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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Career news
- US-based investment banking giant JPMorgan Chace & Co. now has over 70 open blockchain-related job positions in the US, Europe, and Asia. They include product managers, developers, engineers, researchers, payments-related positions, and more.
Investments news
- Cryptology Asset Group, a European investment company for blockchain- and crypto-related businesses founded by Christian Angermayer and Mike Novogratz, has committed USD 100m to invest globally in crypto-related venture funds over the next two years. Their focus will be on first-time funds and emerging managers, and their fund investment strategy will encompass both funds investing in equity stakes of crypto- and blockchain-related companies, as well as funds investing in cryptoassets and tokens.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez confirmed that he owns both bitcoin (BTC) and ethereum (ETH), and is planning to increase his crypto holdings.
- South Korea blockchain accelerator group ROK Capital and Solana Foundation have launched a USD 20m fund to develop the Solana (SOL) blockchain ecosystem. By partnering with Solana, the firm hopes to bootstrap a range of Solana-focused infrastructure projects, including those related to Web3, DeFi, and NFTs, they said in an announcement.
- Impossible Finance, a developer of a DeFi incubator, launchpad, and swap platform, said it raised over USD 7m from over 125 institutional and angel investors, including True Ventures, CMS Holdings, Alameda Research, and Hashed.
- Pontem, a decentralized application (dapp) framework for Facebook’s Diem project, said it has secured a USD 4.5m investment in a private seed funding round led by Mechanism Capital and Kenetic Capital.
Exchanges news
- bitFlyer said it has opened access to its BTC-to-Japanese yen pair to traders in the United States. “By opening up access to BTC/JPY markets for US residents, we enable a tighter connection between the two cryptocurrency markets,” Joel Edgerton, Chief Operating Officer of bitFlyer USA, added.
eToro saw new users jump by more than 200% in the first quarter of the year, Financial News reported. The platform registered 3.1m new users on its platform in the opening three months of 2021, up from 1m during the same period last year and 5.2m for the whole of 2020, it added.
Mining news
- Argo Blockchain said it mined BTC 166 (USD 6.4m) or “Bitcoin Equivalent” in May, compared to BTC 163 in April. This brings the total amount of BTC mined year-to-date to BTC 716, they added.
Adoption news
- Peer-to-peer fintech platform Paxful announced Paxful Pay, an e-commerce solution that allows businesses worldwide to receive BTC. The service allows customers to pay with almost 400 payment methods — exchanging into bitcoin that is sent to the merchant’s digital wallet, they added.
- The Ethereum Foundation micro-tipping platform TipJar is being retired and a total of USD 12m funds are being moved to the ‘EthDev’ main wallet, according to Ethereum community innovator Alex Van de Sande. He added that there are still no plans on whether anything will replace TipJar going forward.
DLT news
- The IOTA (MIOTA) platform has launched the IOTA 2.0 DevNet, the first “fully decentralized” IOTA network without the need of a Coordinator (a node run by the IOTA Foundation for network protection and transaction confirmation), together with the new Digital Assets framework, they said, adding that the DevNet is open for anyone and any machine to participate in, to transact without any fees, and to build on. It marks the beginning of building dapps and new business models before the IOTA 2.0 launching on the mainnet, known as Coordicide.
Regulation news
- UK crypto companies now have until March 31, 2022 to register for the Temporary Registrations Regime (TRR) with the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), instead of the previous deadline of July 9, 2021, the institution announced. The TRR is put in place so that crypto businesses can continue offering their services in the country until the FCA has completed its assessment of all applicants.
Legal news
- Blockchain company Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Chris Larsen are calling for the investigation of Bitfinex‘s parent company iFinex, and 14 other international crypto exchanges. This motion is a response to the ongoing battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the alleged violation of the US Securities Act. Investigating these exchanges would prove that the sale of XRP was done outside of the US geographically, and therefore out of the SEC’s jurisdiction, the memorandum said.
- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak lost his lawsuit against YouTube, which alleged that YouTube helped drive traffic to fraudulent BTC giveaways that used his picture, Bloomberg reported. The reason for this tentative ruling is that internet platforms are protected from responsibility for content posted by users.
DeFi news
- Bitcoin-based decentralized finance (DeFi) provider Sovryn has announced a virtual conference and hackathon called Sovrynthon. It will take place between June 4 and July 18 this year, with USD 250,000 in bounties and USD 250,000 in post-hackathon grants for promising projects. Thanks to their partnership with a public Ethereum-based bounties platform Gitcoin, there will be additional bounties, with amounts still undisclosed, an email said.
- Decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator Matcha is becoming the first DeFi platform to accept fiat natively as a result of a partnership with crypto payments solution MoonPay. Users will be able to convert fiat into crypto directly on the Matcha platform thanks to MoonPay’s service, while the first USD 100,000 in fiat funds on-ramped through the integration will be completely free, said the emailed announcement.
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