at pace.
Exchanges news
- Professional basketball team the Golden State Warriors have agreed to an international rights sponsorship with major crypto derivatives exchange FTX, CNBC reported. According to their sources, it’s a multiyear pact valued north of USD 10m total.
- Bitfinex announced that, in collaboration with Poloniex, it has successfully recovered BTC 6.51458211 (USD 308,467) stolen in the August 2016 hack, when they lost almost BTC 120,000. Recovery Right Token (RRT) holders will have their pro rata tokens redeemed in the coming days, and as the BTC/USD price at the time of the recovery of the stolen BTC was USD 47,337, Bitfinex will redeem USD 308,380 in aggregate RRTs.
- Binance will soon sign a memorandum of understanding with Dubai’s government for crypto-related activities, the Business Times reported. CEO Changpeng Zhao also recently met with heads of the Dubai Blockchain Center and the Dubai Police’s virtual assets crime section, they added.
- Brazilian stock exchange B3 has plans to enter the crypto market in 2022, InfoMoney reported, citing a December 10 presentation from B3 President Gilson Finkelsztain. The exchange is also considering services to facilitate over-the-counter trading and access to liquidity centers.
Economics news
- In the US, wholesale prices increased at their quickest pace on record, rising 9.6% from a year ago, the highest level going back to November 2010, CNBC reported, citing the US Labor Department. The pace was even faster than the 9.2% estimate. The core producer price index increased at a 6.9% pace, a bit slower than estimates but still the fastest ever in records dating to August 2014.
Regulation news
- Thailand plans to unveil detailed rules for digital assets to minimize risks to the financial system and provide greater investor protection as more people are drawn to cryptocurrencies, Bloomberg reported. The Bank of Thailand should release a consultation paper on “Financial Landscape” in January that will seek a consensus around the red lines for those operating in the fields of digital currencies, green finance and related areas.
- Commissioners for the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Hester Peirce and Elad Roisman said in a joint statement that they were “disappointed” with the failure of chairperson Gary Gensler’s regulatory agenda to include items aimed at helping companies raise capital, furthering investor protection, undoing recent rules passed by the commission, and providing clarification on crypto. The commissioners added that the proposed regulatory framework is deferring amendments related to audit trails of information around trades, presumably including crypto, and the people behind the transactions, leaving investors’ data vulnerable.
Blockchain news
- Polygon (MATIC) is rolling out a testnet implementation of Ethereum (ETH) Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 to introduce burning of its native MATIC token and better fee visibility. The improvement goes live on the Mumbai testnet today.
NFTs news
- Streaming service Twitch co-founder Justin Kan announced a marketplace for gaming-related non-fungible tokens (NFTs) called Fractal and based on the Solana (SOL) blockchain. The company already has a number of gaming partnerships in place to be announced in the coming week.
Metaverse news
- The HBAR Foundation behind the Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR) project has partnered with creation platform MetaVRse to build Metaverse solutions for the organizations on the Hedera Network. The organizations believe that this partnership will open up massive opportunities for careers in the Metaverse.
Stablecoins news
- Crypto company Circle, the issuer of major stablecoin USD Coin (USDC), has launched this stablecoin on the Avalanche (AVAX) network, with native USDC liquidity available via the Circle Account and Circle APIs. They add that decentralized finance (DeFi) and other applications will now have access to native USDC liquidity, eliminating the need for costly token bridges and unsupported wrapped tokens.
DEXes news
- Decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator KyberSwap has announced a partnership with GameFi project Sipher to launch a USD 50m liquidity mining program on the Ethereum network on 14 December. Liquidity Mining incentives will be distributed in SIPHER and KNC tokens to SIPHER-ETH liquidity providers over the next 12 months.
Career news
- Crypto exchange Kraken has announced that Chief People Officer Pranesh Anthapur has joined Kraken’s executive leadership team. Pranesh will head the development and execution of Kraken’s global people strategy, as they aim to more than double their staff to over 5,000 in the coming year.
- Crypto exchange Zonda has appointed Jakob Lundqvist, previously Enterprise Architect and head of development at Bitcoin Suisse AG, as Chief Technology Officer. Lundqvist will assume his new role from January 1, 2022.
- Crypto payments solution MoonPay has announced the appointment of JD Millwood, formerly the Vice President (VP) of Growth and Product at payment card company Curve, as VP of Growth.