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‘We end up winning more’: Anchorage boss Mónica sees bank charter as key to weathering crypto winter

For Anchorage’s Diogo Mónica, this crypto bear market has been the easiest to bear of the five that he’s experienced so far.  

The startup’s federal charter is a big part of that, and Mónica says rival crypto custodians must now pursue banking licenses of their own to help shore up the sector.  

Institutional investors, he said, are “looking for partners that are regulated, clear, qualified custodians and people that have actually done well during the downturn.”  

Founded in 2017, Anchorage is a crypto institution co-founded by Mónica and Nathan McCauley. It enables industry players and institutions access to integrated financial services and infrastructure solutions such as custody, staking and trading services.   

Now as the bear market takes hold and a changing-of-the-guard occurs at some crypto’s most weathered institutions including FTX, Kraken and NYDIG, Anchorage’s business remains steady, creating a base for further expansion. 

Already this year, Anchorage has pushed into Asia with five new partnerships, it has teamed up with AngelList to enable investors to invest in funds with the USDC stablecoin, and it has secured a custodian role with buzzy new Layer 1 blockchain Aptos. 

Surviving a bear market without spending a dime 

And yes, it’s managed to do all this without spending a dime from its $350 million Series D fundraising round from last December, Mónica said. 

Anchorage is currently valued at over $3 billion. Its backers run the gamut from traditional finance players such as Goldman Sachs and KKR to crypto native firms such as Alameda Research and Polychain Capital. 

“Throughout this whole bear market, throughout all of these cascading liquidations, throughout Terra Luna failure, throughout all of these counterparties in the ecosystem in the industry going bankrupt, we’ve had zero capital losses to ourselves, to our clients and we’ve had zero breaches of [Service Level Agreement] of any of our services,” Mónica said.   

No one cares about regulation in a bull market

At the height of the raging bull market, when interest rates were low and crypto prices kept going up, no one cared about Anchorage’s regulated status, Mónica said. 

Anchorage was the first crypto firm to receive a federal charter, which means it is regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). 

“Nobody talked about that,” said Mónica, describing the environment last year. “Nobody asked us questions.” 

Anchorage went through a four-year process to secure the charter, operating as a trust company for three years, then doing a trust conversion to a federal charter. 

The process of securing a charter is costly and time consuming, and it doesn’t get any easier once it’s secured. For the companies that hold charters there is a high burden in terms of the level of transparency involved and the continual oversight, Mónica said. 

What Anchorage is less transparent about is who its clients are, which it keeps private as a matter of policy. Mónica spoke to The Block earlier this year about custodying NFTs for hedge funds, not long before the industry’s darling hedge fund, Three Arrows Capital, collapsed. 

“I have no exposure,” said Mónica on whether Anchorage lent to Three Arrows Capital. “We lost no funds, and we don’t really talk much about our clients because they rely on us for our discretion. That’s what I can say about the actual clients that we have.” 

A flight to safety hidden in plain sight

Mónica still views Anchorage as under-the-radar despite the company’s regulatory recognition, major fundraising rounds and regular spots on the crypto conference circuit. 

“The goal is for the spotlight to be on our clients and our clients’ products, not on us,” Mónica said. “Part of the reason why we’re under-the-radar is because we’re not a consumer company. We’re not trying to reach consumers, were not doing publicity for consumers, we’re not trying to get eyeballs.” 

Anchorage is unique in that it’s bankruptcy remote, meaning that the OCC will step in and divest its assets in an orderly fashion in the case of bankruptcy.  

Its business-model structure and an “impeccable” track record is attracting new clients; however, the startup remains tight lipped about exactly how many “billions” of assets are in custody. That is not the case for its rivals. Matrixport and Hex Trust, for example, each recently revealed that they look after about $6 billion.  

“There has been such an amount of flight to safety, that we actually end up winning, we end up winning more during the bear market, because it’s very obvious that you now want to charter a regulated entity, an entity that has been around for five years, that has never had any issues,” Mónica said. 

Institutions aren’t slowing down

Traditional institutions and players continue to unveil new crypto offerings despite the bear market. 

BlackRock, the world’s biggest investment manager, recently launched a product offering institutional clients exposure to spot bitcoin. While Charles Schwab, Fidelity Digital Assets, Citadel Securities and other industry players have come together to launch a new digital assets exchange called EDX Markets.  

“From our vantage point, we see a lot more,” Mónica said. “Thats just the tip of the iceberg.” 

For institutions looking for a custody partner, a charter automatically ticks thousands, if not, tens of thousands of checkboxes, Mónica said. 

No plans to go public

Lending remains one of Anchorage’s fastest growing businesses. It started to slow in “the doldrums of the bear market,” but is picking up again, Mónica said. He views this as a testament to Anchorage’s risk management and credit systems, naturally. 

But Anchorage’s lending is confined to the world of institutions. It only safeguards funds from institutional clients, and only lends to professional operators in the sector — such as hedge funds. And things look set to stay that way. Retail is not territory Mónica wants to explore. 

“It’s not our business or our DNA,” Mónica said. “I would rather have institutions that come and create new products and build on top of Anchorage and get benefit by proximity.” 

Equally he has no appetite to let retail get exposure to the startup, which is valued at over $3 billion, through the public markets. 

“There are no plans to IPO, definitely not in this market,” he added. “And there are no plans for us to raise any future rounds at this point. There’s no need.” 

Mónica remains cautious on M&A even as other players including FTX and Binance rush to pick up distressed assets. Binance may spend over $1 billion on deals this year, according to a report from Bloomberg. 

Any deals Anchorage explores need to align with the company’s product roadmap and at a valuation that makes sense, Mónica said. 

“The reality is that, yes, you might have a great valuation and you might have a lot of cash, but so do these other companies,” Mónica said. Even the companies running out of cash are still sitting at very lofty valuations, 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.

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Author: Kari McMahon

Meta falls short of user goal for Horizon Worlds: WSJ

Meta’s flagship virtual reality social media platform, Horizon Worlds, originally sought to reach 500,000 monthly active users by year end. However that figure is being revised to 280,000 as the company faces hurdles to grow its user base.

Internal memos and documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) indicate the current number of active users stands below 200,000. Since the spring, user activity has steadily declined, with many leaving the platform after a month of playing. The players who stay only visit 9% of available worlds, which may see as many as 50 visitors, while the majority of digital destinations remain ignored completely.

Meta’s Quest VR headsets, that players use to access Horizon, saw a decline in usage, according to sources who said that the $400 consoles exhibited a falling retention rate in the past 3 years.

Horizon is also far behind in terms of concurrent users compared with competitive platforms that offer virtual social experiences, such as VR Chat, launched in 2014, and Second Life, which launched in 2003, according to sources familiar with the matter.

In the past year, Meta shares are down over 60% as the company currently trades at $126.76. Since peaking in September 2021 the company is down over $700 billion in market value.

© 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.

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Author: Jeremy Nation

FTX CEO backs knowledge test for trading wide range of derivatives

FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried agrees with CFTC Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero over the benefits of disclosures and knowledge tests for trading, but took to Twitter to add they need not be crypto-specific.

Bankman-Fried’s comments came in response to those of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission official, who called for the establishment of a household retail investor category to provide additional consumer protections. 

“Establishing a household retail investor category could give them more consumer protections. For example, disclosures written in a way that regular people understand or could be used when weighing rules on the use of leverage,” Romero tweeted.

“100% agree on disclosures, knowledge tests, etc.,” Bankman-Fried tweeted in response, adding that such tests need not be relegated solely to digital currencies.

Disclosure mandates and knowledge-based tests for a wide-range of intermediaries like futures commissions merchants and could make sense, according to the billionaire.

Bankman-Fried’s statements on disclosure and testing coincides with FTX’s bid to launch a U.S.  crypto futures. Indeed, FTX already outlined a proposed knowledge test for its U.S. derivatives product, the founder tweeted.

As the debate over crypto-related consumer protections, and how lawmakers should codify guidelines continues, lately the CFTC indicated it would not be lax towards crypto. CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam expressed a desire for more direct authority over marketplaces.

The position held by Behnam falls in line with statements from Securities and Exchange Commission leader Gary Gensler, who indicated the CTFC could have greater authority over certain digital currencies during a speech at Georgetown University’s Financial Markets Quality Conference in Washington.

© 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.

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Author: Jeremy Nation

Wintermute pays off $96 million USDT TrueFi loan

Market making firm Wintermute paid off its loan on DeFi lender TrueFi, repaying $96 million USDT to the protocol.

Wintermute’s liquidity position remains relatively unchanged and is still very strong, CEO Evgeny Gaevoy told The Block.

The uncollateralized loan was paid off a day before it matured, on October 15, based on TrueFi’s dashboard. Wintermute originally borrowed from the DeFi lender in April, representing one of the largest loans taken out on TrueFi’s platform. CoinDesk first reported the news.

Indeed, Wintermute’s ability to repay its debts was not stifled by a $160 million hack in September. The hack occurred as a result of an access vulnerability associated with a ‘vanity address’ on an administrative account Wintermute used to reduce gas costs, as the platform handles thousands of market making transactions on a daily basis.

© 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.

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Author: Jeremy Nation

September crypto VC roundup: Funding slightly increased from previous month

Quick Take

  • Venture capitalists invested about $2.3 billion in crypto startups in September — slightly more than the previous month.
  • More than 20 new VC funds launched in September, including from Bessemer Venture Partners, Northzone and Madrona.

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Author: Yogita Khatri

Mango Markets exploiter comes clean, claims all actions were legal

Avraham Eisenberg, the man behind the $114 million exploit on Mango Markets, has confirmed that he orchestrated the attack on the DeFi platform in a statement issued today.

“I was involved with a team that operated a highly profitable trading strategy last week,” Eisenberg confirmed, adding, “I believe all of our actions were legal open market actions, using the protocol as designed, even if the development team did not fully anticipate all the consequences of setting parameters the way they are.” Eisenberg declined to comment on the size of his team when asked by The Block.

This legal trading strategy required $10 million on Eisenberg’s part to drain $114 million from Mango Markets. The “trade” worked by manipulating the price oracle to inflate the mango token price three-fold from $0.30 to $0.91. This boosted the value of Eisenberg’s collateral, allowing him and his team to borrow more funds from the protocol.

Eisenberg’s name was linked to the attack barely a day later. Independent reporter Chris Burnet published an article providing some evidence connecting Eisenberg to the attack. The evidence included leaked screenshots of Discord chats describing the planned attack as well as suspicious on-chain activities following the incident. This is not the first time Eisenberg has been linked to a DeFi exploit. Earlier this year he was accused of defrauding FortressDAO investors to the tune of $14 million. 

The attack left Mango Markets insolvent with user positions in danger of being liquidated, as the protocol could not repay the bad debt. Eisenberg noted this in his statement and said he helped negotiate a deal with the DeFi platform. The Mango community voted today to allow Eisenberg to keep $47 million while returning the remaining $67 million to the project. The returned funds will be used to recapitalize the exchange. The bad debt brought on by the exploit can then be covered.

So far, Eisenberg has repaid $8 million worth of tokens, according to on-chain data. According to the details of the deal captured in the vote, this first repayment is a show of good faith on Eisenberg’s part.

The $47 million to be kept by Eisenberg has been a subject of scrutiny in the crypto space. The amount is larger than the usual bounties claimed by hackers in exchange for the affected platform not pursuing any criminal charges. Other exploiters have struck deals to keep as much as 10% of the loot. In Eisenberg’s case, he and his team will keep over 40% of the funds. Accounting for the $10 million used to launch the attack, the team’s effective payout from the bounty will be about $37 million.

According to Eisenberg, the deal is not out of the ordinary. “This is similar to how auto deleveraging works on exchanges such as Binance and Bitmex, clawing back some profits from profitable traders in order to ensure all user funds are protected,” he said. Auto deleveraging is one of the ways exchanges manage risk during periods of high volatility. It is used as a last-ditch method by exchanges when their insurance funds cannot cover a bankrupt user’s position.

Today’s statement also confirms Eisenberg’s acceptance of the $47 million bounty. The bounty forms part of an agreement between the Mango community and Eisenberg that the former will not pursue any legal action. It remains to be seen whether law enforcement officials will view this arrangement as legally binding.

Earlier today, Eisenberg discussed placing a bet on Twitter that he won’t be charged with a crime by the end of 2023.

© 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.

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Author: Osato Avan-Nomayo

Coinbase CEO Armstrong plans to sell part of his stake to fund science research

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong revealed plans to reduce his stake in the U.S. exchange giant in favor of funding research endeavors in science and technology.

Armstrong made this known in a Twitter thread on Friday as he stated that he will sell about 2% of his Coinbase stake. As CEO, Armstrong owns 16% of the company. According to a 2022 proxy statement by Coinbase, Armstrong’s stake amounts to almost 60% control of the firm’s voting shares.

According to the announcement, the Coinbase CEO is looking to fund science and technology research. “I’m passionate about accelerating science and tech to help solve some of the biggest challenges in the world,” Armstrong said.

The Coinbase CEO also clarified that his decision to sell some of his shares does not indicate a desire to step down as the company’s leader. Armstrong said he intends to run Coinbase “for a very long time,” adding: “I remain super bullish on crypto and Coinbase. I’m fully dedicated to growing our business and advancing our mission, but I am also excited to contribute in a different way.”

The crypto space has witnessed a spate of CEOs and senior executives exiting major firms. This has happened as many firms have also laid off a significant part of their workforces. Coinbase itself laid off about 18% of its employees earlier in the summer. These exits and layoffs are part of the general market downturn that has characterized 2022.

The crypto market has lost more than $1.26 billion from its market capitalization over the course of the year.

© 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.

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Author: Osato Avan-Nomayo

Mango hack drama and other major crypto stories of the past week

This past week saw five crypto hacks and exploits happen in one 24-hour period, the largest of which was Mango Markets, where over $100 million was stolen. Those five hacks made it 11 such incidents in October, which is something of a record.

This past week wasn’t only about hacks and thefts. Ethereum became deflationary for the first since The Merge. Also, it is now possible to search for Ethereum wallet addresses on Google.

For these and more, here are the top stories in the crypto space that caught the eye this past week.

Mango Attacker may keep $47 million from crypto exploit

The attacker responsible for the Mango Markets exploit will get to keep over 40% of the siphoned funds. This is based on a deal between the exploiter and the protocol’s community. The Mango DAO voted to let the attacker keep $47 million out of the $114 million drained from the DeFi platform, while returning $67 million to the project.

This deal comes after the hacker initially proposed keeping $70 million from the stolen funds. The attacker created a governance vote to push this through and voted on it with 33 million stolen mango coins. However, the team created a second proposal and the DAO was able to agree on it. This marks the largest-ever bounty given to someone who stole from a crypto project. Previous bounties have been limited to a small percentage, usually 10% of the stolen funds

The Mango exploit is the sixth-largest exploit of a DeFi protocol. It is about $16 million shy of the $130 million Cream Finance exploit that happened in October last year.

October crypto hacks pile on

Four other hacks also happened on the day of the Mango Market exploit. QANplatform, a Layer 1 blockchain that describes itself as being “quantum-resistant” saw $2 million stolen from its cross-chain bridge. The project’s token fell 94% following the hack. Hackers also stole $2.3 million from the staking platform TempleDAO. Rabby Swap, another DeFi project also suffered a malicious exploit with $200,000 drained the process. The fourth incident concerned ParaSwap, a decentralized exchange aggregator. However, the ParaSwap team stated that its funds were not affected by the incident.

October has previously been the month associated with the most crypto hacks, and this year hasn’t proved different. Data from blockchain forensics outfit Chainalysis shows that DeFi projects have lost about $718 million to hacks and exploits this month. This figure also includes the $100 million BNB cross-chain bridge heist.

Deflationary Ethereum

This past week, Ethereum became deflationary for the first time since The Merge. Ethereum’s new supply fell by 0.12%. This decline in the issuance of new tokens happened due to transaction fees spiking during the week. Fees spiked because of a new crypto project called XEN that recently began its token staking.

Ethereum also saw another milestone event this past week as wallet addresses are now searchable on Google. It is now possible to search for an Ethereum address on Google and see the balance in the address. The search engine giant is getting its data from blockchain explorer Etherscan. This is the latest Ethereum interaction from Google, as the site previously provided a countdown timer in the run-up to The Merge.

SEC probes Yuga Labs

Yuga Labs became the latest company in the crypto space to face a probe by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT creator is being investigated for possibly breaking federal securities law.

The SEC investigation into Yuga Labs reportedly concerns the company’s ApeCoin tokens launched in March. The U.S. securities watchdog is said to be looking at whether the tokens can be classified as securities.

Bitcoin mining news

Some favorable news came out for Bitcoin miners in the area of financing this past week. First was Binance announcing a $500 million fund to provide loans to Bitcoin miners. TeraWulf, a Bitcoin mining outfit, announced a $17 million raise at the start of the week. The company said it will use the funds to expand its infrastructure.

Luxor, another Bitcoin mining firm, announced the launch of a derivatives product based on revenue from Bitcoin mining. The product will track the Bitcoin mining hash rate — the term used to describe the amount of computing power utilized per second to secure the Bitcoin 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.

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Author: Osato Avan-Nomayo

Solana NFT platform Magic Eden opts for optional royalty payments

Magic Eden, the biggest NFT marketplace on Solana, said that users will now be able to decide how much they wish to pay as royalties to creators when purchasing items from the website.

“The decision on how much royalties to pay will be passed to the buyer,” the company said on Friday, adding: “By default, ALL collections/listings will honor full royalties.”

According to Magic Eden, buyers will have three ways to set their preferred royalty percentages. They can edit their user profiles to select a royalty percentage payment that will apply to all NFTs on Magic Eden. Alternatively, they can select a royalty percentage for a particular collection or for a single item.

The NFT platform said it was aware that the move has significant implications for the NFT space, and expressed hope that it will be temporary.

Magic Eden added that it will also waive transaction fees on NFT purchases. The Solana NFT platform had charged 2% on sales.

The company’s announcement comes amid an ongoing debate about NFT royalties. On one side of the debate are some users who argue that there should not be compulsory royalty payments for NFTs. Creators, on the other hand, say these payments are a reward for their work.

It is important to note that royalty payments cannot be enforced on-chain. Instead, creators depend on marketplaces like Magic Eden to pay them a specified percentage of the value for which items are sold in secondary sales.

Now, this status quo is being upended by some platforms.

NFT swappers like SudoSwap became popular for being royalty-free platforms.

In August, X2Y2, one of the marketplaces that launched a vampire attack on OpenSea, announced the removal of royalties for some collections.

DeGods, a popular NFT collection on Solana, caused a stir last week when it removed all royalty payments. The move was particularly significant given previous comments by the project’s founder that dropping royalties would make NFTs more expensive and create possibilities for more scam projects. Now, the DeGods’ founder has shifted to saying that 0% royalties will soon become the norm for NFT marketplace platforms.

© 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.

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Author: Osato Avan-Nomayo

European VCs are finally launching crypto funds — what took them so long?

As crypto’s last bear market was drawing to a close, 1kx, a crypto fund that’s backed Matter Labs, Gnosis and Qredo, held an invite-only crypto summit as part of 2019’s Berlin Blockchain Week.

1kx founding partner Lasse Clausen extended an invitation to most of the venture capitalists he knew, aiming to school them on blockchain technology. Only one showed up.

“European VCs completely slept on blockchain,” says Clausen, “That meant most VCs didn’t have the mandate from their limited partnership agreement to buy tokens”

Kicked into gear by last year’s bull market, European VCs are finally beginning to roll out crypto funds and taste token exposure as the size of Europe’s blockchain scene continues to swell.

Europe surpassed Asia in the global share of blockchain venture funding raised in the second quarter of this year, jumping by 25% as other regions slumped, according to The Block Research.

And despite having less capital to hand, Dealroom data show that this year European venture firms are neck-and-neck with the U.S. in terms of the number of blockchain deals successfully completed.

The region’s web3 native venture firms have been gaining ground too. Late last year, Greenfield One closed a $160 million crypto fund with Dutch firm Maven 11’s $120 million fund following suit.

In April, The Block reported that Fabric Ventures is set to close two web3 funds worth $245 million. And last month, Fasanara Capital, a London-based investment firm that launched a liquid digital asset fund in 2019, closed a $350 million fintech and crypto VC fund.

The advances have come even as Europe’s limited partners — as the backers of venture firms are known — have stuck with their notoriously cautious approach.

“We talk to family offices and investors [in Europe] and rarely do they have private equity or VC in their portfolio — let alone crypto,” says Nicolas Priem, managing director of Tioga Capital, a Brussels-based web3 venture capital firm that launched its first $70 million fund in December.

But LP hesitancy hasn’t stopped Germany’s Cherry Ventures from launching a $34 million fund in February. And over the summer, Aglaé Ventures, a firm backed by LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, set up a €100 million ($98 million) web3 fund that aims to invest in tokens and equity, according to people familiar with the matter.

Successful capital raises from American LPs also allow European firms to bypass anxious Europe-based backers.

“Our LPs are very interested in crypto as an asset class,” says Ophelia Brown, founding partner of London’s Blossom Capital, which earmarked a third of its latest $431 million fund for tokens and NFTs such as Bored Apes and CryptoPunks. “75% of our investors come from the U.S. so most of our LPs already have exposure.”

A problem as old as gold

In some jurisdictions, however, venture firms still face a problem as old as money itself: custody.

“There are very few solutions not only in France but also in the EU that are in the legal and business capacity to open an account for tokens,” says Kramer Levin lawyer Hubert de Vauplane, who co-leads the firm’s alternative investment management practice in Paris. 

Most banks refuse “as they consider it too risky in terms of anti-money laundering,” continues de Vauplane. “Not only are they refusing but usually when they see one of their clients doing a [token] capital raising, they close their account.”

The custody crunch is a particular pain for French VCs, since under European Union legislation for alternative investment funds, they are allowed to have just 20% exposure to tokens.

It’s a problem that U.S. firms actively looking at European crypto companies don’t face. Previously shackled by their own 20% limit on token allocation, firms such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia legally restructured to registered investment advisors. 

Yet there is a regulatory workaround. The €100 million Ledger Cathay Fund was set up as an unregulated special purpose vehicle, meaning they don’t need to have an EU custodian, says de Vauplane.

France’s issue could also soon be remedied. Societé Generale, the country’s third-largest bank, is still plowing ahead with its digital asset offering. In other jurisdictions such as Germany there are four crypto custodian providers authorized by regulators.

The UK has had its web3 venture scene hampered by slow approval from regulators wary of crypto, says Tom Grogan, co-lead of the blockchain group at law firm Mischcon De Reya.

“It hasn’t been viable for a long time to launch any kind of crypto business from the UK,” he says. “That’s why you get some complex structuring around somewhere like Guernsey or Gibraltar.”

A crypto-friendly culture?

Despite these challenges, most of the investors The Block spoke to say the European crypto venture scene is set to flourish in the coming years.

Blossom’s Brown says that Europe’s crypto scene has “really come alive” in recent years. She claims that there’s no systemic reason why we don’t see billion-dollar crypto funds in Europe. Indeed, she thinks Europe’s crypto investors are gradually catching up to the U.S.

It’s true the lack of LP-approved cash toward token warrants has resulted in mostly exchanges and custodians reaping the big-buck raises and valuations so far.

But as these startups mature in the region, so will the funds that back them, says Tioga’s Priem. He believes that soon early-stage web3 startups in Europe will start to raise Series C and D rounds, which will warrant larger dedicated crypto funds.

Europe’s firms are still continuing to raise amid the downturn and have raised a record $20.1 billion in the first half of this year. 

UK firm Northzone, which raised a €1 billion fund fund last month, said in an interview with The Block that it would be open to investing in DAOs and tokens.

There are also other crypto funds set to be announced. Swisscom Ventures, the venture fund of a partly publicly owned telecommunications company, is set to debut a web3 fund next year, according to an email from the firm’s spokesperson.

Custody concerns and nervous LPs might hamper the speed of Europe’s venture firms, but Europe out-competes the U.S. in regulatory clarity, says Priem.

This week, a committee of the European Parliament passed its Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation, which will aim to bring digital assets under the wing of institutional regulation across the bloc. Following another vote, this could become law in two years. 

“I think we’re ahead in Europe versus the U.S. with MiCA coming to the market in 2024 but in the U.S., it’s still state-by-state,” he says. “It’s going to provide clarity for investors and in the coming years, that’s going to be our competitive edge.”

© 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.

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Author: Tom Matsuda


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