FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Investment bank Cowen has launched a digital assets division that will allow institutional customers to trade cryptocurrencies.

The company announced on Wednesday that it will offer “full-service trade execution and custody solutions.”  At this point, customers can trade between 16 tokens, including bitcoin, ethereum, solana, AAVE and USD Coin.

“Through Cowen Digital, our clients now have access to the crypto and digital asset markets with our institutional quality and fully integrated end-to-end execution and custody capabilities,” said Jeffrey Solomon, chairman and CEO of Cowen.

The company has been building up its infrastructure for the past few months ahead of the launch. It has partnered with Standard Custody and PolySign to provide custodial services.

Last year, Standard Custody got a license to operate as a New York state-chartered trust. Around the same time, Cowen invested $25 million in PolySign, the parent company of Standard Custody.

To head the new division, the company tapped Drew Forman, its former managing director and head of equity derivatives.

In the future, Cowen hopes to offer crypto derivatives and futures, as well as access to non-fungible tokens (NTFs).

Like Cowen, other players in the traditional finance segment have been making moves in the digital asset space. Earlier in the week, Goldman Sachs announced its first over-the-counter crypto transaction in the form of a bitcoin non-deliverable option.

© 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.

Acala, a parachain project on Polkadot, has launched a $250 million ecosystem fund to boost the adoption of its stablecoin. 

Acala’s $250 million ecosystem fund is being stood up with the aim of accelerating the development of DApps that make use of its stablecoin, Acala USD (aUSD), on Polkadot. Polkadot is an interoperability network that connects many application-specific blockchains, dubbed parachains.

The ecosystem fund drew participation from an array of industry firms, including Alameda Research, Arrington Capital, Digital Currency Group, IOSG, Jump Crypto, Kraken Ventures and Pantera Capital, among others.

In a press statement shared with The Block, Acala said the fund will provide grants to early-stage Polkadot projects in areas like decentralized finance (DeFi), derivatives, payments, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) that incorporate its aUSD stablecoin.

“The fund is meant to support any team building on any Polkadot parachain with a strong aUSD use case,” Dan Reecer, chief growth officer at Acala, told The Block.

Acala is also partnering with other Polkadot parachains – Astar Network, Centrifuge, Efinity, HydraDX, Manta, Moonbeam, OriginTrail, Parallel, and Zeitgeist — on aUSD adoption.

The aUSD stablecoin lies at the heart of Acala’s DeFi offerings. It can be minted using collateral tokens on Polkadot, including polkadot (DOT), kusama (KSM), acala (ACA) and karura (KAR) and then be staked for yield.

© 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.

Jane Street is backing an upstart project in the decentralized finance space, representing the latest sign that the global trading firm is prioritizing crypto. 

The firm has made an investment in Bastion, a decentralized lending protocol built on the NEAR blockchain. In a statement shared with The Block, the project’s anonymous founder N^2 reported that the project has experienced “explosive growth,” pointing to $200 million in total value locked in the protocol within the first 24 hours of its launch.

“NEAR has the highest growth potential of any Layer-1 blockchain right now. As the fastest, sharded Proof-of-Stake chain with superb infrastructure and developer experiences, NEAR has all the tools to become the next DeFi powerhouse,” noted N^2.

Bastion launched its main net on March 7. 

A wide range of investors participated in the funding round, including ParaFi Capital, Digital Currency Group, and CMS. Individual investors, including The Daily Ape’s Darren Lau and 0xMaki, also took part. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

Jane Street’s participation is notable given its position as a global market maker. Historically, the firm has refrained from speaking to the press and has mostly flown under the radar despite trading more than $17 trillion worth of securities in 2020, as noted by Robin Wigglesworth at The Financial Times. 

Still, Jane Street recently opened up to Bloomberg News about its crypto trading business with one executive noting that the firm has been “exploring working with emerging platforms, such as decentralized finance exchanges.” Jane Street trader Turner Batty told the outlet that crypto has become “a clear growth area.”

Jane Street was also among the 50 investors that participated in 1inch’s Series B. Still, relative to competitors like Jump Trading and GSR, its venture activity has been muted.

© 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.

David Woo, a former top Bank of America executive, is famous for his 2013 prediction that Bitcoin would prove to be a viable alternative to traditional money transfer providers.

Nearly a decade later, Woo is still prognosticating about the future of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, though given the current macro backdrop, his outlook is significantly bleaker. 

In the latest episode of The Scoop podcast, Woo joins host Frank Chaparro to explain why Bitcoin may not be spared from the economic and geopolitical issues he sees potentially forming on the horizon: 

“I think the most important story that we could be transitioning into is basically Cold War II,” he said. “Cold War II that pits the US and its allies against China and Russia… That’s not going to be fun.”

US efforts to potentially develop its own central bank digital currency in such an environment also spells trouble, though the Fed itself hasn’t given the official green-light on this front. As Woo discussed during the interview:  

“If we go back to the 70s situation where they are printing money… you think they are just going to encourage people to go into Bitcoin?” He went on to add, “Once you have CBDC, they are going to know every cent you have… Everything is going to be under government control, and at that point, they’re going to crack down on bitcoin like mad.”

To illustrate his point, Woo pointed to China, where the launch of a CBDC resulted in  a harsh crackdown on services facilitating the exchange of fiat currencies and crypto assets.

According to Woo, the main reason the US has yet to crack down on Bitcoin is political. He explains:

“The main reason is because the government in the US doesn’t want to take the side of the banks… The banks represent the established monopolies, the payment system, the dinosaurs and that Bitcoin represents the new kid on the block that’s going to make everything more efficient. Even if they think crypto is a bit speculative, they’re afraid to crack down too hard because they are going to be accused of basically being pro-Wall Street.”

Despite the political unpopularity, Woo believes the creation of an American CBDC and the accompanying crypto crackdown is inevitable:

“China just launched their CBDC…Nobody wants China to get ahead, so America needs to basically show that the US is not ready to surrender the dollar’s reserve currency status in this new struggle.”

Earlier this month the Biden Administration issued an executive order which, among other things, “places the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC.”

Woo suggests that it is this particular event that will have a profound impact on Bitcoin: “Once you have a [CBDC], do you not think the attitude towards Bitcoin is going to change completely?”

During this episode, Woo and Chaparro also discuss:

• The factors driving inflation
• Why the conflict between Russia and Ukraine may result in “Cold War 2” 
• Why inflation, tech stocks, and the US dollar matter for crypto

This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Chainalysis
Fireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.

About Coinbase Prime
Coinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.

About Chainalysis
Chainalysis is the blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Our data powers investigation, compliance, and market intelligence software that has been used to solve some of the world’s most high-profile criminal cases and grow consumer access to cryptocurrency safely. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com.

© 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.

Japanese messaging giant Line is set to launch its non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace on April 13, having secured partnerships with several entertainment companies in the country.

Dubbed LINE NFT, the platform will run on the company’s proprietary network LINE Blockchain. Users who mint NFTs on the platform will have to store them on the LINE BITMAX wallet. As such, NFT exchange among users will only be possible via the proprietary Line wallet service.

As part of the LINE NFT launch, the marketplace has secured partnerships with several major companies in the entertainment sector. Some of the launch partners include popular entertainment franchise Yoshimoto Kogyo, noted video game developer Square Enix, and popular manga Patlabor.

The launch will also include the sale of Yoshimoto Stamp NFT as well as a limited collection of NFT videos from Yoshimoto. After the launch, there are plans to integrate NFTs as avatars on Line’s messaging service.

Line also has plans to include NFTs into its official stamps and stickers. Other planned features include using digital collectibles as prizes on numerous social media campaigns.

When launched, LINE NFT will be the latest online mall dedicated to crypto-collectibles in Japan. Firms like Animoca Brands and Rakuten are also building similar platforms in Japan.

According to a Coinpost report on Wednesday, Line’s platform is separate from Z Holdings’ global NFT platform DOSI which will launch later in the spring.

As previously reported by The Block, the platform will be available in over 180 countries and is part of efforts by the company to meet its mid-term revenue targets.

Both Line Corp. and Z Holdings are subsidiaries of SoftBank with Z Holdings, a merger between Line Corp and Yahoo Japan acting as the conglomerate’s internet arm.

© 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.

Abra, a crypto investment app provider based in the US, has appointed a chief financial officer (CFO) as the firm says it’s going through a period of rapid growth.

Justin McMahan, a former managing director and global treasurer at the high-frequency trading Tower Research Capital, has joined Abra as its CFO effective immediately. Before Tower Research, McMahan worked at investment firm Serengeti Asset Management and Morgan Stanley in his over 20-year career.

McMahan is Abra’s first CFO, an Abra spokesperson told The Block. He will focus on expanding Abra’s finance and operations team as the company is going through “hyper-growth,” said the spokesperson. Abra says its active users grew over 300% in 2021 from the year prior and transaction volume increased more than 660% during that same time, but the spokesperson declined to provide absolute numbers.

Founded in 2014, Abra provides crypto brokerage, deposit and lending services to both retail and institutional clients. The firm claims to have processed over $1 billion in crypto-backed loans and paid millions of dollars in interest payments to clients.

Abra is backed by notable investors, including Foxconn and American Express. It has raised $85 million in total funding to date. When asked if the firm is looking to raise more funds in the near future, the Abra spokesperson said the company is profitable, but it will likely seek additional capital this year. They declined to comment on Abra’s initial public offering or IPO plans.

Abra’s CFO appointment comes as several crypto firms have recently appointed people for that role, including Kraken, OpenSea and Celsius.

© 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.

Tekin Salimi, a former general partner at Polychain Capital, has launched a $125 million crypto investment fund called dao5 that will seek to provide early-stage backing for projects across several sectors in the cryptocurrency space.

Dao5 will commit to pre-seed and seed-stage investments in verticals like privacy tech, decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), and Layer 1 blockchain infrastructure, according to a statement on Wednesday.

Avalanche founder Emin Gün Sirer and Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon will serve on the advisory board. Other members of the board include Moonpay founder Ivan Soto-Wright; Ben Fisch, a computer science professor and founder of Espresso Systems; and CoinShares chief strategy officer Meltem Demirors.

While starting as a crypto fund, Salimi says dao5 will eventually transition to become a fully fledged DAO. As such, whenever dao5 invests in a project, the founders will receive governance tokens of the future dao5 DAO.

According to the announcement, the token grant forms an integral part of the DAO’s long-term plans. The token grant ensures projects that receive investments from dao5 have economic exposure to other startups in the fund’s portfolio, which means dao5 project founders will be incentivized to collaborate for the benefit of the DAO collective. This collaboration aims to serve as a form of risk diversification that also provides value to the projects under the dao5 umbrella.

The dao5 crypto fund will eventually transition to a full DAO around the year 2025. According to the announcement, the three-year transition period is to provide sufficient time to create a robust token and governance model for the DAO.

This tokenomics and governance model will focus on elements designed to improve participation and ensure streamlined incentives, the announcement 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.

Loans platform Figure has opened its waiting list for crypto-backed mortgages in the US, in a move that would let borrowers put up bitcoin (BTC) or ethereum (ETH) as collateral.

Borrowers will be able to take out mortgages worth up to $20 million for a 30-year loan, according to a LinkedIn post by the company’s co-founder, Mike Cagney.

The loan instrument, set to launch in April, will allow payments with the crypto collateral. Meanwhile, Figure says it won’t rehypothecate the assets. 

Figure follows several other companies into the crypto-backed mortgage market, in a move that speaks to the growing interest in bringing digital assets to the housing market. 

In December, Ledn has also announced a new bitcoin-backed mortgage product, which will allow users to borrow to buy a home with their bitcoin holdings as collateral. When it announced the product, Ledn said it was targeting over $100 million in bitcoin-backed mortgage originations by the end of the first quarter of 2022.

Earlier this year, crypto credit company Milo also announced a crypto-backed mortgage product.

© 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 Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) has raised $2.2 billion for its bitcoin reserve and hopes to hit $3 billion in the short term, with a longer-term goal of $10 billion, Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon said in a series of tweets on Tuesday. 

LFG, a Singapore-based non-profit working on the Terra blockchain, will use the bitcoin as a reserve asset for Terra (UST), the largest algorithmic stablecoin on the blockchain.

In response to queries as to how the foundation will source the $3 billion, Kwon said LFG has already raised $1 billion via over-the-counter sales of LUNA – Terra’s native token – and collected another $1.2 billion by selling UST for tether. Kwon added that the foundation will need another another $800 million to meet the $3 billion target.

This purchase will make up one leg of Terra’s long-term plans of amassing $10 billion of bitcoin reserve for UST. Kwon explained that to get to that mark, the stablecoin may set aside a portion of the seigniorage — the protocol’s revenue generated from issuing UST — to accumulate bitcoin.

Kwon also commented that the foundation will create a “bridge” to introduce billions of dollars worth of tokenized bitcoin onto Terra and use as reserves in the stablecoin protocol. The new mechanism may require a change in stablecoin’s protocol – the details of which remain scant at the moment.

‘Funds ready’

“It’s not 10B today – as UST money supply grows a portion of the seigniorage will go to build BTC reserves bridged to the Terra chain. We have 3B funds ready to seed this reserve, but technical infrastructure (bridges etc) is still not ready yet,” Kwon tweeted yesterday. 

Even though LFG or Kwon have not made an official announcement behind establishing a large bitcoin reserve, it’s likely this is meant to strengthen UST’s peg to the dollar.

UST currently maintains its peg via an algorithm that burns or creates LUNA – the native cryptocurrency on the Terra blockchain. Unlike with centralized stablecoins, with UST no real dollars are held by the team for a 1:1 redemption.

According to one research paper, algorithmic stablecoins such as terra are “fragile” because of their uncollateralized nature. Last week, Kwon stated in a Twitter Spaces discussion that bitcoin can help UST maintain its dollar peg even when there are massive selloffs in the market.

By maintaining a large bitcoin reserve, LFG will make it possible users to redeem UST for bitcoin in an effort to instill confidence among UST holders.

© 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 stablecoin on the Solana blockchain has been exploited for $28 million and lost practically all of its value.

Cashio Dollar (CASH) is an algorithmic stablecoin that was launched by a developer called 0xGhostChain in November 2021. Anyone can mint tokens by depositing liquidity tokens for the two stablecoins UDST and USDC from the Saber platform. They can redeem the stablecoin for the underlying liquidity tokens.

The exploit happened shortly after 9:00 AM UTC. According to data tracking site DeFi Llama, the total value locked within the protocol fell from $28.87 million to $569,000. At the same time, the price of the stablecoin dropped from $1 to practically zero, per data tracking site CoinGecko.

Cashio’s total value locked fell by $28 million today. Image: DeFi Llama.

“Please do not mint any CASH. There is an infinite mint glitch. We are investigating the issue and we believe we have found the root cause. Please withdraw your funds from pools. We will publish a postmortem ASAP,” tweeted 0xGhostChain today.

An infinite mint glitch is where a protocol is mistakenly designed in such a way that allows a user to mint as many tokens as they would like, typically without providing any collateral that might otherwise be needed. Once someone can mint infinite tokens, they can sell them on the market, crushing a token’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.