Blockchain startup Lolli has reportedly raised the sum of $5 million from a suite of investors led by Serena Williams, her husband (Alexis Ohanian), and other YouTubers.
As announced on Wednesday, Lolli’s pre-Series A round features Serena Williams’ Serena Ventures, her husband Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six, and Night Media, the management company that represents YouTuber MrBeast. Other investors from the influencer ranks include Casey Neistat, Phil DeFranco, Cody Ko, Noel Miller, Ian Borthwick, and Gabriel Leydon.
This is not the first time the Bitcoin rewards company, Lolli, has successfully raised funds from investors. Last year, Lolli raised a $3 million seed round led by PathFinder, with participation from Digital Currency Group (CoinDesk’s owner), Michelle Phan, and Ashton Kutcher.
Major Blockchain Investment for the Tennis Star
Bitcoin is on a bull run and crypto is booming, so firms with strong use-cases are utilizing this opportunity. Lolli, which incentivizes shoppers to go to its partner stores with bitcoin rewards sent to a wallet, now boasts of over 1,000 merchants and 250,000 users.
The co-founder of Lolli, Alex Adelman, says the company currently offers an average of 7% bitcoin-back rewards at retailers such as Microsoft, Booking.com and Ulta.He added that Lolli users have also earned more than $3 million in bitcoin rewards to date.
“We started out with the idea of educating people about bitcoin. So we just attached it to something that everybody does: shop. People think about investing when they think about bitcoin, but there’s probably less than 1% of the world that would consider themselves investors. Everybody would consider themselves a shopper. The ultimate goal is financial empowerment and financial inclusion, which are also key reasons Serena Williams and her team support Lolli,” he stated.
Serena is also positive about the investment, as Lolli makes Bitcoin more accessible beyond just institutional investments, to the average crypto enthusiast. In her words:“I’m excited to announce my investment in Lolli, a company on a mission to make bitcoin more accessible. Earning and owning bitcoin is a step towards financial inclusivity for all people,” she added.
Shepard Fairey, the artist behind Former President Barack Obama’s iconic “Hope” campaign poster, is selling an NFT.
It’s up for auction next week, and some of the proceeds are going to Amnesty International.
Shepard Fairey, the artist behind Former President Barack Obama’s iconic “Hope” campaign poster, isselling an NFT.
It’s attached to a digital image called “Obey Ideal Power,” and is set to be auctioned off on the NFT marketplace SuperRare.
As blockchain utopians and art-world grifters have shoveled coal into the engine of NFT Hype, creators of all kinds have been jumping aboard, auctioning off GIFs and audio files for huge amounts of money.
And with the frenzy has come a multi-pronged backlash. What about NFTs’ecological footprint? Aren’t therecopyright issues involved here? What about the exclusivity problem—isn’t this stuffonly accessible to crypto nerdswith built-in audiences? How do we know NFTs aren’t just a vehicle for money laundering? And wait: the JPEG I just bought for $69 milliondoesn’t actually live forever on the blockchain?
As skepticism mounts, artists have been packaging new NFT announcements with climate offsets and other charitable components. Aphex Twin said he’d use the money from his recent NFT sale toplant trees, and the NFT marketplace Nifty Gatewayplansto put money toward forest conservation efforts in Peru.
For his part, Fairey has said he’ll donate “a portion of the proceeds” from the sale to Amnesty International.
“Obey Ideal Power” is part of a collaboration between SuperRare and a company called Verisart, which provides ownership certificates for blockchain-based assets. The piece is up for auction on March 29.
Crypto-powered esports streaming app Theta’s mainnet 3.0 launch has been delayed until June.
In an announcement from Theta Labs, the company stated that its development team is still working “to incorporate some building blocks” for a non-fungible token, or NFT, marketplace for the Theta Mainnet 3.0. They are also working to ensure that the network functions when scaled to more than 100,000 Elite Edge Nodes. As a result, Theta needs more time “to conduct a more thorough code review and testing” and will be pushing the expected launch date from April 21 to June 30.
“While delays are never ideal, we think this change is the prudent way forward to ensuring a successful Mainnet 3.0 launch,” said Theta.
The network said it would be focusing on building out its NFT marketplace, purportedly due to the sudden boom in the space. Theta aims for its Elite Edge Nodes, which tokenize internet bandwidth, to become a decentralized storage space for NFTs by establishing cross-chain bridges between its own network, the Ethereum network, and others. This would address the cost of minting NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain.
Last year, Theta announced a similar postponement of its Mainnet 2.0 from March to May in order to allow for “more testing.” The launch ultimately went forward on May 27 without additional delays.
In the lead up to the mainnet 3.0 launch, the protocol’s native token, THETA, has surged significantly, rising by more than 450% from $2.14 to $11.86 between Jan. 1 and the time of publication. The token has even outperformed Bitcoin (BTC) during its current bull run.
Major U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs has filed a prospectus with the U.S. Securities and exchange Commission (SEC) for an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that could offer exposure to bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
In a recent document filing, Goldman Sachs is seeking approval from the SEC to launch an ETF called the ARK Innovation ETF.
According to the banking giant, the ETF would focus on companies that offer what it considers “disruptive innovation” while stating that it could offer exposure to bitcoin.
An excerpt from the filing reads:
“The ETF may have exposure to cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin, indirectly through an investment in a grantor trust. The ETF’s exposure to cryptocurrency may change over time and, accordingly, such exposure may not always be represented in the ETF’s portfolio.”
As previously reported by CryptoPotato, Goldman Sachs stated that it was considering launching a bitcoin ETF along with offering crypto custodial services.
Also, asset management behemoth Fidelity Investments filed a document with the SEC to launch a Bitcoin ETF. The ETF known as Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust would “week to track the performance of bitcoin, as measured by the Index, adjusted for the Trust’s expenses and other liabilities.”
Goldman Sachs and Fidelity Investments become the latest institutions to propose a bitcoin-related ETF with the U.S. regulator. While the SEC is yet to approve any application, the watchdog is currently reviewing VanEck’s Bitcoin ETF proposal.
Meanwhile, countries like Canada and Brazil already have Bitcoin ETFs. Canadian regulators gave the green light to North America’s first Bitcoin ETF back in February 2021 and has gone ahead to approve two more ETFs. Brazilian regulators also approved Latin America’s first Bitcoin ETF earlier in March.
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How does $400,000 per bitcoin sound? Most likely outlandish, especially if it is expected within the next five years.
But that is exactly the price the analysts at Los Angeles-based investment management company Wave Financial believes bitcoin could reach, using the investment analysis model stock-to-flow ratio, by as early as 2025.
One of the most interesting parts of our report, released in late February 2021, is the illustration of how the stock-to-flow ratio was used to accurately predict the movement of the bitcoin price from $4,000 in March 2019 to about $50,000 in February 2021. Stock-to-flow ratio is primarily a gold valuation model. The fact that it works better on bitcoin than most of the other models gives credence to the belief of many that bitcoin is digital gold.
Source
We say in the report, titled “Understanding Bitcoin’s Impact On Portfolio Performance,” that “a $55,000 prediction seemed relatively outlandish in March 2019. But today $55,000 seems like a reasonable target for 2021. The target price of $400,000, once again, seems outlandish today.”
As we now stand in March 2021, a month on from the report being published, some of our price targets are now out of date, with bitcoin surpassing the $60,000 level.
In mid-February, bitcoin achieved a new all-time high price of $50,000 and, for the first time, a market cap of over $1 trillion. This is a market rally that was predictable by considering the mining subsidy halving that happened in 2020 and the growing adoption of bitcoin as an institutional reserve asset.
In 2024, the bitcoin subsidy, the new coins released to circulation, will reduce from 6.25 BTC approximately every ten minutes to 3.125 BTC. In 2020, the mining subsidy dropped from 12.5 BTC. The subsidy halving happens every four years, making bitcoin a deflationary asset, which we believe is one of the main bullish drivers of its price.
Meanwhile, increasingly, mainstream corporate entities and investment firms have embraced bitcoin as a reserve asset. For example, MicroStrategy, a Virginia-based tech company, has taken the lead on this path. The company, founded by Michael Saylor and Banju Bansal in 1989, HODLs about 90,859 bitcoin, worth over $2.186 billion. The company’s latest addition to its holding was a late February purchase of an additional 328 bitcoin for about $15 million at an average price of $45,710 a bitcoin.
The electric car manufacturer Tesla in early February disclosed in a securities filing that it had acquired $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin. Indeed, within the last five years, a significant amount of bitcoin has moved into the ownership of major investment institutions and corporate entities.
Throughout February, rumors spread that the software company Oracle was about to announce the purchase of 72,000 bitcoins. On March 11, the company dispelled the rumors leading to the price of bitcoin shedding about $2,000.
Interest in bitcoin as a reserve asset by mainstream companies is not limited to the U.S. In early March, Meitu, a Chinese tech company, announced its acquisition of 380 BTC and 15,000 ETH. It also came out that Meitu founder Cai Wensheng owned 10,000 BTC (worth about $504 million) in 2018.
Around the same time, Aker ASA announced the establishment of Seetee, a firm through which it intends to invest in bitcoin and bitcoin startups. Aker ASA is a Norwegian industrial investment company with interests in oil and gas, renewable energy, maritime and green technologies.
Indeed, within the last five years, a significant amount of bitcoin has moved into the ownership of major investment institutions and corporate entities.
“The fundamental reason for such focus on Bitcoin is actually centered around the financial environment of 2020,” reads part of our report. “Due to the pandemic, governments around the world are printing money to stabilize and boost the economy” and this is pushing investors toward digital assets as a safe haven.
The report also explains and illustrates the impact the price movement of bitcoin has on investment portfolios that have it as a significant component.
Source: Wave Financial
Bitcoin has technical aspects that set it apart as an asset class in portfolio management and it is most likely to turn into a superior one. Historically, bitcoin has performed well as an addition to different portfolios because it has a low correlation relative to most other traditional asset classes. Using different hypothetical scenarios, the cryptocurrency is a great tool for portfolio diversification and managing portfolio risk-adjusted returns.
It is also very interesting to look at the technical comparisons between bitcoin and other assets using different scenarios and looking at returns on investment by focusing on metrics like volatility, Sharpe ratio and Sortino ratio.
Wave Financial LLC (Wave) provides institutional digital asset fund products. You can read the “Understanding Bitcoin’s Impact On Portfolio Performance” report by following thislink.
This is a guest post by Constantin Kogan. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
Goldman Sachs has filed an application to the SEC for a new investment product.
The product—a linked note—will track the ARK Innovation ETF.
The ARK Innovation ETF is invested in Grayscale, meaning Goldman Sachs clients could be exposed to Bitcoin—indirectly.
Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s biggest banks, has filed an application to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for an investment product that could expose clients—indirectly—to Bitcoin.
The SECfiling, which details a “linked note” (an income-producing product tied to a security or basket or securities, like an ETF), says that investors could be exposed to “disruptive innovation.”
As the linked note tracksARK Innovation, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that is invested in the Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust Grayscale, investors could be exposed to the biggest digital asset—but not directly.
For those who don’t know: an ETF allows investors to buy and sell shares continually throughout the day that represent the value of an underlying asset.
A Bitcoin ETF, which would allow investors to buy shares that represent the digital asset, doesn’t exist in the US—yet. Plenty of companies have tried to launch one, including investment giant Fidelity, which just filed its application today. The SEC has been reluctant to approve these products in the past, however, citing concerns over manipulation of the Bitcoin market.
But Bitcoin ETFs do exist elsewhere—in Canada (where they’ve been ahuge success) andBermuda.
Goldman’s filing, dated March 19, isn’t for an ETF, but a product that would track an ETFexposedto Bitcoin shares.
And it’s another way Goldman Sachs is showing interest in Bitcoin.
The bank was previously skeptical about the coin. Last year, itdeniedBitcoin was an asset class. But it has sincesaidit will start trading Bitcoin futures, reopening its cryptocurrency trading desk after abruptly shutting it down in 2018.
BloombergETF analyst, Eric BalchunasIt, toldDecryptthat Goldman’s new Bitcoin-linked product is “like a side bet for its bigger institutional clients.”
“It has all kinds of different parts to the bet but it all involves riffing off the price of ARKK, hence the word ‘ETF’ in there,” he said.
As the SEC filing says: “The ETF may have exposure to cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, indirectly through an investment in a grantor trust. The ETF’s exposure to cryptocurrency may change over time and, accordingly, such exposure may not always be represented in the ETF’s portfolio.”
Goldman Sachs did not immediately respond to Decrypt‘s request for comment.
Leading decentralized crypto exchange Uniswap (UNI) is revealing that it’s gearing up for the launch of a highly-anticipated upgrade.
In a statement, Uniswap Labs says it is targeting to roll out Uniswap v3 on the Ethereum mainnet on May 5th with features that’ll make it “the most flexible and capital-efficient automated market maker ever designed.”
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On the upcoming Uniswap iteration, liquidity providers (LPs) will have more control over how they allocate capital on the platform.
“Concentrated liquidity, giving individual LPs granular control over what price ranges their capital is allocated to. Individual positions are aggregated together into a single pool, forming one combined curve for users to trade against.”
According to Uniswap, the feature allows LPs to provide liquidity with up to 4000x capital efficiency relative to Uniswap v2, enabling them to generate higher returns on their capital.
The update also introduces multiple fee tiers which allow liquidity providers to be “appropriately compensated for taking on varying degrees of risk.”
Uniswap adds that gas costs on v3 swaps will be “slightly cheaper” than the current version of the decentralized exchange. The much-awaited deployment of the Optimism layer-two scaling solution will follow soon after the v3 launch according to Uniswap.
“Transactions made on the Optimism deployment will likely be significantly cheaper.”
In anticipation of the announcement, Uniswap printed an all-time high of $36.41 on March 23rd, according to CoinMarketCap. At the time of writing, UNI is valued at $30.93.
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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any loses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.
Fidelity Investments, the $4.9 trillion asset manager, has filed paperwork with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, to list a new Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund.
The Wise Origin Bitocin Trust was filed with the SEC on Wednesday, according to a Form S-1 Registration Statement that appeared on the regulator’s website. The ETF aims to track the digital currency’s daily performance using the Fidelity Bitcoin Index PR, an index that’s derived from several price feeds.
From the prospectus:
“The Trust provides direct exposure to bitcoin, and the Shares of the Trust are valued on a daily basis using the same methodology used to calculate the Index.”
The fund is incorporated in Delaware, with Fidelity Digital Asset Services listed as the custodian.
Fidelity says investors can access the fund through a traditional brokerage account without the “potential barriers to entry or risks involved with holding or transferring bitcoin directly.” Like other proposed Bitcoin ETFs, the Fidelity Trust is intended to provide more institutional pathways to cryptocurrencies.
Speculation about a U.S. Bitcoin ETF has been rampant since the 2017 bull market. So far, lawmakers at the SEC have struck down every proposal to securitize Bitcoin in an ETF over concerns of extreme volatility and price manipulation. Proponents of the flagship cryptocurrency believe the tide could be changing now that Bitcoin has matured as an asset class.
Last week, Goldman Sachs filed for a new ETF that includes the option to add BTC exposure. The Autocallable Contingent Coupon Coupon ETF-Linked Notes “may have exposure to cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin, indirectly through an investment in a grantor trust,” the prospectus read.
North of the border, Canadian regulators have so far approved two Bitcoin ETFs. The Purpose Bitcoin ETF, which was launched in mid-February, generated $100 million in volume during its first few hours of trading.
Fidelity was among the first major institutions to embrace cryptocurrencies. The firm began mining Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) in 2014, the same year Abigail Johnson became the company’s president and CEO.
The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)notedthat there has been a rising interest in cryptocurrencies from the younger generation, especially among women under age 40.
The regulator said that most of these investors could not withstand the heavy losses associated with this form of investment.
Young People Invest In Crypto For The “Thrills”
Per the report, the FCA said its study showed that young people mostly delve into crypto investments because of the thrill and idea of owning a stake in the companies they invest in.
Also, young people consider crypto investments as some sort of competition over the conventional motive behind investing, which is majorly about securing one’s future.
Notably, social media tips and news were pinpointed as the major source of information driving the investor class, as the authorities fear that people may be misled into buying high-risk products.
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“We are worried that some investors are being tempted – often through online adverts or high-pressure sales tactics – into buying higher-risk products that are very unlikely to be suitable for them,” Sheldon Mills, the FCA’s executive director for consumer and competition, said.
FCA Building. Source: FinancialTimes
The FCA Reiterates Its Warning
This is not the first time the UK financial watchdog has spoken against crypto investments and their associated risks.
In January this year, the FCAwarnedthat investors delving into crypto should be prepared to lose all their money, as they believe the form of investment comes with a significant amount of risk.
The FCA, alongside other global financial authorities, is concerned about the rising interest in cryptocurrencies in recent times.
Increasing Interest In Crypto
The watchdog noted that it would flag off a campaign by next week Tuesday to sensitize investors about the risks associated with high return investments and the key questions consumers should ask before investing.
Although retail investors have been actively involved in crypto since 2017, the amount surged tremendously last year during the peak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the period when governments imposed lockdowns.
Also, people are losing faith in traditional financial institutions, with beliefs circulating that existing financial policies were designed to keep people from excelling.
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Coin Metrics has revealed via its Ethereum Gas Report released on March 22, 2021, that the upcoming Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 may not solve the network’s high gas fee problem, but scalability solutions will.
EIP-1559 Not the Answer
Since its launch in July 2015, Ethereum has grown to become the world’s number one distributed ledger technology (DLT) network for smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) development. However, that exponential growth has brought new challenges for Ethereum, including low scalability, unpredictable and very high gas fees, among others.
In 2018, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed EIP-1559 as a lasting solution to the issue of surging gas fees on the network and the proposal is slated to get implemented on the Ethereum mainnet later in July, alongside the London hard fork.
However, according to the Coin MetricsEthereum Gas Report,the EIP-1559, which is designed to restructure Ethereum’s gas fee system and make gas fees more predictable, may not be able to reduce gas fees, as it is not designed to tackle the root cause of the problem.
Eth2 and Scaling Solutions to Reduce Gas Costs
The researchreportnotes that though the increase in the price of ether (ETH) has had a direct effect on gas fees, it’s however, the congestion on the network that is responsible for the surging transaction fees.
The team wrote:
“Full blocks escalate the intensity of the gas price auction as transaction senders are bidding for scarce space. Since the rise of DeFi in summer 2020, blocks have consistently been about 95 percent full or more. Since March 2021, blocks have been 97 to 98 percent full on average.”
The Ethereum network has the capacity of processing14.6 transactions per secondsand its current block size sits at 12.5M gas (an average of 160-200 transactions per block).
While it’s possible for the Ethereum team to increase the network’s block limits to allow the platform to accommodate more transactions per second, the move would however be detrimental to the decentralization of the network, the team says.
“But layer-2 scaling solutions, and ultimately Ethereum 2.0, will be needed to truly reduce transaction fees over the long-term. Through various means, scalability solutions will increase the number of transactions that can be processed per block, which will, in turn, help relieve the congestion contributing to high fees,” Coin Metrics added.
At press time, the price of ether (ETH) is hovering around $1,732, with a market cap of $199.40 billion, as seen on CoinMarketCap.
