Good News for German Crypto Investors, Spot Trading Increased in April + More News

Sumejja Muratagić-Tadić
Last updated: | 3 min read
Source: iStock/HamidEbrahimi

 

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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Taxes news news

  • German taxpayers who sell their bitcoin (BTC) or ethereum (ETH) after a year of holding will be exempt from taxes, according to a crypto tax interpretation from the German Ministry of Finance. The work on crypto taxation will continue and a supplementary letter on the cooperation and recording obligations is already in the works, they added.

Investments news

  • Spot trading volumes on centralized exchanges increased 6.89% to USD 1.73trn in April, with a daily maximum of USD 80.3bn traded on April 1, according to a report from digital asset data provider CryptoCompare. Meanwhile, derivatives volumes fell 9.07% to USD 3.08trn, attaining a market share of 64.0%, they added.
  • Crypto intelligence firm Chainalysis has secured USD 170m in a Series F funding round led by sovereign wealth fund GIC, The Information reported. The company’s valuation reached USD 8.6bn following the round.
  • Media company Townsquare Media revealed in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that they invested around USD 5m in BTC during the first quarter of this year.
  • Investment firm Hivemind and blockchain project Algorand (ALGO) announced the acquisition of music platform Napster. They added that further details will follow.
  • Web3 community creation tool Highlight raised USD 11m in a seed funding round led by Haun Ventures at an undisclosed valuation. The project enables users to build a community on blockchain, complete with their own non-fungible tokens (NFTs), without extensive technical knowledge, they explained.
  • Web3 development platform Moralis confirmed it raised USD 40m in a Series A funding round.
  • Nigeria and Kenya-based crypto exchange MARA announced it raised USD 23m in a round led by Distributed Global, FTX, Coinbase, and others.

Mining news

  • Internet company The9 Limited announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary NBTC and Kyrgyzstan enterprise SolarCoin entered a Purchase Agreement for a blockchain computing center in Kyrgyzstan. The9 will obtain 31.5MW electricity capacity for the deployment of its 7,500 Antminer S19J Bitcoin mining machines contributing approximately 675PH/s hash power. The construction work is set to be completed and the rigs running by the end of July 2022, they added.
  • Riot Blockchain reported first-quarter revenue of USD 79.8m, which is up 244% from the quarter a year ago, with BTC 1,405 mined during Q1 2022. In the same quarter, they also increased mining revenue by 150% to a record USD 57.9m, compared to USD 23.2m for the same three-month period in 2021.
  • CleanSpark reported fiscal second-quarter revenue of USD 41.6m and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) of USD 22.5m. The quarterly revenues rose fourfold compared to the same period last year, from USD 8.1m, while the adjusted EBITDA in 2021 was USD 1.9m.

Regulation news

  • International body the Financial Stability Board is “well placed” to design a global regulatory framework for cryptoassets, its chair Klaas Knot said at the annual meeting of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association in Madrid. It wouldn’t have to start from scratch, he said, and would first consider the existing laws that already apply to crypto.

Exchanges news

  • Coinbase halted trading service in India because of “informal pressure” from the Reserve Bank of India, the crypto exchange’s CEO said in an earnings call. Brian Armstrong added that, while they’d be interested in finding out whether they were in violation of the Supreme Court ruling that crypto can’t be banned, their focus is still on working with the central bank and relaunching.

DeFi news

  • Decentralized finance (DeFi) trading and staking protocol Bancor (BNT) announced the launch of Bancor 3, which has new features meant to provide easier staking.