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Yakoa, a California-based NFT fraud detection startup, has raised $4.8 million in a seed funding round. 

Brevan Howard Digital, Volt Capital and Collab+Currency co-led the round, with Uniswap Labs Ventures, Alliance DAO, Orange DAO, Time Zero Capital, Sunset Ventures and others participating.

Yakoa was founded in February by two high school friends, Andrew Dworschak and Graham Robinson. Dworschak studied and researched artificial intelligence and intellectual property at Stanford University and discovered that his research could be applied to the NFT space.

“The entire blockchain space needs to be more user-centric,” Dworschak said in an interview. “We need to put additional tools in place that actually protect the users.” 

Yakoa has a SaaS business model and serves web3 platforms, giving them a map of where copies of their content are surfacing. The startup says it has already indexed NFTs across major blockchains and analyzed them with AI technology to catch fraud before it reaches the consumer. 

Yakoa is not the only NFT fraud fighter in the industry. Optic and Doppel are two of its closest competitors, who both recently raised funds — $11 million and $5 million, respectively.

Yakoa aims to mainly serve three types of clients: NFT marketplaces, hosting entities such as metaverse platforms and brands, although its initial focus is on the first type of clients, Robinson said in the interview. NFT marketplace aggregator Genie, which was recently acquired by Uniswap Labs, is one of Yakoa’s clients. 

With the fresh equity capital in hand, Yakoa plans to increase its team size, Robinson said. There are currently less than 10 people working for Yakoa, and the firm plans to increase its headcount to around 20 in the near term, he added.

© 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.

Quick Take

• Rapid Insights provide a deeper analysis of the current crypto landscape in a timely fashion.
• In the aftermath of the FTX collapse, the impact of this event on the treasuries of NFT projects has become a pressing issue.
• Out of the top 10 NFT projects by all-time trading volume, none has stated to have funds stuck on FTX.
• In addition, 15.4% of the total outflowing mint revenue funds have been transferred to FTX.

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Web3 gaming monetization platform PlayEmber has raised $2.3 million in a pre-seed round led by Shima Capital. Investors in the round also include Big Brain Holdings, Hyperithm, Warburg Serres, Lyrik Ventures and Huobi Ventures, according to a company release.

PlayEmber aims to make it easier for gaming advertising dollars to transition from the web2 market to web3 through a Unity-based software development kit that implements a custom monetization solution.

The company’s co-founders, Hugo Furneaux and Jon Hook, have previously worked with and for gaming companies — such as Voodoo, Lion Studios, Homa Games and BoomBit.

PlayEmber started out as a games and development publishing company, according to an interview with PocketGamer.biz. The platform will accelerate its growth by leveraging the existing games studio, the release notes. 

“Given PlayEmber’s combination of successful Web2 titles brought to the Web3 space, deep gaming expertise as the team builds out its SDK, and an exceptionally strong core management team, we see a very bright road ahead for PlayEmber and intend to support the team however we can as they build out this vision,” said Yida Gao, managing general partner at Shima Capital.

The startup also received strong strategic support from the NEAR Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports the NEAR protocol ecosystem.

PlayEmber’s beta product is already live. The company says the funds will be used to accelerate the growth of the team and the platform.

© 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.

The stablecoin market has stabilized since the collapse of TerraUSD as confidence is returning to larger coins, Fitch Ratings said. 

Tether and Circle, the issuers of USDT and USDC stablecoins, have made concerted efforts to increase investor confidence and improve price stability, the firm said in a report. Both issuers have increased the proportion of liquid assets backing the stablecoins, though excess risk remains. 

While Tether reduced USDT’s commercial paper holdings — now at zero according to the firm — its portfolio still holds more volatile and potentially less liquid assets, such as precious metals, the report said.

“USDT’s consolidated assets exceed its liabilities by 0.3%, which may not cover volatile swings in values of some underlying assets if USDT has to liquidate assets,” Fitch wrote. 

Meanwhile, USDC holds a high level of cash through U.S. deposits (20%) and short-duration U.S. treasuries (80%). 

USDT and USDC have the largest share of stablecoin volume, with $205 billion and $195 billion, respectively, this month, according to The Block’s data. The adjusted on-chain volume of stablecoins so far in November is $473 billion, meaning USDT and USDC make up over 60% of the total volume. 

While stablecoins have been showing signs of stability, USDT briefly traded below its peg to the U.S. dollar last Thursday. The Tron DAO Reserve said it would purchase 1 billion USDT to fight short sellers as a result. 

New coins on the block

The rating agency said the number of new stablecoins increased to 132 by the end of August — a 76% increase from the first quarter of 2022.

“Fitch Ratings believes that the entry of many new coins is likely to lead to additional issues and failures of smaller stablecoins,” the report said.

© 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 thinks that he can raise enough cash to make users whole and spent the past weekend with a few remaining employees seeking commitments from investors, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar. 

Those efforts to fill a shortfall of up to $8 billion have not been successful so far, and the Wall Street Journal said it couldn’t determine what Bankman-Fried has been offering investors in return fresh funding. If the raise were to be successful, he’d likely have to negotiate with creditors to gain approval. 

FTX filed for bankruptcy protection last week. Bankman-Fried told the New York Times on Sunday that he had numerous regrets over the collapse of the company and that the exchange’s margin position had been “substantially larger” than he had thought it was.

“I’ll get to what happened,” he wrote on Tuesday morning in the latest update to a cryptic thread on Twitter. “But for now, let’s talk about where we are today.”

© 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.

The Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami’s resident CryptoPunk, “Priscila,” is getting a friend.

Yuga Labs will donate CryptoPunk #305 to the institute as part of a new initiative to put iconic NFTs from the collection in museums and galleries all over the world.

The endeavor will see Yuga Labs — which owns top collections, including CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Meebits, Otherdeeds and, as of this week, Beeple’s 10KTF — provide museums with resources for safe storage of NFTs, display the best practices and web3 education.

That CryptoPunks has been chosen for this over its other collections is hardly surprising. Since June this year, it has been headed by brand lead Noah Davis — the former head of digital art at Christie’s auction house — who says that “aesthetically speaking, Punks are about as chic as Donald Judd furniture or Piet Mondrian paintings” and believes that CryptoPunks deserve to be on the walls of contemporary art and design institutions worldwide.

“What makes the CryptoPunks an especially important work of contemporary art, is the way in which the collector community coalesces in virtual and sometimes real spaces for semi-constant conversation, collaboration, debate, and comradery,” he said in a statement, adding: “For contrast, I assure you, there is no gated Discord server or Telegram group for Willem DeKooning collectors.”

NFT art galleries are a staple of the metaverse, but this isn’t the first time NFTs have gone on display in museums and other real-life institutions — where they are often displayed on large screens that mimic canvases hanging on a wall. Earlier this year, the world’s first NFT museum in Seattle launched as an outlet for artists, creators and collectors to display their pieces and educate the public about digital art. MoMA will also host an NFT exhibit by visual artist Refik Anadol later this month. 

ICA Miami obtained its first CryptoPunk, #5293, from museum trustee Eduardo Burillo in July 2021. It was named “Priscila” after Burillo’s wife. The institute also launched its own NFT platform with Palm and LiveArtX in April.

© 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.

Mainstream cryptocurrencies traded marginally lower on Tuesday morning on the U.S. East Coast, while some altcoins bucked the trend. 

Bitcoin was down 1.7% at $16,883 over the past day, while ether lost 1.3% to trade at $1,271, according to data compiled by CoinGecko.

Altcoins were rising, with Ripple’s XRP up 7.4% over the past day and Polkadot’s DOT adding 2.2%.

Decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap’s UNI token — built on the Ethereum network — gained 4.1%.

UNIUSD chart by TradingView

Trading volume on Uniswap of $51 billion for November so far has already eclipsed October’s $29 billion. It’s on track to beat its highest level since May, when it clocked in at $61 billion, according to The Block’s data volume on the DEX.

© 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.

Nestcoin CEO Yele Bademosi has revealed that the company has been impacted by the FTX collapse as its operational funds are currently stuck in the bankrupt crypto exchange.

Nestcoin kept some of the funds it raised during its investment rounds in FTX, according to a statement. Alameda Research, FTX’s sister firm, was an investor in Nestcoin’s $6.5 million pre-seed fundraising round in February.

“We used the closely-associated exchange, FTX, as a custodian to store a significant portion of the stablecoin investment we raised — i.e., our day-to-day operation budget,” Bademosi stated. A report by the Financial Times says this “significant portion” amounted to $4 million.

FTX has since collapsed after hating customer withdrawals a week ago. Reports have emerged over the past week of an $8 billion hole in the exchange’s balance sheet as well as allegations that the exchange diverted customer funds to help bail out Alameda.

Having lost access to the funds, Nestcoin says it will have to adjust its plans. These adjustments include letting go of almost half of its employees and implementing a 40% pay cut for the remaining workers. Some employees are also going to be furloughed for as long as two months. Bademosi is reportedly forgoing his compensation while the company navigates this period.

Bademosi, a former Binance director, established Nestcoin with Taiwo Orilogbon, formerly of Bundle Africa, in 2021. The company bills itself as a web3 gateway for Nigerians and Africans to access crypto sectors like NFTs, play-to-earn gaming, metaverse, and DeFi among others.

© 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.

The Supreme Court of the Bahamas approved provisional liquidators to oversee FTX Digital Markets Ltd.’s assets, according to the Securities Commission of the Bahamas.

Brian Simms has been approved as a court-supervised provisional liquidator, while PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Kevin Cambridge and Peter Greaves were approved as joint provisional liquidators.

© 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.

Nomura’s new crypto trading unit, called Laser Digital, plans to pause its hiring plans while it focuses on rolling out its first products.

The Switzerland-based operation is creating bitcoin and ether-focused crypto funds and exchange-traded fund products — and hopes to gain regulatory approval for the first one by mid-2023. 

The team has around 50 people, including 10 joining in the coming months. Laser Digital, which is segregated from the rest of the Japanese bank, recently reviewed staff numbers and decided that an earlier target of 100 hires was no longer appropriate, co-founder Jez Mohideen told The Block.

Expanding the headcount depends on whether ”the market is in a healthy shape,” he said. 

The collapse of crypto exchange FTX amid allegations of mishandling client money and the subsequent plunge in the value of major coins, including bitcoin, has shocked the crypto community. Many institutions are expected to put their virtual asset investment plans on hold.

Mohideen said his team ”will move thoughtfully and take our time” following the news of FTX’s demise. “We expect regulation will be accelerated and the crypto market of the future to be a more institutionalized and regulated market,” he added.

Laser Digital hopes to secure its first license from Dubai in early 2023, while a second license application in Switzerland will take longer.

The firm will also focus on market-making for institutional-grade crypto platforms and run a proprietary trading team backed with more than $100 million in capital. The firm expects to trade client money once licenses are in place.

Olivier Dang heads a venture capital team within Laser Digital that plans 15 to 20 deals a year in firms that are developing institutional-grade crypto products. The firm may also become a market maker in the tokens issued by their VC-backed firms, Mohideen said.

”We are big believers the world will get tokenised” with significant benefits and less need for intermediaries, he added.

© 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.