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Crypto startup Outdefine has raised $2.5 million to help web3 talent find jobs, at a time when the industry is grappling with widespread layoffs.  

The seed funding round is co-led by Jump Crypto and TCG Crypto. Other investors include Big Brain Holdings, Formless Capital and Blocore, according to a company release. They will receive combined equity and token warrants. 

Outdefine started fundraising in the spring of this year, and closed the round between June and July.

What is a decentralized hiring network?

Founded by father-son team, Romil Verma and Sanjay Verma, Outdefine is a decentralized network that makes it easier for talent to find work through its hiring marketplace. The platform uses tokenomics to try and drive a more equitable and transparent relationship between hiring companies and talent, said Romil in an interview with The Block. 

“I saw a lot of pain around having built remote teams for three years firsthand, used all the solutions out there like hiring recruiters, using self-service marketplaces, bootcamp solutions, talent hiring networks and always faced the problem of having to hire talent quickly and see the issues around trust and transparency,” Romil said. 

Outdefine is built on the Solana network. The first phase is launching a marketplace where talent can find opportunities. The hope is that developers such as hiring agencies and training programs will then build services on top of the network and use Outdefine’s data and native token to create richer experiences for talent on the network, Romil said. 

“Over a period of time, it’s the community that is going to drive the direction of the token and the roadmap,” he added. 

Users of the network are rewarded with tokens to incentivize usage such as referring friends or contributing to the community. On the hiring companies’ side, the team already several partnerships lined up, Sanjay said. 

A counter-cyclical play

A decentralized hiring network is particularly relevant as both the crypto and broader tech industry grapples with widespread layoffs in response to a challenging economic environment. 

“Outdefine is a counter-cyclical play to the broader market trends and is a real-world application that makes eminent sense,” said Jarrod Dicker, partner at TCG Crypto, in the release. 

“We are able to actually help a lot of talent, find opportunities and help them move to web3, which works for when the economy is depressed,” Romil said. “But as the economy starts to boom, we are able to capitalize on the other side by helping developer ecosystems build businesses and helping companies find talent quickly.” 

“There’s like a two-sided effect to us, which helps us stay in equilibrium,” he added. 

The funds will be used to develop the tokenomics and expand the network. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Amber Group, a struggling crypto trading firm, owes around $130 million to troubled crypto lender Vauld’s CEO Darshan Bathija.

In July, Vauld mentioned in its affidavit that it has a loan receivable worth around $130 million net from an unnamed “Counterparty 1” and that counterparty is Amber, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told The Block.

“Defi Payments has a loan receivable in the amount of ~US$165,557,929 (the ‘Counterparty 1 Loan Receivable’) from Counterparty 1 against which Defi Payments has taken a loan of ~US$35,000,000 (the ‘Counterparty 1 Loan Payable’) from Counterparty 1, where the Counterparty 1 Loan Receivable has been pledged as security against the Counterparty 1 Loan Payable,” the affidavit obtained by The Block at the time reads. The net loan receivable translates to about $130 million. Defi Payments is the Singapore entity of Vauld involved in court proceedings.

The Block has separately also obtained a document that shows Amber owes that same amount to Bathija, who parked Vauld’s funds in his name with Amber.

Amber declined to comment to The Block when contacted. Vauld and Kroll (Vauld’s financial advisor) did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Vauld halted client withdrawals in July and owes more than $400 million to creditors. Amber, on the other hand, appears to be struggling lately. The firm has reportedly undergone several recent layoff rounds, put its expansion plans on hold, and scrapped a $25 million yearly sponsorship deal with Chelsea FC. Amber is said to further cut staff to less than 400 from 700.

The fact that Amber owes Bathija a significant amount is the latest blow for Vauld. Amber has to repay Bathija by June 2023, according to the latest Vauld affidavit dated Nov. 25.

Vauld has not disclosed to its creditors or creditors’ committee that Counterparty 1 is Amber due to a non-disclosure agreement, according to the affidavit. But Vauld said that Counterparty 1, also sometimes referred to as Counterparty A in affidavits, is “is sizable and well known.”

If Amber fails to repay Bathija on time, Vauld could struggle further. The Block reported recently that Vauld has around $10 million stuck on the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX. The affidavit states that figure to be $6 million. India’s Enforcement Directorate recently froze Vauld’s assets worth $46 billion, after the agency found a Vauld client was involved in a money laundering case.

Vauld has been discussing a potential deal with rival Nexo since July. It remains to be seen whether Nexo will make a deal with Vauld, given its growing troubles. Nexo declined to comment.

Vauld has until Jan. 20 to sort its financial issues unless it applies and gets approval for another credit protection extension.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

NF3, a one-stop-shop for NFT trading, has raised $1.65 million in a seed round co-led by Infinity Ventures Crypto and Spartan Group. 

Other backers include DWF Labs, Saison Capital and prominent angel investors including Bitmex founder Arthur Hayes, LeadBlock Partner’s David Chreng and Neil Gomes, EMEA head for fintech at Softbank, according to a company news release. 

NF3 was co-founded by Poorvi Sachar and Bored Ape Yacht Members Skittlewood and 0xStarmowa, both of whom are choosing to keep their identities private. 

The startup was formed out of a realization that core parts of existing NFT infrastructure weren’t catering to collectors like them, Skittlewood said in an interview with The Block. They designed the exchange to solve these problems by offering derivative solutions, including swaps that enable collectors to trade NFTs and options that offer a buy-now-pay-later construct. 

They are aiming to bring the “fun” back to collecting and trading NFTs, rather than just enabling collectors to flip them for profit or sweeping floor prices, Skittlewood said. 

Kelvin Koh, co-founder of Spartan Group, said in the release: “The suite of products that NF3x is providing for its users go above and beyond spot buying and selling, and we’re excited to support them as they onboard the next generation of NFT traders and funds onto their platform.” 

Apecoin staking

The exchange will move into closed beta in the next few weeks, Skittlewood said. It’s also recently partnered with Solidity.io to launch ApeCoinStaking.io, which is a staking platform that combats geo restrictions some Bored Ape Yacht Club holders were facing when trying to stake their Apecoin. 

“Our goal with this platform is obviously we’re launching the swaps and options, but we want to make it a one-stop-shop for web3 and its needs,” Skittlewood said. 

A multi-chain exchange

The platform is currently built on Ethereum, but it aims to be multi-chain, rolling out to chains where there are active NFT communities including Solana, Polygon and Tezos, Skittlewood said. It also aims to be cross-chain, which will enable people to swap assets between different blockchains, he added. 

The startup began raising for the round a week before the collapse of Terra-Luna, Skittlewood said. It was completed in the summer, following the collapse of hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, he added. 

The funds will go toward hiring and smart-contract auditing, Skittlewood said, adding that the fundraise should provide about 18 months of runway. 

“I am excited to support NF3x’s vision of a tech infrastructure providing transparency, security and flexibility in a space where existing P2P trading methods are capital inefficient, and extremely susceptible to scams and hacks,“ said David Chreng, founding partner of LeadBlock, in the news release. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

In the wake of FTX’s demise, there’s been an awful lot of mudslinging — particularly between the exchange’s former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and the founders of collapsed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.

One of the biggest claims is that crypto trading firm Alameda Research — the sister firm to FTX — deliberately crashed the cryptocurrency luna and its sister token TerraUSD in order to bring down Three Arrows Capital (3AC). It’s an allegation that has sparked a market manipulation inquiry by U.S. prosecutors. 

You “have to be afraid of highly conflicted industry players working to destroy your assets,” 3AC co-founder Su Zhu tweeted on Thursday, as part of a thread mooting that “Alameda/FTX + affiliated parties used their clients’ assets and positions to orchestrate an elaborate attack” on luna. 

Zhu’s criticism was joined by Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon, the creator of luna and TerraUSD. Kwon said that Genesis Trading — crypto’s largest prime brokerage that is facing its own liquidity crisis — purchased $1 billion of TerraUSD shortly before the crash, claiming that it wanted to participate in the Terra DeFi ecosystem. He asked openly whether these funds were provided to Alameda or Bankman-Fried in order to attack the token.

3AC’s other co-founder, Kyle Davies, echoed this claim on a podcast with AnalyseAsia this week. He said that the funds handed to Genesis were given out to a market making firm that immediately sold the tokens in order to drop the price.

“I made a lot of big mistakes this year. But this wasn’t one of them. There’s no evidence, because it didn’t happen. Please, please, focus on your own house,” Bankman-Fried said on Twitter on Friday, in response to a separate tweet thread from Zhu.

FTX bankruptcy

FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Nov. 11, with Chicago-based attorney John Ray taking over Bankman-Fried’s role as CEO. There’s currently a tussle between the U.S. and the Bahamas over the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy proceedings.

When Bankman-Fried responded to the allegations from Kwon and 3AC’s founders, Zhu questioned how SBF was able to know so much about Alameda’s trades — when he had publicly stated that he deliberately kept a distance from the firm. 

Separately, the former FTX executive said on Friday he’s willing to give evidence on the exchange’s collapse to a U.S. congressional committee next week. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) confirmed he is willing to testify in front of the House Committee on Financial Services in Washington D.C. next Wednesday.

“I still do not have access to much of my data — professional or personal. So there is a limit to what I will be able to say, and I won’t be as helpful as I’d like,” he Tweeted, adding: “But as the committee still thinks it would be useful, I am willing to testify on the 13th.”

He added in a tweet thread that he would try to give details on FTX US’s solvency and American customers, pathways that could return value to users internationally, what he thinks led to the crash and his own failings.

“I had thought of myself as a model CEO, who wouldn’t become lazy or disconnected. Which made it that much more destructive when I did,” he wrote. “I’m sorry. Hopefully people can learn from the difference between who I was and who I could have been.”

The Senate had demanded he testify, but had been left with a pregnant silence up until now. A letter sent by senators threatened Bankman-Fried with a congressional subpoena if he refused to cooperate. The deadline for his response was set for 5pm ET yesterday.

The embattled crypto mogul has given several media interviews since the collapse of his company, detailing his version of the story, but punted on an earlier invitation from the House Financial Services Committee, saying he wanted to wait until he had “finished learning and reviewing what happened” to the companies he ran and owns. 

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Germany’s financial regulator BaFin warned that crypto exchange platform Rtcoin is not authorized to operate in the country, in a statement issued on Friday.

BaFin said that Rtcoin was not registered under KWG to conduct financial-related services in the country. KWG, or “Kreditwesengesetz,” is Germany’s Bank Act that guides the operations of entities providing banking and financial services. Crypto exchange platforms operating in Germany also fall under the scope of these regulations.

“The company is not supervised by BaFin,” today’s announcement said, adding: “The information provided on the company’s website, rtcoin.org, gives reasonable grounds to suspect that RtCoin is conducting banking business and providing financial services in Germany without the required authorization.”

The crypto exchange platform’s website lists German as one of its eight service languages. Rtcoin bills itself as the “world’s leading digital asset trading platform.” The company’s website says that it is registered in the Cayman Islands and maintains operation centers in four jurisdictions, including the UK.

Rtcoin does not, however, appear in the Financial Conduct Authority’s list of registered companies or firms with temporary registration in the UK. The crypto exchange is not even present in the FCA’s list of unregistered crypto companies, which details firms operating in the UK that the FCA is aware of but which have not registered with the regulatory agency.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Crypto exchange Bybit will require updated Know-Your-Customer (KYC) verification checks for various products from Dec. 15.

Bybit’s one-click buys, fiat deposits and peer-to-peer trading will require individual KYC, as will NFT purchases and sales of more than $10,000 on the secondary marketplace, according to a new post in the exchange’s help center.

NFT deposits, withdrawals and purchases from the primary marketplace will have compulsory KYC enforced from Dec. 30.

Withdrawal limits for each KYC level will also change on Dec. 20, with non-KYC users able to withdraw a maximum of 20,000 USDT per day and 100,000 USDT per month.

Crypto deposits and trading appear to be unaffected, though the exchange notes that it “may further expand KYC requirements in the near future.”

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Coinbase has called on users to convert their Tether stablecoins to the stablecoin it cofounded, USD Coin — while waiving fees for doing so.

“Now more than ever, stability and trust are of the utmost importance to customers,” the crypto exchange said in an official blog post, adding that the ability to swap USDT to USDC at no cost represents a continued effort to give users “safe, responsible ways to hold and grow their crypto.”

Coinbase reiterated that its associated stablecoin is “unique in that it’s 100% backed by cash and short-dated U.S. treasuries held in U.S. regulated financial institutions.” The exchange added that USDC delivers monthly attestations and is “always redeemable 1:1 for U.S. dollars.”

Tether FUD

The move by Coinbase may be seen as a shot at Tether’s USDT in the so-called “stablecoin wars.”

On Dec. 1, the Wall Street Journal published a report claiming the company behind tether “may not have enough liquid assets to pay redemptions in a crisis.” That assessment came from an apparent increase in loans, as opposed to direct sales.

Tether responded with a scathing blog post titled: “WSJ & CO: The Hypocrisy of Mainstream Media, Asleep at the Wheel of Information.” 

“Critics and media outlets have spent years criticizing, investigating, and warning against the purported ‘ever impending’ failure of Tether, yet they were completely asleep at the wheel as a hugely significant portion of the crypto industry imploded due to irresponsible leverage, outright fraud, and regulatory arbitrage,” the post said.

Tether identified collapsed crypto exchange FTX and its sister firm Alameda Research, bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi, embattled hedge fund Genesis, lender Celsius, collapsed hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and the failed Terra project as “a few” of the entities Tether skeptics had ignored.

USDC currently has a total supply of 39.38 billion, while USDT has a supply of 32.3 billion, according to The Block’s Data Dashboard.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Failed crypto exchange FTX’s Japanese subsidiary, FTX Japan, received approval from regulators to postpone the deadline for its business suspension by three months.

FTX Japan was initially asked to suspend business by Dec. 9, but the Ministry of Finance of Japan’s Kanto Local Finance Bureau has extended the request to Mar. 9, 2023, according to Reuters.

FTX Japan addressed the extension in a blog post. The exchange noted that it is following a plan to improve its business in line with what it submitted to the Kanto Local Finance Bureau in mid-November.

The reason for the deadline extension revolves around FTX Japan’s failure to return assets from custody to creditors. The exchange claimed its “primary focus has been on re-enabling withdrawals for both crypto and fiat assets that are under custody” on Dec. 1.

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

DeFi Kingdoms’ revamped Serendale realm is officially live on metaverse blockchain Klaytn.

The play-to-earn game, known for its nostalgia-evoking 16-bit classic RPG game graphics, was previously based on Harmony but announced plans to move to Klaytn in August.

A new utility token, JADE, will be minted through a native DEX and used for all game-related features in Serendale.

The relaunch of Serendale marks a major milestone for the game. Launched in 2021, it’s the third chain the game has called home. But while Serendale has now moved house, the Crystalvale realm will remain on DFK Chain, an Avalanche subnet.

Since it went live yesterday, the Klaytn-based part of the game has been accessed by over 4,200 unique wallets, according to DappRadar. 

By contrast, activity on Harmony-Serendale has wound down over the last few months.

Earlier in the year, Harmony experienced a major hack on its Horizon Bridge in which criminals made off with nearly $100 million in ETH. In addition, the DFK team reported ongoing difficulties working with Harmony. 

Klaytn hopes the partnership with DeFi Kingdoms will help it reinforce its global presence and liquidity. Created by South Korean internet giant Kakao Corp, the blockchain pivoted to focusing on metaverse and gaming earlier this year.

The terms of the partnership between the two haven’t been disclosed, though the DFK team said that Klaytn paid for the collaboration and offered “good incentives.”

“DeFi Kingdoms contributes remarkably to the Avalanche blockchain ecosystem by ensuring more than 80% of transactions,” said John Cho, head of growth at Klaytn Foundation. “We expect that our partnership with DeFi Kingdoms will help Klaytn reinforce its global presence and liquidity simultaneously.”

© 2022 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.