In retrospect, it was inevitable: A team of blockchain developers has forked GitHub and come up with a system for collaborating on open source software. There’s even a decentralized finance (DeFi) twist. Announced Thursday, Radicle, a fully decentralized code repository, has raised $12 million in funding, integrated its peer-to-peer network with Ethereum and launched the RAD governance token. The funding round was led by NFX and Galaxy, with participation from Placeholder, Electric Capital and ParaFi Capital; Naval Ravikant, Balaji Srinivasan and Meltem Demirors were also involved. Notably, it’s the first crypto investment from NFX since Libra co-creator Morgan Beller left Facebook […]
Ian Allison
84 posts
Mike Hearn, the lead platform engineer at enterprise blockchain builder R3, is stepping down from his role at the company, CoinDesk has learned. Hearn will stay on at R3, but only in the capacity of a technical adviser, according to a memo sent to company staff Friday. Hearn has long harbored ambitions to broaden his range and start new projects, the memo said. “Mike’s plans include his own projects, as well as becoming technical advisor to the R3 executive committee. To support the former, he’ll become CEO of his new firm, as well as transitioning to his ongoing R3 advisory role,” […]
Deutsche Bank has joined the growing ranks of large financial institutions exploring cryptocurrency custody, with aspirations to offer high-touch services to hedge funds that invest in the asset class. The Deutsche Bank Digital Asset Custody prototype aims to develop “a fully integrated custody platform for institutional clients and their digital assets providing seamless connectivity to the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem,” according to a little-noticed report by the World Economic Forum, host of the annual gathering of muckety-mucks in Davos, Switzerland. In a passage buried on page 23 of the December 2020 report, Germany’s largest bank says it plans to create a trading […]
Bitso, un exchange enfocado en América Latina, ha adquirido Quedex, una plataforma de trading de criptoderivados con sede en Gibraltar, donde también es regulada. A pesar de que los términos de la compra de Quedex no fueron dados a conocer, el CEO de Bitso, Daniel Vogel, dijo a CoinDesk que se trató de un buen acuerdo por varias razones. Quedex fue la primera plataforma de criptoderivados en recibir una licencia mediante el marco regulador de activos digitales de Gibraltar, la misma jurisdicción y régimen que regula a Bitso, dijo Vogel. La adquisición de Quedex también permite a Bitso hacerse con una […]
Deutsche Telekom AG, Europe’s largest telecommunications company by revenue, is now one of the main data providers to Chainlink – the omnipresent oracle service on which decentralized finance (DeFi) relies. Not only that, Deutsche Telekom subsidiary T-Systems Multimedia Solutions (MMS), says it has begun staking on the Flow Network, the ultra-scalable proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain from CryptoKitties creator Dapper Labs, and has plans to begin staking on several other chains in the near future. Yes, Deutsche Telekom is providing DeFi data support, and has quietly gone beyond helping with the infrastructure of PoS blockchains and actually started custodying, staking and earning crypto […]
Crypto exchange BitMEX has published a framework of principles for how best to store additional batches of transactional provenance data, a requirement exchanges face as part of new anti-money laundering (AML) rules. In order to fall in line with the rest of the financial system, virtual asset service providers (VASPs) have been asked to obtain, hold and exchange information about the originators and beneficiaries of transactions, known colloquially as the “Travel Rule.” Global anti-money laundering watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) expects the crypto industry to implement the new rule by June 2021. The response from the crypto industry has […]
Digital assets, in one form or another, are making their way into big business. The headline-grabbing version of this is straight-up BTC on the balance sheet, a renegade charge being led by MicroStrategy (MSYTR) CEO Michael Saylor, who is known for warning corporates that capital in fiat is being debased. Saylor’s MicroStrategy event this week included a playbook, going into the nuts and bolts of things like qualified custodians, hot and cold wallets and so on. Square (SQ) provided a similar guide in October. It’s worth stepping back and remembering what unlikely bedfellows mainstream corporate treasury management and bitcoin really are […]
Long in the making, Zurich’s Crypto Broker AG announced Monday it has been granted a securities house license by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). Crypto Broker AG is part of a digital assets conglomerate that includes asset management and custody services. The license means broadening the scope of its business and adding a rubber-stamp when it comes to compliance, risk monitoring, liquidity reporting and so on, said Crypto Broker CEO Rupertus Rothenhaeuser. “Some of our client banks have strict orders only to trade with regulated partners,” Rothenhaeuser said in an interview. “Now it’s just a case of calling them […]
London-based Wintermute, an algorithmic liquidity provider for digital assets, closed a $20 million Series B led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Pantera Capital. Other investors joining the round include Sino Global Capital, Kenetic Capital, Rockaway Blockchain Fund, Hack VC, DeFi Alliance and Avon Ventures, a venture capital fund affiliated with FMR LLC, the parent company of Fidelity Investments. Announced Wednesday, Wintermute plans to use the funding to open its first international office in Singapore in the first quarter of this year, spearheading a general push into Asia, the company said. The company also plans to launch a derivatives business […]
Regulated crypto payment services firm BCB Group has partnered with Huobi Global to help the Seychelles-based exchange giant connect its trading desks to the banking system in the U.K. and Europe. Announced Tuesday, customers of Huobi’s over-the-counter (OTC) platform will be able to instantly settle transactions in euros and pounds (GBP) via BCB’s BLINC network. Cryptocurrency exchanges have struggled in recent years to secure banking relationships and establish an interface with the fiat currency world, with some large exchanges having massive daily volume in closed systems of crypto-to-crypto trading. Prior to partnering with BCB, Huobi did not have a European fiat […]
U.S. banking powerhouse Goldman Sachs has issued a request for information (RFI) to explore digital asset custody, according to a source inside the bank. When asked about timing, the Goldman source said the bank’s custody plans would be “evident soon.” Goldman’s digital asset custody RFI was circulated to at least one well-known crypto custody player toward the end 2020. “Like JPMorgan, we have issued an RFI looking at digital custody. We are broadly exploring digital custody and deciding what the next step is,” said the Goldman source, who asked not to be named. (An RFI on crypto custody was issued by […]
Nexus Mutual, a startup that provides a decentralized alternative to insurance, is extending its community-based offering to cover users of well-established cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase, Binance, Kraken and Gemini. Until now Nexus, which uses digital tokens to revamp the traditional idea of mutual cover, was only focused on the world of decentralized exchange (DEXs), specifically catering to the explosion of decentralized finance (DeFi), which is susceptible to hacks and losses. However, centralized exchanges also get hacked on a semi-regular basis, and traditional insurance cover within the crypto industry remains thin on the ground and prohibitively expensive. Indeed, for many large […]
European users of eToro are claiming they were given the bum’s rush regarding leveraged crypto positions, which have been abruptly closed in the face of what the trading platform called “extreme market volatility.” Retail investors in the U.K. and U.S. are barred from buying into crypto derivatives, including financial contracts that allow margin trading where investors need only put up a small amount of the contract’s notional payoff. Customers of eToro in European countries that allow such trading in contracts for differences (CFDs), were told via email on the evening of Friday, Jan. 8: “If you do not increase the margin […]
Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed BC Technology Group, the parent company of regulated crypto platform OSL, has raised HKD697 million (approximately $90 million) in the form of a top-up share placement. 2020 was a busy year for OSL, an institution-focused digital asset platform based in Hong Kong, providing prime brokerage, custody, exchange and software-as-a-service (SaaS). The company attained regulatory approval to offer crypto services from Hong Kong regulator, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), and also said it was providing technology to Singapore’s DBS bank, which announced its entrance into the digital asset space last month. BC Group CEO Hugh Madden said […]
Argentina’s Ripio has acquired BitcoinTrade, the second-largest crypto exchange in Brazil, in a bid to increase its footprint across the frothy Latin American crypto market. Ripio (formerly called BitPagos) ended 2020 on a high, crossing the 1 million user milestone. Earlier last year, the firm began looking in earnest for a good fit in Brazil and decided on BitcoinTrade, said Ripio CEO and co-founder Sebastian Serrano. The financial terms of the deal were not revealed. “Brazil has always been a very important market for us,” Serrano said in an interview. “BitcoinTrade has a very good reputation in the market, very good […]
It’s been a busy couple of weeks for Switzerland’s digital asset exchange, SDX. In chronological order (and pardoning the unavoidable alphabet soup): Last week SDX’s parent company, SIX, announced test results around the “feasibility” of wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), involving the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and Bank of International Settlements (BIS). This week, SDX took a stake in crypto custody solution Custodigit with a view to building a “digital asset gateway” in Switzerland. Also this week, SDX said it is partnering with crypto-friendly Japanese bank SBI to build a digital asset exchange in Singapore by 2022. This latter announcement […]
A euro stablecoin is being issued by one of the oldest banks in the world and it’s being done on the Stellar blockchain network. Announced Wednesday, Germany’s Bankhaus von der Heydt (BVDH), established in 1754, is working with tokenization and digital asset custody technology provider Bitbond for the first direct issuance of a stablecoin by a banking institution on Stellar, the companies said. Bitbond has already partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation to issue a euro-denominated stablecoin with Tempo, and has also received approval from the German regulator BaFIN to issue tokenized bonds, also on Stellar, said Radoslav Albrecht, Bitbond founder […]
Another big bank edging closer to a crypto custody offering, Netherlands-based ING, spoke publicly for the first time this week about about its preliminary trials with digital assets. Speaking at the Singapore Fintech Festival, Tuesday, ING blockchain lead Herve Francois discussed the work done so far with Pyctor, a custody and post-trade infrastructure for crypto assets that was included in this year’s cohort of the Financial Conduct Authority’s regulatory sandbox in the U.K. Pyctor, a collaborative effort between ING, ABN AMRO, BNP Paribas Securities Services, Citibank, Invesco, Societe Generale, State Street, UBS and others, is designed to make banks feel comfortable […]
Vincent, a sort of search engine for alternative investing, is fielding a massive demand for crypto as the platform launches out of beta with $2 million in funding. “Between October and November alone, investors looking for digital assets have grown 80%,” said Slava Rubin, Vincent co-founder and executive chairman. “Considering digital assets today represent less than 10% of the total available deal volume on Vincent, there is significant room to grow and we are just scratching the surface of helping investors gain access to the space.” Created by the team behind crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, Vincent currently includes regulated crypto deals from […]
BBVA, the second-largest bank in Spain, with about $840 billion in assets, is poised to enter the cryptocurrency trading and custody space, according to two people familiar with the plans. The Spanish bank will begin its crypto offering out of Switzerland, said a source. Switzerland has relatively comprehensive rules around digital assets, set out by the country’s Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). One source with knowledge of the plans told CoinDesk that BBVA is “launching its Europe-wide crypto initiative from Switzerland.” “There are still some compliance hurdles so this will not be in December, but I expect they [BBVA] will be […]
U.K.-based cryptocurrency app Ziglu has raised over $8 million in a crowdfunding campaign, the largest equity raise on the Seedrs platform this year. The support from some 1,250 investors brings Ziglu’s total fundraising to $14.8 million. As for why the offering seemed to command attention on Seedrs: It’s good timing for the crypto app, which former Starling Bank co-founder Mark Hipperson launched in June of this year. Apps like PayPal, Square and Revolut are embracing bitcoin and its price is near all-time highs. “I am blown away by just the reception and the support we’ve gotten from the community about our […]
Upstart crypto exchange LVL wants to take on U.S. giants Coinbase and Gemini by removing trading fees. Announced today, LVL (pronounced “level,” as in playing field) is making its entire service free to use. LVL, which is backed by Morgan Creek Digital’s Anthony Pompliano and Bitcoin advocates Jimmy Song and Willy Woo, previously had no trading fees but only for subscription users. LVL is also partnering with Mastercard to release two debit cards in early 2021. A standard plastic debit card will be available to free-tier users for a $10 issuing fee, while a metal Mastercard is included with three months […]
Recent rumors about U.S. regulation of private, self-hosted crypto wallets have some compelling context. For example, the proposal submitted last month by U.S. authorities to lower the anti-money laundering (AML) threshold for cross-border transactions (its consultation ends today, Friday), seems to support the hypothesis that outgoing Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is rapidly making more rules around crypto. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the Federal Reserve’s rule change proposal would reduce the threshold from $3,000 to $250 for AML compliance for any transfers – in crypto or fiat – that go outside the U.S. Concerns over user privacy in relation […]
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) needs an entirely new approach when it comes to policing crypto, according to Sian Jones, the driving force behind much of the sector’s anti-money laundering (AML) standards work to date. Speaking at the close of the second annual V20 Virtual Asset Service Providers Summit, Jones said FATF only needs to look at the fast-evolving world of decentralized finance (DeFi) to see how incongruous the traditional system of checking transactions created half a century ago by SWIFT is becoming. Global AML watchdog FATF has recommended local regulators of the G-20 countries and beyond try to graft […]
U.S. regulators are discussing the “why” of a new proposal that has crypto fans concerned. Speaking Monday at the V20 Virtual Asset Service Providers Summit, Carole House, cyber and emerging tech policy specialist at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), said criminals are conducting cross-border payments using smaller amounts of cryptocurrency – hence FinCEN’s proposed lowering of the “Travel Rule” threshold. According to the rule change proposal submitted last month, FinCEN and the Federal Reserve would modify the thresholds at which banks must collect and store fund transfer information, reducing it from $3,000 to $250 for any transfers – in crypto […]
The latest face-saving communique from Seychelles-domiciled crypto exchange KuCoin – hacked almost two months ago for over $280 million – is that 84% of the affected assets have been recovered. Some victims will be glad the situation seems to be moving towards resolution. Others, not so much. Leaving aside the conspiracy theories, death threats and alleged lack of communication on the part of the exchange, the KuCoin debacle raises troubling issues around blockchain decentralization and how token projects often rely on fallible intermediaries. Following the hack, many projects whose tokens were stolen from the exchange were urged to react quickly and change […]
Stealth-mode crypto custody specialist Shard X has claimed a breakthrough, being the first company to successfully run math-heavy, multi-party computation (MPC) on hardware security modules (HSMs). So why does this alphabet soup of security tech matter? In summary, HSMs are a battle-tested way to store private keys, particularly popular in consumer products like Ledger and Trezor. MPC, which breaks up cryptographic keys into shards and distributes them, is growing in popularity with custody tech providers like Fireblocks and Curv. But one challenge with MPC has been where to store key shards: The whole process was thought to be too computationally heavy […]
Binance.US, the American affiliate that shares a name with the world’s largest crypto exchange, has joined the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN), a 24/7 instant settlement network used by some of the largest trading entities in the space. SEN, which replaces clunky wire transactions by allowing corporates to instantly move U.S. dollars between crypto exchanges including on nights and weekends, saw its volume increase $7.8 billion to $17.4 billion in the first quarter, according to a recent Silvergate Bank earnings call. Existing members of Silvergate’s SEN payment network include Gemini, Kraken and ErisX. “We’ve launched SEN for our corporate clients so now […]
Crypto market maker Amber Group will service its clientele of institutional traders with the help of BitGo Trust, the custodial arm of the Palo Alto-based security firm. BitGo’s status as a qualified custodian should draw more high-net-worth investors to Amber from places like Hong Kong, Taiwan and Seoul, the companies said. The Hong Kong-based market maker, which has an average daily trading volume between $100 million and $200 million, is building on its existing business relationship with BitGo. (Amber Group’s suite of offerings, which includes Amber Pro and Amber App, have used BitGo security tech since 2018.) Back in February, Amber […]
Big payments players may be dipping their toes into crypto for the first time, but it’s been part of Visa’s Fast Track program since at least 2019. Announced Tuesday, Visa has invited digital asset wallet provider ZenGo into its Fast Track program. The startup hopes to use the program, which has famously championed Bitcoin’s Lightning Network and rewards app Fold, to help launch a crypto-integrated payment card for the U.S. in early 2021. Crypto apps are the flavor of the month, with PayPal joining Square, Robinhood, Revolut and Ziglu, who are all competing in this space. ZenGo CEO Ouriel Ohayon talked […]
“Think of it as the foundation of an enterprise mainnet.” That’s how Christine Moy, head of JPMorgan’s newly rebranded Liink banking network, described its aspirations towards decentralization in the realm of big business. The revamped Liink, which is based on a fork of Ethereum, is more of a “decentralized network,” said Moy, and less like a “central command product.” As such, Liink now invites its 400-plus financial institutions (including 25 of the largest 50 banks) to start building on top of the platform. “Liink participants have the ability to build applications on the network, and in doing so are able to […]
A third and all-encompassing version of Ocean Protocol has been released, fleshing out its vision for “datatokens” and decentralized data marketplaces. Announced Tuesday, Ocean v3 brings the Ocean data market proposal to life with Ethereum-based datatokens, as well as a range of other features like initial data offerings (IDOs), staking, automated market making (AMM) functionality and the potential to share and monetize data smarts. The goal of the project is to democratize the value from data and artificial intelligence (AI), which tends to accumulate in the hands of a few internet giants. In order to monetize data created by individuals, businesses […]
News this week that R3 and IBM are working together raised eyebrows, because each entity has been on different and competing sides since the early days of enterprise blockchain. From next month, the commercial version of Corda (the version big banks and the like are paying R3 for) will be made available via IBM’s LinuxOne servers, delivering a hybrid of on-premise and cloud offerings. R3 announced the news at its annual developer conference, CordaCon. Blockchain tribalism – R3’s Corda competes with Hyperledger Fabric, the enterprise blockchain heavily backed by IBM – has been put aside in favor of commercial sense, it seems. […]
Call it Crypto Lite – for now. Fintech giant PayPal confirmed its long-awaited move into digital assets Wednesday, offering its 346 million users the chance to buy, hold and sell bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ether and litecoin, with the blessing of New York state regulators. While the cryptosphere acknowledges the bullishness of a firm the size of PayPal making a move into the space, there was also concern that the new service does not allow bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to be withdrawn or deposited. Once you buy the coins, they stay in your account until you sell. “Currently, you can only hold […]
A group of former bankers building on R3’s public Corda Network are touting the first digital currency for that ecosystem, dubbed XDC. Announced Tuesday, the Cordite Society, a co-operative registered in the U.K., released the XDC crypto token on public Corda, the open-source version of R3’s network. The new regulation-friendly cryptocoin will open the door, say its creators at Cordite, to various decentralized finance (DeFi) applications running on Corda’s distributed ledger technology (DLT). R3 began life as a pay-to-join DLT consortium of big banks, which over time realized the value of hosting a large developer community and created the open-source Corda […]
Block.one, the company behind the multibillion-dollar-backed EOS ecosystem, has its sights locked on the enterprise blockchain space. Announced Thursday, Block.one has released “EOSIO for Business,” an enterprise-focused version of its software featuring Blockchain-as-a-Service (BaaS), consulting, technical support and training and certification programs, the company said. Blockchain cloud services can offer businesses a quick and painless way to spin up digital ledgers on their preferred cloud computing platforms. “Despite knowing the inherent benefits that blockchain will deliver to their business operations, many in-house product engineering teams are wary of the complexity involved in setting up and administering their own blockchain,” said Block.one […]
The director of Binance UK, Teana Baker-Taylor, is leaving the cryptocurrency exchange after a relatively brief, half-year stint in the role. A spokesperson for Binance confirmed to CoinDesk that Baker-Taylor will depart “in a few days,” adding: “We would like to thank Teana for her hard work and achievements leading Binance UK and wish her all the best for the future.” Josh Goodbody, Binance’s director of growth and institutional business, will take on responsibility for the U.K. arm following Baker-Taylor’s departure, the spokesperson said. Goodbody, a lawyer by training, joined Binance in January of this year from rival exchange Huobi Global, […]
As the limitations and costs of running decentralized finance (DeFi) apps on Ethereum continue to ride high, a growing list of projects are lining up on competing blockchains. Adding to this trend, Polkadot-based Reef Finance has closed a $3.9 million seed funding round for its cross-chain suite of DeFi services, the company announced Wednesday. Included in the round were NGC Ventures, AU21 Capital, QCP Capital, Kenetic Capital and Woodstock Fund. Reef aims to solve the high technical barrier investors face when attempting to participate in DeFi, said Reef Finance CEO Denko Manceski, not to mention doing away with gas fees on […]
Some tricks of the trade employed by today’s booming decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms are being used for a completely new paradigm: decentralized data marketplaces. Announced Thursday, blockchain-based data monetization startup Ocean Protocol is teaming up with Balancer Labs to create the first automated market maker (AMM) for data. Ocean Protocol is about helping people and businesses unlock data and monetize it, spreading the benefits of data and AI beyond the handful of organizations that hoard, control and get rich from it. Creating efficient data marketplaces is really the lynchpin of this, according to Ocean founder Trent McConaghy. Thus the collaboration with […]
As decentralized finance (DeFi) balloons to a roughly $10 billion market, infrastructure builders are coming up with ways to reduce the associated risks. Announced Wednesday, wallet and custodial technology provider Trustology has added a “DeFi Firewall” to its suite of institutional-investment tools. The “Firewall” is basically a set of rules or filters selected by a fund, specifying which DeFi protocols or decentralized exchanges they consider kosher. With DeFi’s liquidity mining opportunities driving adoption and demand, investors from a more traditional or institutional background want some of this action. At the same time, they have to be able to show that funds […]
Ethereum data firm Dune Analytics, which has stood out from the pack for its focus on decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, has raised $2 million from a mix of seasoned crypto investors and DeFi angels. Announced Wednesday, the seed round was led by Dragonfly Capital and included Multicoin Capital, Coinbase Ventures and Digital Currency Group (the owner of CoinDesk). The list of angel investors in the round included the likes of Compound’s Calvin Liu, Matteo Leibowitz of Uniswap and Aave founder Stani Kulechov. Yearn creator Andre Cronje, who also participated in the round via a non-dilutive grant, said for the record that […]
Netherlands-based Blockdata, which provides qualitative insights into the range of large enterprises using blockchain technology, has been acquired by data provider CB Insights. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. New York City’s CB Insights will be opening an office in Amsterdam, while Blockdata will remain a standalone product with its own team. Blockdata’s work will also be available to CB Insights clients, the companies said. The acquisition demonstrates that large firms are still interested in deploying distributed ledger technology (DLT) within their firewalls, and are looking for fast and thorough insights into the complex ecosystem that has grown […]
A leaked version of rules to be issued later this month by the European Commission proposes an all-encompassing set of regulations covering the trading or issuance of digital assets across the 27-nation bloc. Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) draft legislation provides legal certainty around crypto assets – cryptocurrencies, security tokens and stablecoins – along the same lines as Europe’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), a legal framework for securities markets, investment intermediaries and trading venues. The takeaway is that Europe intends to treat crypto the same as any other regulated financial instrument, which will doubtless provide legal clarity. The unknown […]
The folks building the next generation of digital money in Switzerland understand the need to collaborate. Stablecoins, digital tokens pegged one-to-one to the Swiss franc (CHF) in this case, are a prime example. SEBA Bank and Sygnum Bank, the two B2B players that hold banking licenses from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority and that specialize in digital assets, are both involved in stablecoin explorations, as is the country’s respected crypto conglomerate, Bitcoin Suisse. “Within the Crypto Valley and here in Switzerland, there’s a very good collaboration going on, where everyone’s working together to try to design a Swiss franc stablecoin […]
“A pandemic-led acceleration of adoption.” That’s how Singapore-based DBS Bank describes the current state of digital assets in its quarterly report on cryptocurrencies published in August. It’s interesting to hear such an observation from a respected multinational bank and its chief economist, Taimur Baig. However, there have lately been murmurings about certain large financial institutions – particularly in places like Singapore, Switzerland and Germany – fielding a new wave of demand for crypto, filtering through from smaller private banks and wealthy clients. On the subject of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin (BTC), Baig identified two distinct phases of demand: pre-pandemic and post-pandemic. “Pre-pandemic […]
Blockchain investment firm Digital Currency Group (DCG) has acquired Luno, a retail-focused cryptocurrency exchange with over five million customers spanning over 40 countries. Luno will continue to operate as an independent, wholly-owned subsidiary of DCG, the companies said. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed in an announcement Wednesday. The deal marks another shift in strategy for DCG (which also wholly owns CoinDesk) as it makes a full acquisition of a solidly retail-focused business. “We have invested in many retail businesses all over the world – including nearly two dozen exchanges,” said Mark Murphy, DCG’s chief operating officer. “But […]
A group of VC heavyweights and crypto entrepreneurs, including Blockfolio founder Ed Moncada, are backing a new risk management tool for the exploding decentralized finance (DeFi) space. Announced Thursday, Cozy Finance has raised a $2 million seed round, led by Electric Capital and including Variant Fund, Dragonfly Capital, Robot Ventures, Slow Ventures, Volt Capital, Spencer Noon, Moncada and others. The team attempting to bring some order to the creative chaos that is DeFi consists of Cozy co-founders Tony Sheng, formerly of Multicoin Capital, and Payom Dousti, co-founder of Rare Bits, a peer-to-peer marketplace for crypto goods. The value of assets deposited […]
People may like the idea of blockchains and web 3.0, but they tend to hit an immediate obstacle in the form of private cryptographic keys and mnemonic seed phrases that cannot be lost, forgotten or divulged at any cost. Private key management specialist Torus replaces that jarring user experience with what appears to be a familiar single login, but one that’s reinforced behind the scenes by a clever distributed architecture built for web 3.0. Announced Monday, the Singapore-based startup has released a one-click Chrome browser extension for its Torus wallet and added a new product called tKey, a custom version of […]
Concordium, an ambitious project whose founders have close links to companies including Volvo, IKEA, Saxo Bank and Nasdaq, is looking to shake up the seemingly glacial world of enterprise blockchain. The most striking thing about Concordium, which launches its third testnet next month, is the way it pushes what was once anathema to big corporates: public and permissionless blockchains. Businesses, wary of tipping their hands and giving away any competitive advantage, have traditionally preferred the idea of private and permissioned blockchains. But many advocates of blockchain tech believe only open systems hold true transformational promise. The oft-cited analogy centers on the […]
When Hong Kong regulators gave crypto firm OSL a nod of approval last week, it was the icing on the cake for the HKEX-listed digital asset trading platform. Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) granted BC Group crypto subsidiary OSL an “approval-in-principle” for its license application for Type 1 (dealing in securities) and Type 7 (automated trading service or ATS), as it pertains to crypto and virtual assets. The bigger picture is that Asian crypto hubs like Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan have a clearer regulatory stance going forward and are progressing faster than the U.S. and Europe. Perhaps this […]
The new bitcoin transaction automatically complies with the FATF Travel Rule and will save intermediaries from doing it all manually. Source link
There’s a joke in the world of digital advertising: How many companies does it take to put an ad on a website? In fact, there can be as many as 15 intermediaries participating in this opaque process, sponging up around 30% of the advertising spend. To fix this broken system, the next generation of adtech specialists are again pinning their hopes on blockchain technology. Announced Thursday, MadNetwork, a permissioned layer running on top of Ethereum while using the public blockchain itself as its immutable system of record, emerges from stealth with a testnet coming next month. Adtech provider MadHive and advertising […]
The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups. Source link
Africa isn’t included on the virtual asset regulatory map just yet. But crypto businesses seeing strong growth across the 54-country continent are working hard on know-your-customer (KYC) rules to meet the exacting standards set out by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). A broad range of entities operating in Africa, ranging from crypto exchanges to remittance providers to peer-to-peer marketplaces, are exploring KYC options, which could mean picking up licenses from other jurisdictions or even creating new regulatory frameworks in some cases. The FATF makes reference to jurisdictions with “weak or non-existent” anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) controls in […]
Music is back on the blockchain. Audius, a streaming service that connects music fans directly with artists, has raised $3.1 million in a strategic round co-led by Multicoin Capital and Blockchange Ventures, with participation from Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures. Audius has now raised a total of $8.6 million as the platform prepares for prime time, having grown in less than a year to over 250,000 monthly users and 40,000 artists. EDM artists seem to be the site’s burgeoning specialty with notables like RAC, deadmau5, Lido, 3LAU, Zeds Dead, Mr. Carmack and REZZ all signed on. The blockchain use case for […]
Ethereum’s Devcon 1, held in London in November 2015, was like Woodstock, except perhaps with less nudity. Bankers and Big 4 consultants disguised in hoodies shared space with dreadlocked Ethereum coders, sitting cross-legged in the corners, their laptops open in front of them. Packed into a Victorian banking hall in the heart of the City of London, the audience listened as ConsenSys chief Joe Lubin predicted a new future for firms; cryptographer Nick Szabo talked about decentralization in the context of Francis Drake and the Aztecs; and chief scientist Vitalik Buterin assembled shards of the path that lay ahead. “The internet […]
Crypto companies enthusiastically building solutions to bring the industry in line with anti-money laundering (AML) benchmarks may be creating their own interoperability problem. There are a number of promising and popular solutions coming to the fore, but If a virtual asset service provider (VASP) using one solution is unable to talk to a counterparty using another, the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) requirement to leave an identifiable trail when transferring funds becomes pointless. To remedy this “Travel Rule” conundrum, Netki is adding a system of “translators” to its TransactID protocol that the company says creates “an interoperability bridge” between VASPs, having […]
PayPal, the fintech giant planning to bring crypto trading to its massive user base, has chosen Paxos to handle the new service’s supply of digital assets, according to two people familiar with the matter. It’s a plum assignment for New York-based Paxos, which last week launched Paxos Crypto Brokerage and announced its first customer in Revolut US, the American division of the U.K.-based fintech firm that offers bitcoin trading. A formal announcement of the PayPal relationship could come as soon as this week, one source said. The offering would make PayPal one of the most prominent mainstream companies to offer cryptocurrency […]
IBM is giving its blockchain track-and-trace capabilities the social-impact treatment with a provenance application that enables coffee drinkers to directly assist the smallholders who farmed the beans. Announced Wednesday, IBM has teamed up with J. M. Smucker Company – the $12.2 billion food giant behind coffee brands like Folgers, Café Bustelo and Dunkin’ – to trace the supply chain of Colombian coffee. The program is meant to support the farmers who grow Smucker’s coffee beans with clickable donations to a variety of local community programs to build schools, clean water systems and other infrastructure. The coffee provenance blockchain, which IBM says is […]
Evertas, an insurance provider focused on the cryptocurrency space, has raised $2.8 million in a seed round led by Morgan Creek. Disclosure The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups. Source link
There may be an enterprise blockchain arms race brewing in Latin America. LatamLink, an alliance of three organizations involved in the launch of the EOS public blockchain in 2018, is now busy integrating the EOSIO software for enterprise uses. The group seems to be competing for business in the region with ConsenSys, a globally distributed outfit focused on all things Ethereum. Up for grabs is LACChain, a blockchain framework that has the backing of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and a host of public and private entities across Latin America and the Caribbean. ConsenSys set up a Besu testnet for LACChain […]
Binance Labs, the incubation and seed funding arm of the world’s largest crypto exchange, has made its first investment this year, backing decentralized privacy startup HOPR. Announced Thursday, Binance Labs led a $1 million seed round in HOPR, which also saw investment from Focus Labs, Spark Digital Capital, Caballeros Capital and Synaitken. The seed round followed a fellowship award the startup received last year from BinanceX, the exchange’s early-stage developer platform. The investment in HOPR, which takes data privacy to the next level with a token-incentivized mixnet solution, was a long time in the making, explained Binance Strategy Officer Gin Chao. […]
Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), the business end of the second-largest blockchain, has appointed a new executive director, Daniel C. Burnett. Burnett, who previously worked as a standards architect within Ethereum-focused ConsenSys, wants to widen the EEA’s scope beyond banks and blue chips, to include exchanges. Burnett even aims to embrace the brave new world of decentralized finance (DeFi), which has proven to be one of Ethereum’s major use cases. “We should be seeing the exchanges as members, we should be seeing tooling vendors as members,” Burnett said in an interview. “It could be something in the API that they have to […]
Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange by trading volume, has donated 27,000 KN95 masks worth over $60,000 to the U.K. National Health Service’s Pru Trust to aid the fight against COVID-19. The Princess Royal University Hospital (PRUH) is one of London’s largest and busiest teaching hospitals. It’s part of the King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which employs more than 11,000 healthcare workers and delivers services to more than 326,000 Londoners. The COVID-19 outbreak has seen an unprecedented need for personal protection equipment (PPE) by the healthcare system and its workers. The timing is also auspicious, given Binance’s recently-revealed plans to […]
Ocean Protocol, a blockchain-based data-sharing platform, has completed a proof-of-concept (PoC) with Daimler, showing how the Mercedes-Benz maker can begin monetizing data streams within the company and across its supply chains. Announced Tuesday, the Singapore-based Ocean collaborated with Daimler AG to explore the decentralized sharing of internal sales and financial data among the multinational’s production hubs, and externally between some of its supply chain procurement partners. The project, which involved Daimler’s Stuttgart headquarters and its Singapore manufacturing hub, lets large enterprises feel more comfortable about sharing data and extracting insights from hitherto undiscovered datasets – while keeping tabs on who’s looking at […]
Curv, a company that provides increased secrecy when it comes to holding crypto assets, has closed a $23 million Series A funding round. Announced Wednesday, the crypto custody tech provider, which uses a technique called multi-party computation (MPC), received investment from CommerzVentures, Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group (DCG), Team8 and Digital Garage Lab Fund. Curv closed a $6.5 million seed round in February of last year, which makes the total raised so far almost $30 million. Backing from the likes of CommerzVentures (the venture arm of German banking powerhouse Commerzbank and the main investor in the Series A) and Coinbase Ventures […]
Blockchain analysis company Elliptic has added two privacy coins to its monitoring platform. Announced Tuesday, the addition of zcash (ZEC) and horizen (ZEN) will provide exchanges and institutional investors insight into when a transaction trail ends so they can take additional due-diligence measures. Privacy is a core tenet of crypto, and firms looking to shine a light on shielded transactions must walk a fine line. “We are helping regulated businesses look at transactions on the blockchain and completely support people’s rights to financial privacy,” said Tom Robinson, Elliptic’s chief scientist. “If funds are seen to come from a shielded address, that […]
The COVID-19 crisis may have been the last straw for a non-profit digital identity organization, breaking its efforts to raise funds to pay staff and carry out a regulated token issuance. The Sovrin Foundation, a U.S.-based umbrella organization that oversees the development of blockchain-based digital identity standards (also known as self-sovereign identity or SSI), laid off nine full-time and six part-time employees in March, officially becoming a volunteer-run operation. “Sovrin’s transition from a permanently staffed organization to a volunteer-led one is now complete,” Paul Knowles, Sovrin’s external press representative, said in a statement emailed to CoinDesk. “We are pleased to state […]
Fintech giant PayPal plans to roll out direct sales of cryptocurrency to its 325 million users, according to three people familiar with the matter. Currently, PayPal can be used as an alternative means for withdrawing funds from exchanges such as Coinbase, but this would be a first in terms of offering direct sales of crypto. “My understanding is that they are going to allow buys and sells of crypto directly from PayPal and Venmo,” a well-placed industry source told CoinDesk. “They are going to have some sort of a built-in wallet functionality so you can store it there.” It is unclear […]
The Austrian government is taking a considered approach to COVID-19 tech solutions after an initial rush to get some kind of contact tracing app out the door. The nation’s second wave of projects now includes blockchain. Announced Wednesday, the country’s Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs awarded a €60,000 ($67,600) grant to a project called QualiSig, which uses elements of Austria’s digital identity system to create three COVID-related prototypes around fraud prevention, fake news and health data. The QualiSig prototypes use the Ardor blockchain built by Swiss firm Jelurida and its Ignis tokenizing system. Developed by Danube University Krems researchers […]
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is working with the Colombian government to see if blockchain-based transparency can help prevent a hotspot for corruption, which happens in the process of bidding for high-value contracts to provide public goods and services. WEF partnered with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Office of the Inspector General of Colombia to develop a proof-of-concept (PoC) using the Ethereum public blockchain. The aim of the project was to apply a high level of transparency to the procurement corruption use case in the context of the country’s system of government contracting. The PoC will be piloted in […]
Ethereum development house ConsenSys is being backed by heavy hitters like Binance and Huobi to test its new “staking-as-a-service” offering, designed to make it easy for institutions to earn income from the next iteration of the second-largest public blockchain. Announced Tuesday, the Eth 2.0 staking pilot from ConsenSys Codefi includes Binance, Huobi Wallet, Matrixport, Crypto.com, DARMA Capital and Trustology. This first batch of participants will provide feedback and feature requests to Codefi as it builds out its Eth 2.0 staking API, which is targeted at large exchanges, wallet providers, custodians and crypto hedge funds. Existing Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains such as Tezos, […]
Nexus Mutual, an alternative insurance provider for a variety of Ethereum-based DeFi protocols, has seen its risk pool double over the past 90 days to more than $4 million. Indeed, Nexus can barely keep up with the demand for smart-contract cover in the exploding decentralized finance (DeFi) arena. “We are in this position where there are lots of people that want heaps of cover, but we don’t quite have enough assets to cover everything we would like to right now,” said Nexus Mutual CEO and founder Hugh Karp. “So it’s a good problem to have and we’re working on it.” The […]
U.K.-based cryptocurrency platform Ziglu has launched, following a £5.25 million (US$6.6 million) seed round. As a starting point, the platform aims to painlessly put crypto in the hands of consumers. Announced Monday, Ziglu allows users to exchange GBP for bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), litecoin (LTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH), with more fiat currencies to be added and a debit card coming in July or August. Ziglu is the brainchild of Mark Hipperson, co-founder and CTO of U.K.-based Starling Bank, one of a crop of so-called “challenger banks” that took on the incumbents with sleeker, more intuitive and transparent services. Things have […]
Crypto custodians are in a race to build the next State Street or BNY Mellon. There are only a handful of these types of large custody banks and most of them have been around for hundreds of years. But crypto is such a striking example of old world meeting new that it offers firms a rare opportunity to break into a market that would simply be impossible under normal circumstances. “In the traditional world you can’t really build a custodian, it’s not something you can just break into,” said Diogo Monica, co-founder of Anchorage, a Silicon Valley-based custody platform specializing in […]
The first Libra white paper published in June 2019 had the temerity to threaten the monetary authority of central banks and governments. The empire struck back. That’s why an updated white paper from April 2020 has taken a belt and braces approach to regulatory compliance, said Dante Disparte, head of policy and communications at the Libra Association. The new technical document comes replete with buttoned-up hires and a pending payments license through the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). Libra’s watering-down of its global stablecoin to a series of fiat-backed stablecoins has prompted some commentators to say the project has lost […]
Decentralized finance (DeFi) could soon boast a real-world use case. MakerDAO, the organization behind the dollar-pegged stablecoin known as DAI, is in the process of voting on whether to further diversify the collateral it accepts for loans beyond cryptocurrency and tokens to include real-world assets (RWAs). Specifically, Maker would also allow supply chain invoices and musicians’ future royalty streams as security when it lends out DAI. These assets would be represented on the Ethereum blockchain by non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the innovation that spawned CryptoKitties. Small businesses and artists could take the borrowed DAI, which usually trades 1-for-1 with the U.S. dollar, […]
It’s probably no coincidence that three major crypto firms – Coinbase, Genesis Trading and BitGo – have almost simultaneously announced plans to become prime brokers, a kind of fixer when it comes to financing and facilitating trades for institutional investors. This type of vertical integration happens in every business, whether that’s Amazon running the internet or Coinbase trying to own the crypto space. Given the long road of the last couple of years, it’s maybe surprising there hasn’t been more M&A activity in the blockchain world. The big news this week was Coinbase’s acquisition of trading technology and execution platform Tagomi. […]
IBM has become a shareholder in we.trade, the trade-finance platform jointly owned by 12 European banks, signaling further consolidation across the enterprise blockchain space. Ciaran McGowan, we.trade’s CEO, said the deepening relationship with Big Blue will help the platform in its next phase of global expansion. “Now we’ve got a very strong partnership with IBM for scaling globally and we are working closely together on Asia, Africa and Latin America,” McGowan said. We.trade has the distinction of being the first enterprise blockchain consortium to go live, which happened back in early 2018. The platform was formed by a group of banks […]
Crypto sleuthing firm Elliptic has expanded its scope to cover some 97% of digital assets by trading volume – the broadest range of any crime-fighting blockchain analytics service, the company said. Announced Wednesday, Elliptic Navigator adds 87 new crypto assets to the firm’s existing purview. That said, touting just the number of coins covered can be “fairly irrelevant,” said Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson, because analytics shops could be including many ERC-20 tokens that nobody really uses. “More important is the proportion of all trading volume your supported assets cover,” said Robinson. “We now support just over 97% of all assets by […]
Enterprise blockchain isn’t dead, but survival has meant more collaboration and some smart pivots. That was the prevailing sentiment in the enterprise-focused corners of this week’s Consensus: Distributed conference. Back in 2015, a large amount of hype was generated as whole industries, starting with finance, began espousing the technology behind bitcoin, which would transform business processes and herald a global technological upgrade. A recalibration of expectation followed as the technology entered Gartner’s infamous trough of disillusionment. There was also a narrowing down of the space into three quite separate enterprise-focused blockchain networks: R3 Corda, Hyperledger and enterprise Ethereum. But these days, […]
R3, the company behind distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform Corda, is edging ever closer to Ethereum, with news of a partnership with blockchain-in-the-cloud startup Kaleido. The announcement comes following Kaleido’s emergence as a standalone company last month. The startup revealed Tuesday it was spun out of ConsenSys, the Ethereum-based venture studio founded by Joe Lubin. “We spun out April 1. It’s been exciting for us to take that step forward,” Sophia Lopez, Kaleido’s chief operating officer, told CoinDesk in an email. “In addition to the partnership with R3 and going live with Corda available on the Kaleido platform this afternoon, we […]
Tradeshift, the digital trade finance platform that uses blockchain to make payments instant and transparent, has proposed a scheme to the government of Denmark that will free billions of dollars from supply chains, the startup says. The COVID-19 crisis, like the 2008 financial crisis, has seen companies stretch payment terms and try to preserve cash, which causes a ripple effect down the supply chain and makes the overall situation steadily worsen. Tradeshift’s plan is to motivate big companies that have applied the brakes, to pay their suppliers instantly rather than delaying, thus preventing further calcification of supply chains and possibly keeping […]
A new messaging standard released today is designed to help cryptocurrency firms comply with anti-money laundering regulations from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). The standard, called IVMS101, defines a uniform model for data that must be exchanged by virtual asset service providers (VASPs) alongside cryptocurrency transactions. The standard will identify the pseudonymous senders and receivers of crypto payments, with such information “traveling” with each transaction. Getting industry players to agree upon an interoperable data standard is a significant step towards a more regulated crypto space. The standard messaging format now needs to be incorporated into the various solutions being built […]