American crypto lending firm, BlockFi has announced the relaunch of its yield-bearing product in the US, a product that will only be accessible to accredited investors.
Dubbed BlockFi Yield, the lending firm said it is offering this service based on an exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.
The company said the product will not be registered with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), but that this will not mean the product will be available to just anyone. The company said the product will be available in Beta by the end of this year to a few clients, but that it will launch it for all eligible clients by the start of 2023.
“As we continue to diligently work towards registration with the SEC for a public offering for BlockFi Yield, we are delighted to share that U.S. clients verified as accredited investors will soon be able to earn interest on digital assets at BlockFi,” said Flori Marquez, Founder and COO of BlockFi. “A foundational pillar of BlockFi is to be client-centric and serve as a stabilizing industry force. We are proud to be one of the battle-tested organizations that are still serving their clients, listening to their needs, and evolving as we continue to support their digital asset journey.”
Rekindling the Yield Product
The relaunch of the BlockFi Yield product is a testament to the fact that the lending outfit has learned from its past mistakes. The earlier version of the product was targeted at a wider net of clients, spurring a series of investigations from states as to whether the offering constituted an offering or not.
BlockFi was fined $100 million by the SEC back in February, drawing on a glaring loophole in its offering. With the repackaged launch of the product, the firm said it will make the verification of accredited investors a compulsory requirement to access the new product.
BlockFi was among the distressed firm by reason of the crypto winter, however, the purchase agreement it has with FTX Derivatives Exchange has helped it stay in business unlike its competitor Celsius Network.
The German offshoot of American cryptocurrency trading firm, Coinbase Global Inc has been ordered by the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority known as BaFin to ensure it achieves a proper business organization.
For the order that came into effect at the end of October became necessary as the regulator said it found a number of inconsistencies in some aspects of the company’s operations when it conducted an audit of its financial statement.
BaFin specifically noted that Coinbase is directly violating the standards put forth by the German Banking Act.
The press release issued by the regulator made reference to Section 25a (1) of the Act, a provision that mandates companies to maintain adequate risk management procedures. Additionally, the section of the law also requires firms tagged as GmbH to maintain adequate staffing, as well as putting adequate emergency processes bordering on its information technology system and employee remuneration.
“An audit of the annual financial statements revealed organizational deficiencies at the institute. The regularity of the business organization was not given in all audited areas,” the regulator noted in its statement.
Germany remains one of the countries with robust and clear regulations for the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Despite its positive leanings toward the crypto ecosystem, Germany has maintained a cautious stance alongside other economies in a bid to protect investors from uncertainties that are tied to the nascent crypto ecosystem as seen by the collapse of many crypto heavyweights including Celsius Network, Voyager Digital and Three Arrows Capital (3AC) amongst others.
Coinbase was licensed by BaFin to provide custody-related services last year, marking one of the exchange’s ambitious pushes into the European Union. With the major correction on its internal controls and risk management measures, Coinbase Germany will have to heed the BaFin’s directives in a bid to continue serving its customers in the country.
Michael Miebach, the Chief Executive Officer of American payments giant Mastercard Inc is the latest financial industry veteran to share his optimism about the future of the nascent crypto ecosystem.
In a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, Miebach said he believes in the potential of the emerging assets, however, there are a lot of intricacies that must be resolved before the industry can go mainstream. When asked if he believes crypto can get to the point where everyone gets to use it as payment for transactions, Miebach responded by saying;
“Entirely possible, but I think it’s a long way to go before crypto becomes mainstream.”
Among the things he pointed out, that will need to be sorted include the ease of purchase of crypto and its associated products like Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). The compliance and security aspects of these emerging protocols have also remained a frail part that has created significant loopholes that must be covered in a bid to truly chart the mainstream embrace of the sector.
“I think this question on regulatory compliance, on scalable technology, on making sure it’s a predictable user experience – why is buying an NFT such a clunky experience? It shouldn’t be,” Miebach said in the interview.
Mastercard has been playing a central role in helping to get crypto products across to users around the world. Many crypto exchanges and service providers have partnered with Mastercard to issue co-branded payment cards to their users for easy crypto transactions.
Notably, Miebach said Mastercard’s involvement in the crypto ecosystem is encompassing and also goes beyond direct payment and into Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). For Miebach, the crypto industry may have a lot of headwinds at this time, but the possibility that they will grow into a dominant aspect of the financial ecosystem in the long term is high.
Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao has just made a revelation that it is looking at acquiring FTX Global, based on a prompting from the exchange for liquidity bailout.
FTX Derivatives Exchange is making the headlines today for the wrong reasons and one such is that the platform has halted trading activities for users. Drawing on its own analytics, The Block first reported the transaction halt, pointing out that the last time the trading platform stopped processing withdrawals the last transaction was at 06:37 ET (11:37 GMT) on the Ethereum blockchain.
Raging FUD on FTX Ecosystem
The entire Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubts had been detailed by Blockchain.News in previous reports but essential entails the hyperinflation of the exchange’s native token FTT as shown in the leaked Alameda Research balance sheet.
It was also alleged that FTX is reputable for lobbying against other industry participants, a move Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao pointed out in a recent tweet promising to sell over $600 million worth of FTT tokens in his exchange’s vault.
The situation degenerated and FTX users started withdrawing their funds from the trading platform with a corresponding dump off of FTT which has slumped by 19.04% to $18.50 over the past 24 hours.
As predicted by a number of analysts, the withdrawal halt might have been fueled as a result of the bank run placed on the exchange platform.
Moving Forward: The Binance-FTX Settlement
While its details remain unknown, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has come out to announce that his platform and Binance have inked a strategic agreement with Binance.
After having revealed that a competitor is likely spreading false rumors about its operations, Bankman-Fried acknowledged the role of Binance in the ecosystem. In a later tweet, CZ confirmed that Binance will be buying FTX Global and will be making due diligence on the deal in due course.
CZ noted that nothing is final yet and Binance can still decide to pull out of the deal at any time. The industry was riled by these latest updates with the combined crypto market cap dropping 2.33% to $1.01 trillion.
Crypto exchange Coinmetrohas successfully raised $7 million in funding in a round backed by three angel investors and hundred shareholders.
Following the funding, the valuation of the company has touched a three-fold increase to $180 million. Previously, the company was valued at $60 million last year.
Founded in 2018, Estonia-based Coinmetro is an EU-licensed exchange. The crypto exchange also has regulatory registrations in the US, Canada and Australia.
The company plans to use the new capital to scale up operations in the US, UK and Europe, while also rolling out a series of passive income products.
Coinmetro CEO Kevin Murcko said, “we have no shortage of ideas and are looking forward to making them real for our growing community over the months and years to come.”
According to Crunchbase, the crypto startup has altogether raised a total of $18 million to date.
The company next plans to raise a Series A in early 2023.
During the third quarter, the average check size for a seed and pre-Series A round was $6.5 million.
Recently, another crypto firm was on the hunt for raising funds.
New-York based web3 investment firm CoinFund announced on November 7, 2022, that it has been looking to raise $250 million just three months after its previous fund.
CoinFund announced that it plans to use the investment to fund seed-stage startups.
Three separate filings have shown that CoinFund’s Cayman Islands-domiciled funds aim to raise $130 million and $20 million. Meanwhile, the company’s Delaware-associated branch is looking for $100 million.
The reports suggest that the funding round is still in its infant stage, and sales have not yet occurred.
In August, CoinFund announced a $300 million fund to back early-stage blockchain projects.
The fund was backed by institutional investors, including the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, Adams Street Partners and StepStone Group.
The venture fund, which is called ‘The CoinFund Ventures I fund,’ was opened to invest in web3 firms showing commercial traction.
MarketAcross, the premier blockchain PR and marketing firm, is the official global media partner for the Future of Crypto conference, organized by Benzinga. The event is a new Benzinga initiative which wants to focus on the broader cryptocurrency industry, including DeFi and NFTs.
With the strategic partnership, MarketAcross can leverage its marketing & PR expertise to bring more exposure to the Future of Crypto Event. Additionally, the MarketAcross network will be tapped to add speakers to the upcoming event and give thought leaders a platform to reach their target audience.
The Future of Crypto is in its first iteration and will take place at Pier Sixty in New York City on December 7, 2022. Several speakers have been announced, including Kevin O’Leary, Anthony Scaramucci, and the Dapper Labs team. More names will be added in the coming weeks.
In addition, there will be a unique panel by Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) members and how they plan to move the brand forward.
Enthusiasts looking to attend The Future of Crypto by Benzinga can purchase tickets from the official event website.
The Future of Crypto is a brand-new cryptocurrency and blockchain event with the prominent backing of Benzinga. The financial media outlet was one of the first to cover altcoins and NFTs, making it a household name in crypto circles.
The Future of Crypto is slated to be a multi-event series, with further details on additional events to be released in the coming months. In addition, MarketAcross will bring the events to the forefront of attention and help more people understand the importance of NFTs, the metaverse, DeFi, crypto, and blockchain.
About The Future of Crypto The BIGGEST day of the year for crypto enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, investors, and networkers to discover the #1 crypto ideas you can use today – directly from hundreds of industry insiders and dozens of project creators. Website
About MarketAcross
Headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, MarketAcross is the world’s leading blockchain PR and marketing firm. It provides a complete end-to-end marketing solution for blockchain firms across the globe. MarketAcross has helped many of the industry’s largest exchanges and blockchain projects, including Polkadot, Solana, Binance, Polygon, Crypto.com, Huobi, and eToro, build their brands among cryptocurrency and blockchain audiences.
According to CoinMarketCap, Litecoin’s price shows an impressive bullish trend, which is worth analyzing. The token price has risen by 28.05% in the past seven days and has subsequently entered the top 20, as per the price-tracking website for crypto assets.
At the time of writing, the price of Litecoin (LTC) was $68.65, with a 24-hour trading volume of $1,400,844,453. The token has been down 1.59% over the last 24 hours. The cryptocurrency is ranked #19, with a live market cap of $4,912,922,846, according to CoinMarketCap.
On October 21, Litecoin was worth $51.18 per coin. Like many cryptocurrencies, the coin has been affected by the overall crypto market downturn and is down 74% in the past year and 65% year to date. In comparison, Bitcoin is down about 69% over the past year and 59% year to date.
Litecoin opened in 2022 at $150.80, and today it is down by 54.39%. At the time of writing, the LTC price is $68.65, up 0.76% from the previous trading day.
On November 1, the price of Litecoin jumped nearly 8% after the payments company MoneyGram enabled users to trade and store several crypto assets, including Litecoin, on its app.
Besides Litecoin, Moneygram also allows users to trade and store Bitcoin and Ethereum. However, with Litecoin having a much smaller market cap and much less of a following, the news did not move Bitcoin and Ethereum in the same way it boosted Litecoin.
Moneygram announced that users in almost all US states and the District of Columbia can purchase, sell and hold Litecoin and other cryptocurrencies. As a result, Litecoin has recently disassociated itself from altcoins and posted a massive rally against Bitcoin.
The price of Litecoin is rallying after temporary decoupling from the crypto market. The token has experienced an increase in the number of addresses holding 1,000 or more LTCs. Litecoin has added 314 new whale addresses; these wallets hold large volumes of LTC and contribute to a huge increase in on-chain activity.
The recent activity in Litecoin price comes after months of consolidation at the $55 level. Litecoin value is now past the key resistance level at $60, which has served as a barrier to a breakout on several occasions.
Besides the price boost, a few days ago, Litecoin mining difficulty set a new record high, peaking at just under 18 million hashes. Blockchian.News reported the matter on November 6. The rise in Litecoin’s mining difficulty means the competition rises as more miners enter the crypto network to reap the rewards.
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried tweeted Monday, claiming that “FTX is fine. Assets are fine.”.
“FTX has enough to cover all client holdings. We don’t invest in client assets (even in treasuries). We have been processing all withdrawals and will continue to be,” said Bankman-Fried on his Twitter, trying to boost the confidence towards his investors as the speculation mounted over the weekend about the solvency of billionaire Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto exchange.
The CEO made a move after he disclosed the health of FTX’s balance sheet—a warning he has learned from the Terra luna meltdown.
On Monday, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao shocked the crypto community with the exchange’s move to liquidate its holdings of FTX’s cryptocurrency FTT, a rival to Binance’s own much larger BNB stablecoin. Blockchain.News reported the matter.
While CZ did not specify the value of the FTT cryptocurrency he planned to offload, he confirmed via Twitter that almost $600 million of FTT was transferred from a wallet to Binance’s exchange as “part of” Binance’s FTT exit.
CZ posted to Twitter on Sunday that liquidating FTT is just post-exit risk management, learning from luna. CZ said, “Due to market conditions and limited liquidity, we expect [the sale of Binance’s FTT] will take a few months to complete,” adding that the sale would be done in a way that “minimizes market impact.”
Following its collapse, Celsius has been accused of artificially inflating its balance sheet by manipulating the price of its cel cryptocurrency.
Last week, the crypto blog Dirty Bubble Media drew parallels between Sam Bankman-Fried’s trading company Alameda Research and the bankrupt crypto lender Celsius after media reports alleged that Alameda’s balance sheet is being used by FTX to boost its native token, FTT.
Yesterday, Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda, hit back against CZ’s suggestions, telling him that if he is looking to minimize the market impact on his FTT sales, then Alameda would happily buy it all from him at $22. Ellison then posted that Alameda’s reported balance sheet is “for a subset of our corporate entities”, and the company has more than “$10 billion of assets that aren’t reflected there.”
Crypto Community Raises Concerns
The drama has caused anxiety among the crypto community members who fear the industry will be hard hit by another Terra luna crash or Celsius-style meltdown after the stablecoin reserves on the exchange dropped significantly over the last 24 hours.
Yesterday, CryptoQuant data indicated that the FTX stablecoin reserve is currently at $107 million, an improvement after it dropped by 93% over the last two weeks to $51 million earlier.
The increased reserve was because Alameda Research sent stablecoins from Circle and other exchanges to FTX. Alameda is a crypto trading firm owned by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
On-chain analyst Lookonchain also stated that Alameda has withdrawn $487 million USDC from Circle and transferred it to the FTX exchange since November 3. It also withdrew more than $197 million USDC from Circle after CEO Caroline Ellison said the trading company was willing to purchase Binance’s FTT for $22 each.
Furthermore, Chinese crypto reporter Colin Wu reported that firms like Jump crypto and Nexo had made huge amounts of withdrawals from FTX over the last 24 hours.
Lookonchain reported that such a wave of withdrawals has made FTX’s hot wallet value drop to $1.8 billion from $2.4 billion in the last 24 hours.
Crypto influencer and founder of crypto banter Ran Neuner also informed his followers to withdraw their funds from FTX while noting that he has nothing against the exchange. Ben Armstrong (BitBoy Crypto) also urged people to close their FTX accounts without saying that the exchange was insolvent.
But Gabriel Shapiro, the general counsel at blockchain researcher Delphi Labs, tweeted that [It] feels like people want FTX to be insolvent and are trying to cause a bank run. [It] would be another major political [and] regulatory black eye for the industry—can we not?”Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried has emphasized that all is well with the FTX exchange. He tweeted that the exchange had already processed billions of dollars of deposits/withdrawals yesterday and said it would keep doing so. He added that the exchange would welcome users who withdrew their funds when all these blows over.
Avalanche Foundation has announced it will grant a $4 million incentive in AVAX tokens for the growth of the decentralized trading platform GMX.
The million-dollar incentive is deducted from the Avalanche Rush, a liquidity mining incentive program by Avalanche Foundation aimed to boost the Avalanche DeFi ecosystem.
According to Avalanche, the $4 million incentive will be issued over a multi-month duration alongside its collaboration platforms building on the GMX protocol. The collaborators include TraderJoe, YieldYak, Dopex, and Yeti Finance.
Launched on Avalanche in January, GMX is a decentralized exchange platform that enables users to trade spot and perpetual futures contracts on the Avalanche blockchain while also offering on-chain trading and deep liquidity.
The platform eliminates the risk of impermanent loss by allowing liquidity providers to risk the loss of their capital if GMX traders are profitable. Meanwhile, if traders lose their money instead, fees generated are rewarded to liquidity providers. In contrast, if the traders are being profitable, liquidity providers take responsibility.
The incentive program cancels some of the risk correlated with providing liquidity on GMX. It allows the collaborators of the protocol to build new types of products on top of the revenue model used by GMX. Alongside the $4 million, which will be allocated over a few months, users would be able to provide liquidity on the GMX platform and make use of the new products the platform collaborators develop.
Notably, the incentive program Avalanche Rush has been a part of the rapid growth of the Avalanche DeFi ecosystem since its launch in 2021. As the smart contract platform stated, ”the incentive program boosted its DeFi total value locked (TVL) by 900% within just a month of its launch.’’
GMX is not the only platform utilizing the Avalanche blockchain amid the extreme market condition. In September, New York-based global investment firm KKR & Co. Inc announced that it had put some part of its private equity funds on the Avalanche blockchain.
In an explanation on Twitter, co-founder and chief customer service of Binance exchange Yi He claimed that Binance is not in a war with FTX and has no intention of engaging in drama.
Following Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao or CZ’s announcement that the exchange would start selling its remaining FTX’s FTT exchange token holdings, rumours declaring both exchanges might be beefing with each other have been going around.
The speculations started to look real, specifically when FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried took to his Twitter and said,
“A competitor is trying to go after us with false rumors. FTX is fine. Assets are fine. FTX has enough to cover all client holdings. We don’t invest in client assets (even in treasuries). We have been processing all withdrawals and will continue to be.”
As a result, on Monday, Binance Co-founder Yi He decided to clear the air. Yi He tweeted, “Recently, the Portfolio Management team at [Binance] Labs decided to sell FTT based on the risk-control metrics we monitored.” She added saying a public announcement of such a decision evinces that Binance Labs “always respond to what our community asks in a transparent and direct way.”
In short, Yi He concluded, “The point we’d like to stress is that the decision to hold or sell a token depends on one’s own risk appetite and judgment. Our decision to sell FTT is a pure investment-related exit decision, which has nothing to do with “a war,” and we have no intention to engage in drama.”
Speaking of Binance, the exchange has been dipping its feet into different industry sectors over the past months. Last month, CZ disclosed in an interview with Bloomberg its plan to consider buying banks with $1 billion.
Though CZ did not specifically disclose the targets, he stated he was open to minority investments or full takeovers. Zhao also pointed out that investment banking is a reasonable strategy for Binance because when partnering with banks, Binance usually attracts many new users, which will also boost the bank’s valuation.
