FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Blockchain.com and Crypto.com have notified users that they are enforcing restrictions connected to Russia.

Blockchain.com will longer provide custodial and rewards services to Russian nationals, according to emails sent to users yesterday and seen by The Block. Notified users have until Oct. 27 to withdraw custodial funds and rewards — after which their accounts will be blocked. Rewards accruals are already blocked.

The crypto financial services company said the restrictions are a result of government sanctions recently issued by the European Union.

Crypto.com has already blocked users affected by the EU regulations from accessing the app. The emails, dated Oct. 14 and seen by The Block, do not provide any information regarding withdrawals — so it is assumed that withdrawing funds from Crypto.com is not an option.

The crypto exchange company also said the restrictions are a result of the new regulations.

The moves follow recent actions from NFT company Dapper Labs, which blocked accounts tied to Russia about a week ago. The company, which created CryptoKitties and the Flow blockchain, also said its actions were a direct result of EU sanctions — adding that while affected users cannot access or transfer their NFTs, they still own them.

The Block reached out to both Blockchain.com and Crypto.com for comment and will update accordingly.

© 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.

Episode 99 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and BlockTower General Partner & Head of Venture Thomas Klocanas.

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.

BlockTower yesterday unveiled a new $150 million fund, which has been operating in stealth since December of last year.

BlockTower also announced a new venture arm, which complements the firm’s long-biased flagship fund, market-neutral fund and credit strategies.

In this episode of The Scoop, Thomas Klocanas, BlockTower general partner and the new head of ventures, explains how BlockTower’s new venture fund synergizes with the firm’s existing strategies, and how this is advantageous for early-stage crypto projects.

According to Klocanas, BlockTower’s four strategies collectively have more utility than a single specialized fund could have on its own:

“If you’re a DeFi protocol at seed stage, one of the first things you’re calling your investors to solve for following your seed round is how do you bootstrap liquidity?… The benefit within BlockTower, our market-neutral fund, that’s a big part of their mandate, that’s a big part of how they generate yields — so there are obvious synergies where we can pipe that in.”

Given this interoperability between the different facets of the business, Klocanas believes his new fund is more aptly referred to as a “strategic” fund:

“We’re not just a venture fund, we’re a ‘strategic.’ When folks say ‘strategic,’ they typically think of Coinbase’s investment arm or Gemini’s investment arm, but really I think that category is a little wider, and BlockTower is strategic in that we have multiple funds and strategies that can not just be an investor, but a user of your platform.”

For Klocanas, of all the crypto industry’s subsectors,  “the highest conviction theme right now is definitely credit.”

Given the amount of re-hypothecation in crypto that was exposed earlier this year, Klocanas believes there are clear advantages to decentralized lending:

“There is a benefit to lending through a smart contract in that in the pecking order, if you’re lending with something that has claims on collateral with code, you’re going to get paid.

During this episode, Chaparro and Klocanas also discuss:

• Why BlockTower is still enthusiastic about tokens;
• Whether or not the crypto venture landscape is still overheated;
• What lessons crypto VCs can learn from traditional venture.

This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Tron

About Tron
TRON is dedicated to accelerating the decentralization of the internet via blockchain technology and decentralized applications (dApps). Founded in September 2017 by H.E. Justin Sun, the TRON network has continued to deliver impressive achievements since MainNet launch in May 2018. July 2018 also marked the ecosystem integration of BitTorrent, a pioneer in decentralized web3 services boasting over 100 million monthly active users. The TRON network completed full decentralization in December 2021 and is now a community-governed DAO. | TRONDAO | Twitter | Discord |

© 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.

Binance has launched a $500 million fund to provide loans to Bitcoin miners struggling to cope with difficult crypto-market conditions.

Binance Pool, the company’s mining service, will provide loans for both private and publicly-listed Bitcoin miners — who will need to pledge security, in the form of physical or digital assets, to obtain loans with a duration of 18-24 months. Binance will charge interest rates between 5% and 10%.

The initiative comes as Bitcoin miners experienced a tough few months while the price of bitcoin declined. With low bitcoin prices, miners’ revenues have declined sharply — with Compute North even filing for bankruptcy.

Bitcoin miners’ revenue fell 16.2% to about $550.5 million last month – marking its fifth decline in the last six months, and the lowest total since November 2020, according to data from The Block Research.

Binance is not the only firm that is looking to support the crypto-mining industry. Last month, Chinese crypto billionaire Jihan Wu, the founder of Bitmain, set up a $250 million fund to buy distressed assets from Bitcoin miners. Wu’s Bitdeer Technologies Holding Co. plans to invest $50 million OF its own money, with Wu then seeking to raise an additional $200 from external investors.

Also last month, DeFi platform Maple Finance launched a $300 million lending pool for Bitcoin miners. The platform will charge interest rates of around 15%-20%, and provide loans that will have a duration of 12-18 months.

Earlier this month, crypto asset manager Grayscale formed a new entity named Grayscale Digital Infrastructure Opportunities LLC to invest in Bitcoin mining hardware. The entity plans to purchase mining rigs and hopes to profit by selling the bitcoins earned in the process.

© 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 investment firm NYDIG laid off about one-third of its employees in September, the Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday. 

NYDIG notified about 110 people about the layoffs on Sept. 22, according to the report. The cuts were made to lower expenses and home in on key areas of the business, it added. 

NYDIG announced that it had reshuffled its executive ranks on Oct. 3, with CEO Robert Gutmann and president Yan Zhao stepping down as Tejas Shah and Nate Conrad assumed their respective roles. Gutmann and Zhao are staying on at NYDIG’s parent company, Stone Ridge Holdings Group.

“Shah and Conrad will focus on accelerating NYDIG’s investment in its industry-leading mining solutions franchise serving the largest North American miners and in its platform technology business, helping banks and non-bank enterprises utilize the Lightning Network for next-generation wallets and global payments,” NYDIG said at the time of the reshuffle. 

NYDIG also highlighted in October that it saw record bitcoin balances in the third quarter. The company said revenues were up 130% through the second quarter and that it expected further increases into the third. NYDIG’s founder and executive chairman Ross Stevens called the company’s balance sheet “the strongest it’s ever been” and said it was “now investing aggressively into a capital-starved market.”

NYDIG was founded in 2017 after Gutmann, Zhao and Stevens started Stone Ridge Holdings Group in 2012.

NYDIG is among several other crypto companies that have announced job cuts and key departures in the past few months as the industry continues to weather a bear market. Executives have been leaving their posts in droves since August, and companies like crypto market maker GSR and Indian crypto exchange WazirX recently announced layoffs. 

© 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 Financial Accounting Services Board (FASB) unanimously voted to direct firms to use fair-value accounting for the crypto on their balance sheets – a change that could favorably alter the picture of a company’s bottom line.

Previously, firms were directed to report the lowest price since purchase for crypto, accounting for the assets with impairment charges. Those charges show the decline of the asset by reflecting any fall in value.

With crypto’s significant volatility, this led firms to take a big hit on their balance sheet that may not have reflected the current state of its holdings. Now, firms could be directed to record crypto at fair value, which standardizes reporting of digital assets with other financial assets. Those rules allow firms to recognize gains and losses as they occur, rather than when they sell the asset.

The vote represents only the first step towards amending the rules. The FASB still will have to circulate a draft of the rules and solicit comments. It will likely be months before any directive is firmed up and takes effect.

Crypto tax firm Bitwave said the unanimous vote marks a step towards an easier reporting process for crypto companies, and could usher in wider adoption.

“Impairment meant that public companies looking to get into digital assets had a big hurdle in their public reporting,” Bitwave CEO Pat White said.

Indeed, MicroStrategy, which has extensive bitcoin holdings, has long complained of the previous accounting standards. The company sent a comment letter to the FASB in September 2021 laying out the challenges of accounting with a crypto-heavy balance sheet. It pointed out that accounting with impairment charges leads to reports of assets “that diverge significantly from their fair market value.”

MicroStrategy faced pushback from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) at the start of this year when the agency scolded the firm for attempting to adjust for bitcoin impairment charges on its balance sheet disclosures. 

Lawmakers have taken up the issue in the past as well. In May of 2021, seven members of Congress sent a letter to the FASB asking the accounting body to establish clearer guidance for digital assets. 

The accounting standards-setting body has been in the process of overhauling its directives for crypto assets this year, and further changes are still up for discussion.

“If anything is clear to us now, it’s that more change is coming. There has never been a time when it’s more important to have flexibility in your crypto accounting platform,” White 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.

A governance proposal that would deploy Uniswap V3 on zkSync 2.0 passed earlier today with overwhelming support.

This deployment means Uniswap V3 will be available for users to trade on after zkSync launches on Oct. 28. Uniswap V3 holds the largest share of Decentralized Exchange (DEX) volume, according to The Block Research’s data. 

Matter Labs, the parent company of zkSync, put forward the proposal, in partnership with FranklinDAO, formerly known as the Penn Blockchain Club.

Almost 100% of voters supported the proposal. Out of approximately 41.3 million votes cast, only 120 were against the deployment.

The goal of this deployment is to support Uniswap’s cross-chain expansion into multiple blockchain ecosystems, according to the proposal. It further outlined that the deployment of Uniswap V3 will onboard new users and increase user activity on Uniswap, due to the cheaper fees and the security guarantees it gets from zkSync.

Uniswap V3 is a DEX that makes on-chain trading much more capital efficient. It does so by allowing “concentrated liquidity,” which enables liquidity providers to choose the price ranges they want to deploy their tokens.

This deployment will also help the growth of future protocols and infrastructure partners building on zkSync. Once live, Uniswap V3 code will be publicly available for anyone to use. This “will help grow a large list of projects that can be built on Uniswap V3,” the proposal 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.

The committee representing creditors in the Voyager bankruptcy case says it supports the recent sale to FTX, but in a new objection it’s taking issue with provisions in the sale plan that would protect executives from being taken to task down the line.

The creditor committee filed an objection last night in response to Voyager’s motion for approval of an order that would lay out procedures for its sale process. The creditor committee is concerned about stipulations in the recently filed plan that would effectively release executives from liability.

FTX scooped up the distressed firm’s assets for $1.4 billion at the close of last month, bringing the Chapter 11 process into its end game. The court still needs to approve motions related to the deal, and creditors will have to vote on the plan.

Now, the committee is asking the court to include a third option during the voting process that would allow creditors to accept the plan but object to the releases of the estate claims against directors and officers.

The committee’s counsel complained in its objection that the current plan deceptively deprives creditors of the ability to push back on the plan, since litigation will be costly on the estate. But the releases in the current version may keep creditors from pursuing funds that could be owed to them by executives. 

“This attempt to protect the individuals principally responsible for the Debtors’ financial woes is particularly egregious given that (i) there are colorable and valuable causes of action against these directors and officers, (ii) the releases are extraneous to effectuation of the sale transaction, and (iii) the beneficiaries of the releases are providing the Debtors with no consideration whatsoever in exchange for the releases,” the objection said.

It’s also asking the court to send a letter ahead of the upcoming Oct. 19 hearing disclosing information about the creditor committee’s investigation into executives and a recommendation to creditors on the plan at hand. Information regarding the investigation was redacted from the objection due to a protective order, despite the committee’s position that the information is not protected under the bankruptcy code. 

© 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.

After falling for several days in a row, most bitcoin mining companies tracked by The Block trended upward on the stock market Thursday.

The coin was trading at around $19,400 by market close, according to data from TradingView.

Stronghold Digital Mining’s stock rose by 13.9%, followed by Marathon (7.7%), Hut 8 Mining (5.5% on Nasdaq) and Bitfarms (4.7%  on Nasdaq).

Here’s how crypto mining companies performed on Thursday, Oct. 13:

© 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.

When Amanda Wick walked into digital currency conferences, she saw a lot familiar faces.

Crypto features, “lots of men. And conversely, the same women,” Wick, the former chief of legal affairs at blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, told The Block in a recent interview. “It’s like, there’s more than one female venture capitalist, there’s more than one woman doing crypto banking, there’s more than one woman [general counsel],” Wick added.

Building off prior professional development work she did for women at Chainalysis, Wick has founded a new standalone nonprofit, The Association for Women in Crypto. The association, which, filed for 501(c)(3) status Wednesday, is focused on enhancing knowledge and education around crypto, “while advancing the opportunities for women and the role they will play in the future of digital finance,” according to the group’s mission statement.

Mainly, that’s through linking women with others. “The goal is that members would never have to cold call a woman in crypto,” said Wick. 

The board consists of Jane Khodarkovsky, general counsel at Celo Foundation, Jennifer Farer, a prosecutor within the Justice Department, Laurel Loomis Rimon, a partner at the law firm Paul Hastings and a former senior official at multiple government departments, and Wick herself, who has worked for the Departments of Justice and Treasury as well as Chainalysis.

The project has the macro goal of expanding representation within a male-dominated industry.

The association’s inaugural membership focuses heavily on lawyers and compliance professionals. Former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Kathy Kraninger, current CFTC Senior Innovation Advisor Shivon Kershaw, Crypto Council for Innovation CEO Sheila Warren, and Michelle Korver, head of a16z’s crypto regulatory affairs, are also among the founding members.  There’s also representation from firms like Aave and Elliptic alongside government agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. 

“I wanted people who really work in the space who do the work, do crypto compliance, invest in venture, do marketing for crypto companies,” said Wick. “Women who are in crypto. But most importantly women who support other women.”

© 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.

A U.S. markets regulator is continuing a very public push for expanded authority in crypto, with its leader acknowledging that it is “a big step” for the commodity derivatives agency.  

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has traditionally regulated derivatives on physical goods — from pork options to energy futures. But CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam and his colleagues have pushed before both Congress and the public to expand their agency’s authority to spot markets for cryptocurrency they consider commodities, because of the unusual nature of digital assets, which can be delivered near instantly. 

“This is a big step for us,” said Behnam before the Institute of International Finance on Thursday. “But I’ve made the case, and the argument is, unlike traditional commodity markets, which are largely institutional and wholesale markets, we’ve seen commodity digital markets emerge that are retail oriented and speculative.”

A council of U.S. financial regulators recently recommended that Congress grant rulemaking authority to regulators for digital asset spot markets, which currently would include bitcoin and ether. The report does not specify an agency to hold that power, though the Senate Agriculture Committee has held a hearing on bipartisan legislation to grant the CFTC that power. 

Just two days ago, Behnam appeared at another event promoting his agency’s ability to handle the new regulatory perimeter. 

© 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.