cryptocurrency trends
Quick Take May saw venture capital investment of around $3.5 billion in crypto startups — the lowest since last October. Twenty new crypto VC funds were also launched, including from a16z, Standard Crypto and SPiCE VC. This feature story is available to subscribers of The Block News Plus. You can continue reading this News Plus feature on The Block.
June 9, 2022, 12:50PM EDT • 23 min read Quick Take In this weekly series, we dive into some of the most interesting data and developments across the Layer 1 blockchain landscape, from DeFi and bridges to network activity and funding The L2 scaling protocol Optimism has launched its native governance token as the team looks to attract further adoption of its network, but challenges with supporting infrastructure remain Avalanche and Solana have made progress on their own approaches to …
Bloomberg announced on Thursday that it has expanded its data coverage on the Bloomberg Terminal, which will now include 50 cryptocurrencies. Users of its professional terminal will be able to see data on bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), binance coin (BNB) and solana (SOL), among others, according to the announcement. This will enable clients to access and monitor intraday pricing for crypto, indices and futures contracts in real-time. Cryptocurrency prices were first added to the terminal — a ubiquitous fixture on …
Quick Take Founded by Chris Maddern, Floor tracks data on prices for non-fungible tokens. The app is currently only available to the 3,500 Floor token holders, however with the funding it plans to open parts of the Floor platform to everyone. Floor — an upstart project in the non-fungible token (NFT) market — announced on Wednesday the close of a Series A funding round. Born out of founder Chris Maddern’s own frustration with managing his portfolio of NFTs, Floor also …
June 9, 2022, 11:40AM EDT • 9 min read Quick Take Since the second half of 2021, the bitcoin mining industry has witnessed an increasing number of traditional financial institutions jumping into the miner lending business. 11 major public mining firms had outstanding loan payables of $776 million as of March 31 and drew an additional $235 million in the subsequent months. As the interest among traditional lenders grows, we take a look at some of the most fundamental metrics …
Quick Take Rapper Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey will fund a bitcoin education program for residents of Marcy Houses in Brooklyn. Dorsey said he thinks Bitcoin can be an important tool in empowering marginalized communities. Starting this summer, residents of Marcy Houses in Brooklyn will be eligible to receive free Bitcoin education classes as part of a new initiative funded by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and rapper Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter. Dorsey announced the project, called The Bitcoin …
Aztec Network will update its Layer 2 rollup solution on Ethereum to a new version called Connect. The new update, which focuses on smart contract data privacy, will go live Thursday. Previously, Aztec has offered a private money protocol called zkmoney, that allowed users to shield data on Ethereum transactions. However, it worked as a standalone solution that didn’t allow Ethereum apps to integrate data privacy. With the release of Connect, the Aztec team is aiming to position Connect as …
Orderly Network, a decentralized exchange protocol, has announced a $20 million fundraise led by a group of DeFi heavyweights. Three Arrows Capital, Pantera Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Sequoia China, Jump Crypto, Alameda Research, GSR Ventures and MetaWeb.VC all invested in the round, alongside other unnamed strategic partners, according to a press release on Thursday. Orderly runs on Near Protocol, the blockchain backed by Tiger Global. Near helped incubate Orderly, which was only founded as recently as April this year. Woo Network, …
Tatsumeeko, the web3 incarnation of the Discord-hosted massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Tatsu.gg, has raised $7.5 million in a seed round. The raise was co-led by Delphi Ventures, Bitkraft Ventures and DeFiance Capital, the Singapore-based company announced on Thursday. It also received funding from Binance Labs, Animoca Brands, Dialectic and GuildFi. The company declined to share a valuation when asked by The Block. Started in 2016 as a community project, Tatsu.gg became a fully-fledged, full-time undertaking for its team …
Terraform Labs and its CEO Do Kwon must comply with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) subpoenas related to the Mirror Protocol, according to a ruling on Wednesday from the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The SEC is investigating whether Terraform and Kwon were involved in selling unregistered securities through the Mirror Protocol, which lets users trade crypto tokens that represent popular stocks like Apple and Amazon. The regulator served Kwon with papers at Messari’s crypto conference, Mainnet, …