USD 4.5B Crypto Fund, Less Difficult Bitcoin Mining, OTC NFT, Ethereum’s Merge + More News
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
- Venture firm a16z crypto announced a USD 4.5bn crypto venture fund led by founder and managing partner Chris Dixon. Of that, approximately USD 1.5bn will be dedicated to seed investments, and USD 3bn to venture investments, they added.
- Ripple (XRP) will explore the possibility of an initial public offering (IPO) once its lawsuit with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has ended, CNBC reported, citing CEO Brad Garlinghouse.
- The bitcoin (BTC) index fund by brokerage firm Fidelity Investments has surpassed USD 125m in investments, according to a filing with the US SEC. The total number of investors has increased from 83 in May 2021 to 689 now, the filing shows.
- Gaming platform Bud announced that it raised USD 36.8m in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital India. The funding will be used to develop creation tools, grow the user base and roll out Web3 products for the metaverse ecosystem, they added.
- Gaming project MetaKing Studios raised USD 15m in seed funding from Makers Fund and BITKRAFT Ventures. The company will use the financing for the development of its strategy MMO game BLOCKLORDS, launching in early access this year.
- Cryptoasset manager Babel Finance raised USD 80m in its Series B funding round, reaching a valuation of USD 2bn, according to TechCrunch.
- Crypto data analysis firm ZenLedger raised USD 15m in Series B funding led by ParaFi Capital. The funding will allow them to expand services globally, add new crypto finance products, and grow retail and government market share, they added.
- Venture capital firm Standard Crypto raised USD 500m toward a fund that will invest in both equity and crypto, Axios reported, citing a source with knowledge on the matter.
- Savings and investment app Relai raised EUR 2.16m (USD 2.3m) in its first public raise via the crowdfunding platform Crowdcube.
- Blockchain scalability project StarkWare Industries raised USD 100m at a valuation of USD 8bn.
- Venture firm Volt Capital announced a new USD 50m crypto fund, according to TechCrunch.
- Holding company GlobalBlock announced that its European subsidiary is operationally ready and will be operating the company’s digital asset brokerage and trading services business from Lithuania.
Mining news
- Bitcoin mining difficulty, or the measure of how hard it is to compete for mining rewards, dropped 4.33% to almost 29.0 T today. It follows two consecutive rises, both of which led the mining difficulty to new all-time highs.
NFTs news
- Crypto financial services company EQONEX announced that it completed its first-ever direct to custody over-the-counter (OTC) NFT trade. The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT was purchased through Canadian brokerage Secure Digital Markets, one of EQONEX’s partners, and deposited directly into UK custodian Digivault. It is now held in bank vaults alongside other Digivault cryptoassets, diamonds, and silver.
Blockchains news
- A new feature release of the Ethereum (ETH) Geth client, Geth v1.10.18 (Sharblu), has been announced. This release is ready for the Merge transition on the Ropsten testnet, and will activate the Merge on Ropsten when the testnet reaches a total difficulty of 43531756765713534, said Chief Stacktrace Designer Felix Lange in the GitHub document.
- Public blockchain Klaytn (KLAY) announced a collaboration with blockchain infrastructure company Parity Technologies to build a new Klaytn chain that will serve as an alternate implementation of the Klaytn specification and as a sidechain to Klaytn’s main chain.
- Web browser Brave announced it now integrates with the Solana (SOL) blockchain to expand access to Web3 by expanding multi-chain support. Users should be be able to buy, sell, and store SOL and fungible Solana tokens SPL in the Brave Wallet, and buy SOL and other cryptoassets with fiat via payments provider Ramp.
- Blockchain project Injective has integrated generic cross-chain messaging protocol Wormhole. The integration will enable developers building on Injective to leverage cross-chain capabilities in their dapps.
Regulation news
- Turkey is crafting legislation that would establish greater control over the crypto market, potentially imposing a tax on some crypto transactions, Bloomberg reported, citing two officials. Among the proposals is a requirement that companies have a minimum of TRY 100m (USD 6.1m) in capital, while another is that crypto platforms must open branch offices that can be taxed in Turkey.
Payments news
- Bitcoin payments infrastructure platform OpenNode launched a new OpenNode Stripe App that will allow users of the financial infrastructure platform Stripe access to BTC. Companies who use Stripe will be able to convert their funds in BTC or automatically convert incoming payments in part or full, they added.
Career news
- Crypto platform Nuri announced that they are letting go of an unspecified part of their team due to “uncertainty in the financial markets”. However, they added, without providing specific numbers, that they are counting almost half a million customers, were able to quadruple their revenue over the course of 2021, and reached all-time highs in onboarding customers and financially active users in Q1 this year.
Scams news
- A member of the private NFT group Proof Collective has fallen victim to a scam that lost them 29 Moonbird NFTs worth USD 1.5m total after clicking a malicious link shared by a scammer, per Twitter user Cirrus.
