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Messari, a crypto-focused data analytics business, plans to raise fresh financing.

The startup is in the process of raising capital at a valuation of $300 million and has pitched potential investors, according to two people familiar with the matter. One of those sources said the company is looking to raise $35 million. 

That would be significantly more than what Messari banked from investors in August last year, when Steve Cohen’s Point72 Ventures — the venture arm of a hedge fund that manages $24 billion in assets — led a $21 million Series A fundraise. It would also roughly triple the company’s valuation.

Messari’s founder and CEO Ryan Selkis declined to comment on the raise, but said via Twitter message: “We’re continuing to build crypto’s largest subscription information business, and are focused on getting ready to release a slate of new products at Mainnet [a conference organized by Messari] this September! More news to share then.”

He added that the startup does not need money and has “never spent a dime of investor capital while scaling to 130 people.”

News of the raise comes just a week after Messari announced the acquisition of Dove Metrics, which tracks fundraising and M&A activity in the crypto sector. The terms of that deal were not disclosed.  

Rich data

Messari is a part of a small cadre of increasingly well-capitalized startups whose mission is to arm institutions dabbling in crypto with the analytics tools and research needed to navigate the space. Its rivals include the likes of Kaiko, Delphi Digital, Nansen, Dune Analytics, and The Block’s own Research unit. Paris-based Kaiko raised $53 million in a Series B round in June, Dune Analytics announced a $69 million raise in February and Nansen banked $75 million in December last year.

Founded in 2018, Messari’s product is built around analytics tools and a disclosures library for clients such as Coinbase, Gemini, BlockTower and Chainalysis. The proceeds of the company’s $21 million round went towards expanding its institutional footprint, in part by scaling a research tool that helps institutional clients with onbarding, integration and support for new crypto assets. Kraken Ventures, Alameda Capital and CMS Ventures were also among its Series A backers.

Messari’s boss Selkis was part of the founding team behind Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group (DCG), where he managed the firm’s seed investments, before moving to DCG-owned CoinDesk in the role of managing director.

© 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.

Los Angeles-based game studio Arrivant is taking its Project Eluüne: StarGarden title cross-chain and will launch on Polygon in addition to its current home on Solana.

The team cited Polygon’s “dedication to sustainability” and “recent hirings of AAA talent” as motivating factors. In a statement, it confirmed that the move was decided before the Slope exploit on Solana last week, and that it plans to operate across multiple chains going forward. 

“We believe Polygon is building an environment well-suited to welcome the next generation of gamers into the space. While we are planning to become a cross-chain project serving players wherever they want to play, we are quite confident many of them will be choosing to play on Polygon,” said Arrivant CEO Cedric Gamelin. 

Founded in early 2020 by Gamelin, Meghan McWilliams and Ramin Shokiradze, Arrivant also announced it is finalizing a $5 million seed funding round at a valuation of $35 million. C2 Ventures led the round, with participation from Polygon itself, 6th Man, Lightspeed and others.

It will use the funding to scale its team and focus on delivering early access to the game by the first quarter of 2023. 

Project Eluüne allows players to recruit, craft, train, upgrade and merge creatures in a fantasy world made up of floating islands named StarGardens. The gameplay is designed round forming tribes — think guilds or clans — and will also feature Soulbound non-fungible tokens (NFTs). 

According to research from The Block, Polygon Studios were the third most active blockchain investors in the second quarter of 2022, after Animoca Brands and Coinbase Ventures. Solana Ventures, which was previously among the busiest investors, has dropped out of the top 10.

Despite the market downturn, interest among investors for gaming projects is not easing. Among the top ten most active blockchain investors, gaming accounted for 47% of investments in the most recent quarter.

As of July 8, Polygon was the third-largest chain for hosting blockchain games with 198, followed by Solana with 102. However, the charts are topped by BNB Chain with 618 and Ethereum with 382.

© 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 API and node infrastructure providers Infura and Alchemy are the latest centralized entities in the cryptocurrency space to blacklist the US Treasury-sanctioned crypto mixer Tornado Cash.

Both platforms are currently blocking remote procedure call (RPC) requests to Tornado Cash, according to Twitter user 0xdev0. RPC calls enable users of decentralized apps to communicate with blockchain servers, especially when the user is not running their own individual node. Infura and Alchemy are among a number of RPC providers popular among crypto users.

By blocking RPC requests, Tornado Cash users who are using Alchemy or Infura endpoints are not able to access the privacy service. This restriction seems to however be limited to the front-end code. It is still possible to access Tornado Cash from the command line interface (CLI) via “method calling,” as has been reported by some users on Twitter.

While neither Infura nor Alchemy has responded to The Block’s request for comments, the RPC request blockade is likely tied to Tornado Cash’s recent troubles. The US Treasury on Monday sanctioned the crypto mixer by adding several of its wallet addresses to its sanctions list. Since then, the platform’s website, email, and GitHub accounts have all been taken down. Circle, the USDC stablecoin issuer, has also frozen USDC in affected wallets.

Infura has been known to block access to crypto services in accordance with US sanctions. Users in places like Iran and Venezuela have routinely complained of being unable to use MetaMask. The MetaMask wallet uses Infura as its default RPC endpoint for connecting to the Ethereum 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.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) announced today that it’s exploring Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDCs) use cases through a new research project.

The project will focus specifically on the use cases and benefits of CBDCs and distributed ledger technologies on countries like Australia, which have modern and well-functioning payment systems, according to a release. The research is taking place in collaboration with the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC), a 10-year, $180 million research program funded by industry partners, universities and the Australian government. 

“CBDC is no longer a question of technological feasibility,” said Andreas Furche, CEO of the DFCRC, in the release. “The key research questions now are what economic benefits a CBDC could enable, and how it could be designed to maximise those benefits.” 

The research project is expected to take a year to complete and will feature a “limited scale” pilot program that will take place in ring-fenced environment, per the release. 

The Reserve Bank and DFCRC will select a range of different use cases proposed by industry participants to participate in the pilot. 

Once the project is completed, a report on the findings will be published and those findings will contribute to ongoing research into the desirability and feasibility of a CBDCs in Australia, the release said. 

Australia’s central bank joins several others — including the Bank of Thailand and the central bank of the Philippines — in exploring CBDC use cases with pilot programs. 

The RBA also recently partnered with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub to create two prototypes for an international settlement platform using multiple CBDCs alongside several other countries.

© 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.

CleanSpark acquired a 36-megawatt mining facility in Georgia from vertically integrated bitcoin miner Waha Technologies for $16.2 million.

The new site will add 1.1 exahash per second (EH/s) to the company’s hash rate (a 38% increase), according to a statement released Tuesday. It can be scaled by 50 megawatts, totaling 86 megawatts.

The miner bought roughly 3,400 rigs that were already operating in the new Georgia location for $8.9 million. They represent about 0.34 EH/s.

CleanSpark will fill the balance of the 36 megawatts with machines it has already paid for. The company has been stocking up on ASICs recently, taking advantage of the current buyer’s market. It acquired 1,800 bitcoin miners in June and 1,061  additional ones in July. 

“The market has been preparing all summer for consolidation, and we are pleased to be on the acquiring side,” CleanSpark CEO Zach Bradford said. “Our focus on sustainability and maximizing value for our stakeholders have put us in a unique position to take advantage of the unprecedented opportunities that the current market has created.”

CleanSpark announced last week that it generated roughly $8.8 million from the sale of 426 BTC in July, based on an average bitcoin price of $20,768.

© 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.

On Tuesday, crypto spot and derivatives exchange FTX notified users that derivatives markets tied to ether (ETH) will remain unaffected prior to the merge. In a blog post, the Bahamas-headquartered platform clarified it won’t halt or settle ether derivatives like futures and perpetuals before the merge and it intends to keep trading live throughout the event.

The merge is a highly anticipated Ethereum upgrade in which the blockchain will transition from proof of work to proof of stake and is expected to go live in the coming months.

In a statement, FTX said, “FTX does not have any plans to halt or settle ETH futures prior to the Merge, and we will do our best to support continuous trading.”

The exchange added that its Ethereum futures and perpetual contracts — ETH-0930, ETH-1230, ETH-PERP —will track the price of proof-of-stake ether once it has gone through the merge.

FTX is the second-largest crypto exchange in terms of daily derivatives trading volume, according to CoinGecko. In the last 24 hours, the exchange has supported $7.5 billion in derivatives contracts. The exchange offers futures and perpetual contracts tied to the underlying value of ether, amongst other crypto assets. 

Today’s announcement from FTX comes at a time when aggregate open interest of ether futures across exchanges spiked from $5 billion mid-June to more than $7.7 billion right now, according to data from The Block’s Data Dashboard. Open interest in a futures market refers to the total value of unsettled trading contracts. Rising open interest serves as an indicator that more money is entering the asset market. While futures and perpetual contracts allow traders to gain exposure to ETH, they also offer a way for investors to hedge potential volatility in ETH’s price. 

© 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.

Ark Invest, the asset manager founded by Cathie Wood, ditched $20 million worth of Block shares on Monday and loaded up on over $65 million worth of chipmaker Nvidia.

Ark Invest sold 235,489 shares in payments provider Block on August 8, all from its flagship Ark Innovation ETF, according to its latest trade filing. The firm instead bought 366,982 shares of Nvidia – 289,229 of which were added to the Ark Innovation ETF, with the remainder added to the Ark Next Generation Internet ETF and the Ark Fintech Innovation ETF. 

Shares in Jack Dorsey’s Block closed down a little over 2% on Monday at $85.50. Based on this price, the value of Wood’s sold shares was $20.1 million. Meanwhile Nvidia was trading at $177.93 on Monday evening, which means Ark’s investment clocked in at around $65.3 million. 

Wood’s fund exited PayPal in April to bet on Block, which Wood discussed with CNBC’s Kate Rooney at the time. The Ark CEO told Rooney her analysts had higher conviction on Block due to organic growth at its Cash App, which she said would be “fired up” by bitcoin. 

Shares in Block sunk a little over 50% during the second quarter while bitcoin clocked its worst quarter in 11 years as various asset classes suffered major losses amid ongoing macroeconomic turbulence. Last week Block recorded a 6% decline in net revenues year-over-year, which was attributed to a decline in bitcoin revenues.  

PayPal shares also plunged in value during the second quarter. The company, whose Venmo product competes with Cash App, reported positive earnings last week and revealed Elliott Investment Management took a $2 billion stake in the payments firm. 

Monday’s sale came exactly two weeks after Ark sold over 1.4 million shares in crypto exchange Coinbase for $75 million. Unfortunately for Ark, Coinbase shares have almost doubled since then, on the back of partnership news and ahead of the firm’s second-quarter earnings today. Wood told Bloomberg TV on Monday that regulatory uncertainty — the SEC is investigating Coinbase over several coins listed on the platform — was the driving force behind Ark selling these shares.

© 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.

Banking giant Citigroup is hiring a digital assets risk manager to focus on cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and decentralized finance, according to a job posting on the firm’s website. 

While it’s just one of many open roles focused on digital assets at the company, Citi is among the first major banks to take aim at decentralized finance — a sub-sector of crypto that, as recent events involving Terra and Three Arrows Capital have shown, can be perilous to navigate.

Citi is currently hiring for two digital asset risk managers at a director level, per the website. One will specialize in decentralized finance, stablecoins and cryptocurrencies, while the other will be focused on CBDCs, digital securities and enterprise blockchain. 

Both risk managers will have responsibilities that include marshalling “a robust, risk-sensitive and unified risk management view and response” to initiatives, pilots, proof of concepts and strategic partnerships, according to the postings. 

“Risk management in decentralized finance is really much more complex than what you see in traditional finance — this is why they [Citi] need a person dedicated to simply understanding and reasoning about it,” said Tarun Chitra, founder and CEO of crypto financial risk modelling tool Gauntlet, in an email. “However, the roles seem quite non-technical, so I suspect this is more of an investigation into how to support these markets.”

In a resurgent crypto market, DeFi will likely provide a better alternative to traditional yields, Chitra said. But any bank looking to offer exposure to DeFi would likely have to go through regulated channels that carry out proper know-your-customer checks, like Aave Arc, he added.

Citi’s major crypto hiring push

Hiring is also taking place for multiple product positions and for a head of platforms role within the digital assets division of Citi’s Institutional Client Group (ICG). There are also digital assets roles within treasury trade solutions and the custody technology teams. 

The flurry of job postings comes as part of the firm’s broad push for fresh crypto talent. In November 2021, The Block reported the firm planned to hire up to 100 individuals to build out its ICG digital assets division.  

Citi has emerged as a launchpad for top level executives moving into the crypto industry. The Block reported in April that at least 15 executives had left the bank for top jobs at crypto firms like Copper, Paxos and CoinFund. 

“The participants that engage in a market when it’s down are the ones that stand to gain the most,” said the founder of a leading DeFi protocol, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “And so they [Citi] probably view this as a favourable time to begin hiring.”

An arms race

Citi isn’t the only big investment bank doubling down on crypto hiring during the bear market. 

The Block recently reported that banking giant Morgan Stanley is looking to hire a product development manager with a focus on building a wide range of new crypto products across business lines. 

However, Bitwise’s CEO Hunter Horsley cautioned observers to curb their enthusiasm on the recent posting. “Hiring a mid-level person to work on something like this doesn’t guarantee a product comes to market,” he said. 

Bank of America also recently launched a new markets team dedicated to cryptocurrencies, while investment banking titan JPMorgan staked a claim in the metaverse with a Decentraland lounge named after its crypto-focused team Onyx. 

© 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.

OpenSea has backed non-fungible token (NFT) minting platform Fair.xyz in a $4.5 million round led by venture capital firm Eden Block. 

Other investors in the round included NFX and First Minute Capital, Fair.xyz told The Block. The startup, which has partnered with the Ukrainian government to help launch its own NFTs to fund the war against Russia, was valued at $33 million after the round closed.

According to the founders Isaac Kamlish, Isaac Bentata Chocron and Nathan Cohen — all former Meta and Goldman Sachs engineers — the current process of minting NFTs is broken. They describe how a lack of developer knowledge, gas fees and transaction failures lock out the vast majority from creating their own NFTs. 

“There’s loads of no-code solutions out there that help but with only creating one- or two-piece collections,” said Bentata Chocron in an interview. “When you launch at scale — say 10,000 – you have to deploy your own smart contract, build a website and integrate the NFT fully into it, generate your artwork and centralize it. It’s a very elaborate process that can take weeks for an experienced team.” 

Through Fair’s solution, creators can launch NFT collections in minutes, according to the founders. Its smart queuing technology also helps to reduce gas fees and the possibility of failed transactions. The team plan to monetize by taking a 6% commission on primary sales of NFTs created through the service. 

While the current NFT market is a far cry from the heady days of January 2022 when monthly trading volume reached $5.6 billion — last month it dipped under the $700 million mark — that hasn’t stopped companies from developing in this field. 

In June of this year, crypto payments firm MoonPay launched a similar service named HyperMint which allows brands and creators to mint up to 100 million NFTs at once. On Sunday, American luxury jewelry brand Tiffany debuted and sold out its 250-strong NFT collection in 20 minutes. 

© 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 committee representing unsecured creditors of Celsius Network, the bankrupt crypto lender, issued its first official statement last night.

The group repeatedly singled out Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky, stating that it intends “to thoroughly investigate the prepetition conduct of Mashinsky and other Celsius insiders, including the problematic asset deployment decisions, prepetition transfers, and other issues.”

Celsius suspended withdrawals on June 12, and a month later filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York. At that time, the company said it had more than 100,000 creditors.

The Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors was appointed on July 27, according to yesterday’s statement. It is made up of seven individuals and institutional representatives who lent funds through the platform. They are Caroline G. Warren, Thomas DiFiore, ICB Solutions, Christopher Coco, Andrew Yoon, Mark Robinson, and Covario AG.

“The Committee’s goal is to maximize the recoveries of account holders and unsecured creditors,” it said in the statement. “The Committee intends to be a vigorous participant in the Debtors’ bankruptcy and to put the interests of the Debtors’ account holders and unsecured creditors first.”

The group has hired White & Case, the law firm, as its counsel, as well restructuring advisor M3 Partners and blockchain consultancy Elementus. It has also appointed Perella Weinberg Partners, an investment bank specializing in restructuring, to advise on “potential transactions” that could help recoup lenders’ funds. Finally, it is in the process of appointing Kroll “to establish a website and call center to provide information regarding the bankruptcy process to account holders and unsecured creditors.”

Potential sales of bitcoin accrued through Celsius’ mining operations and of GK8 — the security firm it acquired for $115 million in November last year — are being explored, according to the committee’s statement. The committee will also investigate “strategic options to reorganize or sell the business (or portions thereof) to maximize value for account holders and unsecured creditors.”

Celsius owes $1.2 billion more than it holds in assets, per a statement made by Mashinsky.

© 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.