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The Nexus Mutual DAO has voted in favor of allocating 15,348 ether (ETH), which currently amounts to $29 million, from the DeFi insurer’s capital pool to earn yield on Maple Finance.

According to details from the voting page, the vote ended with almost unanimous approval from voters. The level of participation from the DAO was however not enough to reach the required quorum. As such, the Nexus Mutual advisory board’s decision was required to pass the vote.

The vote was based on a proposal to invest 10% of the Nexus Mutual treasury into Maple Finance to earn yield. Maple Finance is a DeFi lender that has issued over $1.5 billion worth of crypto loans since its inception in May 2019. Nexus Mutual will deploy this capital into the Maven 11 Capital wrapped ETH (WETH) pool on Maple. Maven 11 is a digital asset firm and is one of the pool delegates on Maple Finance.

The reason for this investment is to enable Nexus Mutual to earn yield on its ETH holdings. According to the proposal document, only 20% of the ether in its capital pool is earning interest for the DeFi insurer. This 20% comes from Nexus Mutual’s staked ETH holdings.

Nexus Mutual will earn up to a 9% annual yield on the ether tokens it lends to Maple Finance via the Maven 11 WETH pool. The ETH lending itself will generate a 4% yield while the remaining 5% gains will come from MPL rewards generated from lending tokens on Maple. MPL is Maple’s native token.

According to the proposal, Nexus can earn additional revenue from the MPL rewards. One way to do this would be to sell the MPL rewards to ensure yields stay at a minimum of 9%. Alternatively, Nexus can also stake the MPL to receive staked MPL (xMPL) which can also earn additional yield for the DeFi insurer.

© 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.

Dutch authorities arrested a developer suspected of involvement in Tornado Cash on Wednesday, two days after the US government sanctioned the crypto mixing service, according to a statement today from the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD). 

The FIOD arrested an unidentified 29-year-old man in Amsterdam, according to the statement. He is suspected of involvement in concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering through the mixing service Tornado Cash, which allows users to obscure blockchain-based transactions.  

“These advanced technologies, such as decentralised organisations that may facilitate money laundering are receiving extra attention from the FIOD,” the agency said, adding that it may make further arrests. 

The US Treasury added Tornado Cash and 44 associated Ethereum and USDC wallets to its Specially Designated Nationals list, according to an August 8 announcement from the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control. The wallets identified included the smart contract that runs Tornado Cash and the Tornado Cash donation wallet.

© 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 CEO Changpeng Zhao said his team seized a large portion of the funds stolen during Tuesday’s front-end exploit on Curve.

In an update Zhao said on Twitter that the centralized exchange froze $450,000 in stolen assets, which the Curve hacker had deposited to the exchange. Zhao added the team is working with law enforcement to help return them. Meanwhile, Curve is yet to comment in relation to the recovery of the funds.

“Binance froze/recovered $450k of the Curve stolen funds,” Zhao said. “We are working with LE [law enforcement] to return the funds to the users.”

This was the second such seizure of funds tied to the Curve exploit. Previously, The Block reported that Fixed Float, an exchange based on the Lightning Network, had also frozen 112 ETH (200,000) deposited from the Curve exploiter in a likely attempt to launder the assets. As such, the recovered sum is now up to more than $650,000. 

On Tuesday, Curve Finance had its front end compromised with a Domain Name Service (DNS) spoof. During this attack, the perpetrator altered Curve’s DNS to redirect users to another website, which hosted a malicious contract.

When the unsuspecting users interacted with the contract, it gave the hacker the ability to drain their wallets. After the exploit, the hacker transferred the large majority of the stolen funds to Binance as well as Fixed Float — where they were frozen.

© 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.

Abrdn, an investment firm with more than $619 billion in assets under management, said it has become the biggest external shareholder in digital-assets exchange Archax. 

Founded in 2018, Archax is the UK’s first regulated digital-securities exchange. It enables institutional investors access to blockchain-based assets, it said in a news release on Friday. 

Since January, crypto-asset companies have been required to register and secure approval from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to operate in the UK. Archax is the only exchange to win approval from the regulator, per the release. 

Archax has secured permissions that cover trading, custody and brokerage and will launch later this year, the release said.

Abrdn’s stake in Archax will provide the asset manager with a seat on the board. It’s the company’s first big move into digital assets. 

Founded in 1825, investment house Abrdn, formerly known as Standard Life Aberdeen, offers a range of investment services focused on investment solutions, tools and technologies for financial advisers and a personal wealth business.

The company plans to use the stake in Archax as a route for investors to access opportunities within digital securities and connect to existing offerings through “tokenization,” per the release.

“With Archax, we will have a meaningful footprint in this fast-developing market — which is likely to evolve in a multitude of different ways that are relevant to our core businesses,” said Stephen Bird, Abrdn’s CEO, in the release. 

On Thursday, the FCA rolled out new disclosure requirements stating that any person who decides to acquire 25% or more of an FCA registered crypto-asset firm must receive prior FCA approval before completing the transaction. 

Across the pond, US asset managers are making similar moves. On Thursday, BlackRock, the world’s biggest investment manager, launched a product offering institutional clients exposure to spot bitcoin. The week before, it announced a partnership with Coinbase to offer crypto assets to institutional clients. 

Also, $1.3 trillion asset manager T. Rowe Price recently appointed Blue Macellari as its head of digital-assets strategy. She joins the firm from crypto hedge fund Dunamis Trading and will lead both the development and implementation of the firm’s crypto strategy. 

Fidelity, which oversees $4.2 trillion, has been in the space longer, having launched a digital-assets arm in 2018. 

© 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.

Leon Li, founder and CEO of crypto exchange Huobi, is reportedly in talks with investors about selling a controlling stake in the company.

The deal could value Huobi at as much as $3 billion, according to a report published on Friday by Bloomberg. Li is reportedly looking offload roughly a 60% stake in the company. The report stated that a deal could be concluded this month.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX and Tron founder Justin Sun have held discussions with Huobi about acquiring the shares, according to Bloomberg.

A spokesperson for Huobi confirmed to Bloomberg that Li had discussed a potential sale with several institutions. “He hopes that the new shareholders will be more powerful and resourceful, and that they will value the Huobi brand and invest more capital and energy to drive the growth of Huobi,” they said.

The Block has contacted Huobi for comment but did not hear back by press time.

Founded in China in 2013 but headquartered in the Seychelles, Huobi remains one of Asia’s largest crypto exchanges by volume.

At its height in late 2020, it boasted a market share among crypto-only exchange of more than 25%, according to The Block Research’s data. But its slice of the market has faded over time to around 5% today, with rival Binance accounting for an increasingly dominant portion of the market.

© 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.

Strike, the crypto payments app built on the Lightning Network, announced a new Visa card that will offer spending rewards.

The company announced the launch on its Twitter Thursday evening, telling users they can now “take Strike anywhere and earn rewards on everyday spending.” The rollout will begin with a waitlist.

Strike is one of the better-known apps built on the Lightning Network, a Layer 2 protocol designed to speed up Bitcoin-based transactions. The app made headlines in April when CEO Jack Mallers announced a deal with Shopify that would allow merchants to take payment in crypto, but receive dollars.

In a series of tweets, Strike said users will be able to use the new card for direct deposits, to be paid in bitcoin, buy bitcoin, send and receive money, spend funds using Apple Pay and Google Pay, and earn rewards.

It also said that 1% of all profits associated with the card will be donated to open-source Bitcoin development.

Lightning Labs, an entity that helps steer much of the development of the Lightning Network, raised $70 million in a Series B funding round in April, with backing from Valor Equity Partners and Baillie Gifford.

© 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.

Stronghold Digital Mining pushed back its second-quarter earnings conference call from this afternoon to August 15, the company said on Thursday in a press release. It is now the second mining company to delay its earnings release this week. 

“We’re making a significant announcement that needed a day or two more to finalize,” a spokesperson said when asked about the delay. Stronghold did not publicly mention a reason for rescheduling its earnings in its press statement.

Stronghold now is planning to hold its second-quarter earnings conference call on August 15 at 5:00 p.m. EDT, and would issue a press release with results after trading closes that day. The mining company’s stock price was up 4.68% today from yesterday’s close.  

Stronghold operates miners at two plants in Pennsylvania that generate power using waste coal. The company went public in October 2021. 

Another notable mining company, Riot Blockchain, also delayed its earnings release this week. Riot notified the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in an August 9 filing that it would be unable to file its second-quarter report on time,  saying it needed to do an assessment of its impairment due to “recent adverse changes in business climate.”

Contributing to the accounting delay were “various global macroeconomic and geopolitical factors, such as the ongoing war in Ukraine, global logistics slowdowns, and recent significant inflationary pressures,” Riot said in the filing. 

© 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.

Most bitcoin mining stocks closed Thursday higher than they were at open. The three stocks that faired the best were Hut 8 (US) at +9.23%, Hut 8 (Canada) at +9.2% and Argo Blockchain (UK) at +8.89%. 

CleanSpark, SAI.TECH and Cipher Mining Inc saw the biggest price drops: -4.68%, -2.64% and -2.16% respectively. 

The price increases and decreases on Thursday were modest compared to Wednesday’s bitcoin mining stock fluctuations. Yesterday, CleanSpark jumped  by 27.78% while SAI.TECH fell by 7.85%.

On Thursday, the price of bitcoin eclipsed $24,000, continuing the gradual rise it has seen for most of August.

Here’s how crypto mining companies performed on Thursday, August 11:

© 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 miner sold 7,202 BTC in June — 89.4% percent of the bitcoin holdings it had at the end of the previous month. That money was mostly used for equipment payments, capital investments in additional data center capacity and scheduled repayment of debt, the company said then.

Core Scientific mined 3,365 BTC, by about 5% from the previous quarter, despite having curtailed power for 8,157 megawatt-hours in July, amid a heatwave in Texas. About 15% of its footprint is located in Texas, the company said last month.

That increase was mainly driven by the expansion of the company’s self-mining hash rate to 10.3 exahash per second (EH/s), from 8.3 EH/s at the end of March.

The company has maintained its hash rate target for 2022 at between 30 and 32 EH/s.

© 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.

Rune Christensen, co-founder of MakerDAO, has stated that the DAI stablecoin could exit its USD peg by eliminating all of its USD Coin (USDC) exposure. The DAI stablecoin is currently backed 60% by USDC, according to daistats.

Christensen made the remarks on the MakerDAO Discord channel on Thursday. The MakerDAO co-founder said the recent US Treasury sanctions against crypto mixing service Tornado Cash was the reason for considering the pivot. According to Christensen, the sanctions are more serious than he originally considered. Centre, the consortium behind USDC, froze USDC funds in Tornado Cash wallets following the sanctions. 

“Will be discussing it at tonight’s call but I think we should seriously consider preparing to depeg from USD … it is almost inevitable that it will happen and it is only realistic to do with huge amounts of preparation,” said Christensen.

By abandoning its USDC exposure, the DAI stablecoin could lose its US dollar peg. This is because DAI’s current peg is maintained via something called a “price stability module” or PSM. The PSM enables the minting of DAI for acceptable collateral such as USDC and ether (ETH) at a fixed rate. This fixed rate requires a little more than $1 of the collateral to mint $1 worth of DAI.

According to data from Makerburn, DAI is over 80% backed by stablecoins of which USDC is in the majority. As such, if MakerDAO sells its USDC for something like ETH, DAI could lose its $1 peg due to a disruption of the PSM. Christensen says this is an acceptable risk and the MakerDAO community is set to discuss the matter in a governance call today.

Christensen’s comments have drawn criticism from several notable crypto personalities. Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin called it a “risky and terrible idea,” adding that a significant decline in the spot price of ETH could see the collateral backing for DAI becoming undervalued.

Robert Leshner, the founder of DeFi protocol Compound Finance, argued that the move could affect DAI’s stability. According to Leshner, this could have implications for the DeFi space as a whole. “Converting DAI into a price-elastic asset will ruin it, full stop,” Leshner 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.