Another Crypto Exchange Eyes Nasdaq, Polkadot’s Parallel Finance + 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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Exchanges news

• MaiCoin Group, which operates Taiwan’s largest crypto exchange, is considering going public on the Nasdaq stock market within two years, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The company is completing a Series C funding round that could value it at about USD 400m, their sources added.
• LMAX Group partnered with European financial market infrastructures operator SIX to launch cash-settled, centrally cleared cryptoasset futures expected to go live in Q3 2022, pending regulatory approval. It should initially include centrally cleared USD settled bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH) futures, trading 23 hours, five days a week, with the full product roll-out to be extended to 24/7 trading.

DeFi news

• Decentralized finance (DeFi) parachain hub of blockchains Polkadot (DOT) and Kusama (KSM) Parallel Finance announced the coordinated launch of six separate products, including Parallel’s Automated Market Maker (AMM), Farming, Liquid Staking, v2 Crowdloan Platform, Cross Chain Bridge, and Wallet, across different DeFi primitives. These will allow Heiko, their Kusama deployment, to include nearly all major DeFi products, they added.

Payments news

• Real estate investment trust (REIT) investing in supply chain real estate NOYACK Logistics Income (NLI) announced that it is accepting crypto payments for shares via a partnership with crypto payments provider BitPay.

Economics news

• The Bank of Japan (BOJ) maintained its massive stimulus and warned of heightening risks to a fragile economic recovery from the Ukraine war, per Reuters. Although rising fuel and commodity prices could drive up consumer inflation to the BOJ’s 2% target in the coming months, this won’t cause them to withdraw stimulus, the bank’s governor Haruhiko Kuroda said.

Wallets news

• The Coinbase Wallet introduced support for Solana (SOL) and all the tokens created on this blockchain. The wallet also plans to further integrate with the Solana ecosystem, including the ability for users to connect to Solana dapps, and the ability to view and manage their Solana NFTs directly within their Coinbase Wallet extension.

Mining news

• Bitcoin miner TeraWulf announced that its Lake Mariner facility in New York, USA, began mining operations on March 4, 2022, utilizing more than 90% zero-carbon energy, and it now expects to have 4,000 bitcoin miners operational at the facility by the end of April. Additionally, its Nautilus Cryptomine facility in Pennsylvania is expected to begin mining in the third quarter of 2022.

Investments news

• Binance Labs, the venture capital arm and innovation incubator of crypto exchange Binance, announced it led a seed round of undisclosed value for Ultiverse, to build a Web3 social gaming metaverse with BNB Chain. The funds should be used to develop the product, attract top talent and further increase the growth of the community.
• Ethereum scaling solution Optimism raised USD 150m in a Series B funding round co-led by crypto investors Paradigm and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) at a USD 1.65bn valuation. The funding will largely go toward hiring, they said.
• MetaMagnet, the operator of the blockchain gaming platform C2X, announced the closing of a USD 25m funding round led by FTX Ventures, Jump Crypto, and Animoca Brands at a valuation of USD 500m. C2X also added that an initial exchange offering (IEO) was conducted on March 18, 2022, for the platform’s native token C2X, while the public listing of the C2X token will be announced at a later date.

NFTs news

• US-based gaming retailer GameStop said it intends to launch an NFT marketplace by the end of July. The company added that its previously established partnership with layer 2 solution Immutable X would provide it with up to USD 150m in IMX tokens upon achievement of certain milestones.
• NFT protocol Rarible integrated with the Polygon (MATIC) blockchain, while also teaming up with Polygon Studios, the NFT and gaming arm of Polygon, to leverage marketing and tech support. To support continuing multi-chain expansions, Rarible is also launching its multi-wallet profile product, built for the increasing number of users with cryptoassets on multiple blockchains and wallets.

Gaming news

• Virtual reality game development company Thirdverse and smartphone game operator Drecom Co. announced a partnership to plan, develop, and operate blockchain games. The companies intend to announce their product roadmap in the coming months.

Career news

• Layer 1 blockchain protocol Zilliqa (ZIL) announced that Tom Fleetham, formerly of tech giant IBM, has been hired as the new Head of Business Development, Sports and Gaming. Fleetham will help Zilliqa scale up its partnerships in the next phase of its growth, they added.