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Quick Take

• Founded in 2018, TRM Labs is a blockchain intelligence company that provides various compliance and forensics services for public and private sector clients
• TRM Labs noted its key strengths as (1) asset coverage (2) cross-chain analytics and (3) data reliability
• In December 2021, TRM Labs raised $60 million (Series B round) to fuel the company’s global expansion in key markets (Europe, APAC and Latin America) and R&D efforts for maintaining product superiority
• TRM Labs’ plan for 2022 and 2023 is maintaining its aggressive growth (6.0x YoY in recent years) with an eye toward strong unit economics and cash efficiency

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Digital asset manager CoinShares reported losses in the second quarter as the firm suffered over $21 million in losses following the de-pegging and subsequent collapse of TerraUSD (UST).

Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA – a popular measure of a company’s financial performance – was negative £8.2 million (just over $10 million). This is down from a positive EBITDA of £28.6 million a year earlier, according to a statement on Tuesday. 

The firm said that decreased revenue, gains and significant losses relating to the TerraUSD collapse as well as the costs related to its ongoing expansion caused the negative performance.  CoinShares position in TerraUSD was $120 million at one stage, although it reduced its risk during the de-pegging for a loss of just over $21 million.

When asked about its expansion plans during its earnings call CFO Richard Nash said the firm is being “more cautious” with its growth plans, although it wants to be ready to capitalize on the next period of growth in crypto.  

CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti shared his views on contagion in the crypto space, saying that we have seen the worst of contagion – before noting there is some potential for contagion risk in Asia.  

Mognetti was particularly critical of centralized lending platforms in response to a question about the firm’s position in Maple Finance and TrueFi. The CEO said there is a lack of transparency when it comes to centralised lending platforms, going on to add that decentralized protocols are the future of finance.  

CoinShares stock price was down 0.48% on Tuesday trading at 30.95 SEK – approximately $3.03. The stock was trading as low as 26.30 SEK just under a week ago on July 27. 

© 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.

Messari, the crypto information and data services firm, has acquired crypto fundraising intelligence database Dove Metrics of Blackrose Capital, the company announced in a statement on Tuesday. 

Further details of the deal were not disclosed. But the acquisition is part of the company’s goal in “creating greater transparency around the industry,” Eric Turner, Messari vice president of market intelligence, said.  

“The acquisition of Dove Metrics will enable us to offer new datasets and tools that further allow our users to stay on top of industry trends and monitor, in real time, the top projects and technologies that investors are backing,” Turner added. 

Following the acquisition, Messari integrated the Dove Metrics dashboard to its platform and made the newly added data available to its subscribers. 

Dove Metrics’ database tracks over 8,000 investors, including venture capital (VC) funds, hedge funds, investment decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), corporate funds and angel investors, the company said in its statement. The database also provides insight into around 3,000 funding rounds and hundreds of merger and acquisition transactions.

Dove Metrics started operations in 2020. The company has been led by Regan Bozman and Pierre Chuzeville, who also run early-stage crypto venture capital fund Lattice Capital. 

© 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.

Paystand, a US blockchain-enabled B2B payments firm, bought Mexican accounts payable startup Yaydoo, Axios reported.

No deal terms were disclosed. The companies did not immediately return requests for comment.

Paystand operates in the US and Canada, while Yaydoo is focused on Spanish-speaking Latin America, including Colombia, Peru and Chile. Combined, the companies serve 500,000 customers, and have processed more than $5 billion in payment volume.

The companies will continue to operate independently, but will cross-sell products. 

In July 2021, Paystand raised $50 million in a Series C round, bringing its total funding to $85 million from NewView Capital, with participation from SoftBank’s SB Opportunity Fund and King River Capital, according to TechCrunch. Yaydoo raised a $20 million Series A round in August 2021 co-led by Base10 Partners and monashees, alongside SoftBank’s Latin America Fund and Leap Global Partners.

© 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.

Solana NFT marketplace Magic Eden will launch support for Ethereum-based non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the coming weeks, the company announced on Tuesday.

The move has been expected since the company’s Series B fundraise in June, when it hinted it was planning to launch on more blockchains.

Users will be able to choose to mint NFTs using SOL and ETH via its cross-chain Launchpad, starting with NFT project EZU, a sister project to Psychedelics Anonymous by Voltura, aka Lewis Gale.

Launched in September 2021 by founders with pedigrees from Uber, Coinbase and Google, Magic Eden was valued at $1.6 billion in its latest funding round in June. The Series B raised $130 million for the company and was led by Electric Capital and Greenock Partners. It followed just three months after its Paradigm-led $27 million Series A.

Other marketplaces have also rolled out cross-chain services over the past few months. OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace, rolled out services to support Solana NFTs in April, having originally launched on Ethereum. In July, OpenSea was responsible for $484.79 million in NFT market volumes.

Magic Eden’s launch comes amid declining in sales volumes for NFT marketplaces. In July, marketplace volumes dropped from $884.68 million down to $626.11 million, according to data from The Block.

Magic Eden is no exception. From an all-time-high trading volume of $380.87 million in January, volumes have dropped to just over $81 million in July.

© 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.

Bitcoin miner Digihost is planning to move some of its fleet from New York to a new site in Alabama.

The company has just broken ground on the new 55-megawatt facility, according to a statement released Tuesday. The machine transfer will allow the miner to benefit from lower direct energy costs negotiated with Alabama Power.

The first 28 megawatts of energy capacity are scheduled to be ready by the end of the third quarter of 2022 and the full 55 by the first quarter of 2023.

The company said that it sold some of its bitcoin to fund energy costs. 

Digihost mined 64.17 BTC in July. It had 220.09 BTC at the end of July, down from 293.30 BTC in June, which indicates that it sold about 137.38 BTC last month.

The company also held 1,000.89 ETH at the end of July. Its total digital asset holdings were valued at about $6.82 million based on current prices. Digihost also held $4.5 million in cash and $500,000 in derivatives.

© 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.

Luxury fashion brand Gucci is now accepting ApeCoin payments through BitPay at select stores in the US, according to a tweet on Tuesday morning. 

ApeCoin is the cryptocurrency affiliated with the Bored Ape Yacht Club, an non-fungible token (NFT) project created by Yuga Labs. 

Gucci will become the first merchant to accept ApeCoin through BitPay, a payment service provider that has been in operation since 2011. This isn’t the first cryptocurrency that Gucci has moved to accept, however. In May, the brand started accepting bitcoin, litecoin, dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies at select US stories. 

The move is the latest in a series of crypto initiatives from Gucci, which has a team dedicated to web3 initiatives and gaming. The firm has also launched games on Roblox, including Gucci Garden, which has had 19 million visitors. Gucci has also created “skins” for avatars in games like Animal Crossing and Pokemon Go. 

In June, Gucci announced joined the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) behind the NFT marketplace SuperRare, acquiring 150,000 $RARE tokens, worth around $31,000 at the time, to join the DAO and earn governance rights within the community. 

© 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.

MarqVision, a startup that detects and removes counterfeit products using AI, announced Tuesday that it raised $20 million in Series A funding.  

Investors in this round include DST Global Partners, Atinum Investments, Softbank Ventures, Bass Investment and Y-Combinator, according to a release sent to The Block.  

MarqVision’s counterfeit detection spots counterfeit items for not only physical items but non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on over 1,500 online marketplaces. Thefts, plagiarism and fakes regarding NFTs are a frequent subject of complaints on crypto Twitter and are often seen on the world’s largest NFT marketplace, OpenSea.  

With this new funding round, MarqVision intends to bolster its product development to further protect intellectual property (IP) for brands and content creators.  

“With this new round of funding, we can accelerate our mission of building the world’s first IP operating system to give brand owners full control of their IP portfolios,” said Mark Lee, co-founder and CEO of MarqVision, in a statement.

Many fashion brands such as Prada have eyed the blockchain spaces as a way to verify products and avoid counterfeits, The Block previously reported. 

© 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

• Crypto startups have developed a taste for investing in other projects at an early stage in their own development. 
• Some traditional venture firms are concerned that their portfolio companies are getting distracted from developing their own products. 

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Marathon closed a deal for a $100 million loan from Silvergate Bank collateralized by bitcoin, a move that comes as other miners have sold bitcoin in an effort to pay down their debts.

The company also refinanced a previous $100 million bitcoin-backed loan that it had previously secured with the same firm, it announced Monday after the market close.

The new revolving line of credit allows Marathon to draw $50 million initially and an extra $50 million up to 270 days after closing (on July 28). It has a variable interest rate and is currently priced at 7.25%.

“We are pleased to be closing on these debt facilities and believe that the combination of a term loan and revolver provide Marathon with exceptional flexibility as to our funding options,” said Marathon CFO Hugh Gallagher.

Marathon announced Monday that it had no outstanding balance on the original loan, which was set to expire in October 2022. The two credit facilities will now mature in July 2024.

As bitcoin’s value fell by about a third in June, companies like Bitfarms and Argo sold a large portion of their bitcoin holdings (3,000 and 637 BTC, respectively) to reduce the outstanding balance on various loans. Core Scientific sold a total of 7,202 BTC during the same time period.

On Monday, Bitfarms said that it sold an additional 1,623 BTC in July to further reduce its bitcoin-backed loan down to $23 million.

Marathon, however, said last month that it had 10,055 BTC in reserve and hadn’t sold any since October 2020.

© 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.