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Bitcoin mining stocks tracked by The Block had mixed results on the market Wednesday, with half of them going up and the other half falling.

The coin has generally been trading under $20,000 since late August but climbed above that mark on Tuesday, as the crypto market rallied.

It was trading at around $20,800 by market close, according to data from TradingView.

BTCUSD Chart by TradingView

Cipher Mining’s stock rose 42.56%, followed by Argo (+42.47% on the London Stock Exchange), CleanSpark (+6.94%) and Northern Data (+6.77%).

Here’s how crypto mining companies performed on Wednesday, Oct. 26:

© 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.

Facebook owner Meta reported that its metaverse division Reality Labs posted a $3.7 billion loss in the third quarter of this year.

That brings Reality Labs’ year-to-date losses to a staggering $9.4 billion. Meta said that it does not “anticipate that Reality Labs operating losses” will grow significantly next year.

Meta said Reality Labs generated $285 million in earnings for the quarter, down from $558 million the previous year.

Outside Reality Labs, Meta continues to generate robust advertising revenues with, primarily, its core businesses, Facebook and Instagram.

Storm clouds have been brewing all year as Meta continues to prioritize its metaverse ambitions over its core businesses.

Most recently, Meta shareholder Altimeter Capital Management’s CEO suggested in a blog post that the company slash its workforce by at least 20% in addition to reducing investment, primarily by limiting Reality Labs’ expenditures to no more than $5 billion a year.

Less than a month ago, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees Meta was freezing hiring and restructuring teams to cut costs.

For more than a year, Zuckerberg has been working diligently to sell his vision for Meta’s future and how it hinges on the company’s ability to build its version of the metaverse, an immersive digital space where people can work, play games and socialize.


Meta’s flagship virtual-reality platform is called Horizon Worlds. It has so far struggled to attract high numbers. Fewer than 200,000 people are visiting Horizons each month, according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal.

Although the platform is only a little over a year old, the numbers seem paltry when compared to Facebook and Instagram, which between them boast more than 4 billion users.

During the company presentation Meta Connect earlier this month, Zuckerberg doubled down on his mission to play a pivotal role in building a metaverse, a business concept that in many people’s minds will take years to fully form. The head of Meta unveiled a new, more advanced virtual reality headset he hopes will help lure more consumers and companies into the metaverse.

Zuckerberg spent a large portion of Meta Connect exalting the virtues of using virtual reality for work. This included announcing strategic partnerships with Microsoft, Accenture and Zoom.

Some analysts have predicted the metaverse will be worth trillions of dollars in the future.

Meta has also found itself in the Federal Trade Commission’s crosshairs.  The agency in July filed a suit against Facebook, alleging the firm is trying to assume monopoly control of the metaverse.

© 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

• zkSync is a Layer-2 scaling protocol aiming to offer cheaper and faster transactions for the Ethereum ecosystem
• zkSync, which is currently in testnet, has raised $58m to date, in total, over three venture capital rounds
• The Block Research noticed and mapped out 154 projects across 14 categories that are out-of-stealth

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members of The Block Research.
You can continue reading
this Research content on The Block Research.

A video Elon Musk posted shows the Tesla and SpaceX CEO entering Twitter’s headquarters and carrying what appears to be a bathroom sink. The billionaire changed his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit.”

Musk in a video conference with bankers said the $44 billion acquisition deal would close by this Friday, Bloomberg reported.

After trying to back out of the deal in July and in turn being sued by Twitter, Musk reversed his position last month, saying that he indeed wanted to move forward with the acquisition.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted in May.

Internal research from Twitter revealed this week that the social media platform is struggling to keep its most active users, which are responsible for 90% of all tweets and half of its global revenue.

“A beautiful thing about Twitter is how it empowers citizen journalism – people are able to disseminate news without an establishment bias,” Musk tweeted Wednesday.

© 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 investment platform Freeway hasn’t restarted services after a trading failure “dramatically impacted” the firm’s portfolio, and its in-house token dropped 80% in value.

It will “take time” before Freeway will resume its services, the firm said, though it’s not clear when trading may resume.

The company also wiped the names and photos of employees from its website sometime between Sept. 16 and the day it halted services, according to an internet archive.

“Unfortunately, the trading loss that has been incurred has dramatically impacted Freeway’s portfolio, but, having been made aware of these losses we are taking steps to secure Freeway’s remaining funds, and have already moved out of the loss-producing strategy,” Freeway said in a tweet. 

Pointing to “market volatility,” Freeway paused services on Sunday. The platform had allowed users to purchase so-called “Superchargers,” which generate yield and can be sold back to the company. Freeway had claimed to offer up to 43% annual rewards on these products.

The company’s in-house token has dropped by 80.5% in the last seven days. The token was trading at $0.00136355 on Wednesday afternoon, according to CoinGecko. 

“In order for us to resume Supercharger buy-backs we need to be in a position to execute safely. We will therefore need to see significant inroads into the losses before that can happen, and that will take time,” Freeway said.

The company says it will initiate a four-pronged recovery plan. Steps include using a “controlled environment” to maintain “the management and growth of remaining funds,” a new diversification strategy and starting an “Earn and Protect” program. Freeway also said it plans to deploy “major new funding in a totally new product,” but did not offer more details because the funding is not finalized.

© 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 firm Kollider publicly launched its derivatives exchange Wednesday after raising $2.35 million in seed funding in 2021.

The round was led by investment firm Lemniscap, with participation from Castle Island Ventures, Polychain Capital, Alameda, Pfeffer Capital, Okex and others, the company said.

The exchange uses Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, allowing users to open and close their positions on the exchange directly from their Lightning wallets.

“We believe that Kollider’s Lightning-native exchange is the fastest and easiest way to trade on the market today,” the company said.

Users can add capital — as little as a single sat — to their positions over the Lightning Network and don’t need to pre-fund their account. One bitcoin equals 100 million sats. 

“This improves capital efficiency and ensures that users are only taking counterparty risk with their funds when they have an open position,” the company said.

The firm has built two versions of their product: The more simple-to-use Kollider Lite and the full-feature interface Kollider Pro. It has also introduced Kollider Synthetic Stablecoins and a browser-based Lightning Network wallet.

Kollider had previously raised $375,000 in a pre-seed round in 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.

Gas limits on the Polygon blockchain network coupled with a buildup queue on a third-party relay resulted in a transaction mining issue on Lens Protocol, the service reported.

As the issue persists, users in the service’s Discord channel reported they were unable to claim social media handles from the protocol. An update will come from Lens once the mining problems are resolved, the protocol said in an announcement on Twitter. It remains unclear as to exactly how long it will take for a fix.

Since its February 2022 launch, more than 50 applications reportedly utilized Lens Protocol, a platform created by Aave developers that allows applications to plug into user-owned social data enabled via NFTs for authentication and monetization.

Lens Protocol did not immediately respond to The Block’s request for comment.

This is a developing story.

© 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.

Blockchain market intelligence provider Glassnode acquired crypto tax and portfolio tracking platform Accointing.com. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed in a press release.

Glassnode is a blockchain data and intelligence provider focused on on-chain and financial metrics. It hasn’t publicly announced any venture funding. Data analytics firm Messari, a competitor, is said to be valued at around $300 million and recently raised $35 million in a Series B round led by Brevan Howard Digital.

Funding data from Accointing.com is also not publicly available.

Glassnode said the deal will allow users of both platforms to track their portfolios in one place once Accointing.com is integrated. Until then, users will be able to access both platforms using the same login.

The acquisition continues a trend of high of elevated M&A activity in the data and analytics space. The third quarter saw seven deals involving such companies, the second highest total since The Block Research started tracking acquisitions.  

Blockchain M&A deals from The Block Research

© 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 traders continued to be plagued by liquidations, with about 205,000 traders liquidated since Tuesday, driven by a surge in the value of cryptocurrencies.

Total short liquidations since Tuesday have reached more than $1.28 billion so far, according to The Block’s data dashboard. Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX accounted for around 80% of the short liquidations in the past 24 hours.

The cascade of liquidations began on Tuesday as crypto prices soared on hopes of the Fed easing interest rate hikes. Crypto traders suffered $686 million in short liquidations on Tuesday as a result. Traders going long on crypto also suffered, with $99 million in long liquidations on the day. 

Crypto prices continued to climb on Wednesday, with bitcoin briefly trading above $21,000, while ether was trading hands for about $1,570. The liquidations continued as a result of the sustained upward trend in prices today.  

FTX accounts for around 72% of the total number of liquidations, according to The Block’s data dashboard. The exchange did not respond to requests for comment from The Block.

© 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 Binance has released an oracle service called Binance Oracle to help blockchain applications connect with real-world data.

BNB Chain ecosystem will be the first blockchain to use Binance Oracle, though the team has plans to expand it to other chains. Over ten BNB Chain projects have already integrated with the Binance Oracle.

“Binance Oracle will emerge as a significant contributor to Web3 by offering a stable, reliable, and efficient Oracle network with comprehensive accuracy and accessibility features,” said Gwendolyn Regina, investment director at BNB Chain.

The oracle solution will aggregate off-chain data needed by applications such as those in the decentralized finance sector. Binance Oracle will leverage the use of “threshold signatures,” a type of cryptographic tool that will be used to securely sign data feeds into blockchain applications. This cryptographic mechanism will assure that there is no single point of failure in the data feeds.

With this release, Binance has forayed into a niche largely dominated by Chainlink, an oracle network that serves over 690,000 active users across many different blockchains. Other oracle projects like Band Protocol, Ocean, and Pyth and are widely used by blockchain apps as well.

© 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.