FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Crypto exchange Binance announced a partnership with the Nasdaq-listed crypto firm Eqonex on Monday, but the UK’s financial regulator doesn’t seem too happy about it.

The deal appears to give Binance control of Eqonex through a convertible loan worth $36 million. Binance is providing the loan via its newly launched payments technology company Bifinity, also announced today.

The loan has an 18-month maturity, and its initial conversion price is $1.89 per share, about 16 cents above Eqonex’s current share price.

While Binance doesn’t say the loan gives it — or Bifinity — control of Eqonex, Eqonex’s own announcement says Bifinity will have the right to appoint its chief executive officer, chief financial officer and chief legal officer and nominate two seats on its board of directors.

Binance has formed Bifinity to provide fiat on- and off-ramp services to itself and other businesses. Bifinity has been Binance’s official on-ramp partner since late last year, but Binance only officially announced its launch today. Bifinity has also partnered with Paysafe and Checkout.com to help merchants adopt crypto. Eqonex says Bifinity is registered in Lithuania as a crypto wallet service provider. 

As for Eqonex, it was founded in 2020 in Singapore and describes itself as the first digital asset firm with an exchange to be publicly listed in the US. It provides crypto trading, custody and asset management services to clients. It operates the Eqonex crypto exchange, the Digivault custodian and the Bletchley Park Asset Management unit.

Why do UK regulators seem unhappy?

Eqonex’s Digivault unit is registered with the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for the purposes of avoiding money laundering. The regulator, in a statement today, said that parts of Binance Group may have become beneficial owners of Digivault following the deal. 

The regulator went on to say that it did not have powers to assess the fitness and propriety of the new beneficial owners or the change in control before the transaction was completed. But it “can take steps to suspend or cancel the registration of a cryptoasset business if it is not satisfied the firm or its beneficial owner is fit and proper.”

“The FCA also has powers to suspend or cancel a firm’s cryptoasset registration on a number of grounds, including where a firm has not complied with obligations under the Money Laundering Regulations,” it added.

A Binance spokesperson did not comment to The Block when asked if Binance or Bifinity gets ownership control in Eqonex as part of the deal but directed us towards the Eqonex announcement. When asked about the FCA’s statement, the spokesperson said, “We note it with interest and look forward to continuing the dialogue with the FCA.”

This is the second time the FCA has shown concerns about a crypto deal in recent weeks. Late last month, the regulator issued a similar statement after Bitpanda, an Austrian crypto exchange, acquired Trustology, a DeFi custodian regulated by the FCA.

Bitpanda, however, is “confident that no issues with the acquisition will arise.”

“We have a very good working relationship with the FCA who was informed of that transaction well in advance and the FCA statement was in accordance with Bitpanda’s expectations,” it told The Block at the time.

That’s a strikingly different statement from Binance’s. It remains to be seen whether the FCA will take any action against either of the two deals.

© 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.

Space Runners, a company focused on creating NFTs and digital wearables, has raised $10 million in a round co-led by Pantera Capital and Polychain Capital. 

The company will work with artists and brands to create items to bring into games. In some cases, these NFTs can be redeemed for real-life access to events or meet-and-greets with celebrities and athletes.

“Our goal is to build the first end-to-end Fashion ecosystem on the blockchain with the newly secured financing,” says Won Soh, co-founder of Space Runners, in a statement. 

In its first collection with former NBA Champions Kyle Kumza and Nick Young, Space Runners launched the NBA Champions Sneaker Collection in December, which sold 10,000 NFTs in nine minutes. Space Runners now has over 500, 000 members across Discord, Instagram, and Twitter. 

“Pantera is proud to support Space Runner’s vision to pave a new way to interact with fashion on the blockchain,” said Paul Veradittakit, a partner at Pantera Capital, in a statement. “Digital identity and self-expression will be a key component in the metaverse…Fashion will be just as, if not more, important in the Metaverse than the real world.”

With its new funding, Space Runners wants to extend its brand to be the largest supplier of “interoperable fashion items for different metaverses and games,” according to a statement from the company. Apart from today’s financing round, investors have contributed around $30 million to Space Runners’ coffers to date. 

© 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.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden said he is siding with crypto innovators as other Democrats in Congress express favor of tightening crypto regulations in the US. 

“There is obviously a debate but I want to be on the side of the innovator,” Wyden told the Financial Times. “When I think about crypto I think about remittances, or somebody who has a kid 1,000 miles away and wants to get them help in an emergency, rather than going through scores of banks, credit card companies.”

Several lawmakers on the Democratic side have been advocating for months for stricter control of cryptocurrencies, which Senator Elizabeth Warren once called “the new shadow bank.”

Warren, a longtime critic of cryptocurrency, argued that the industry provides the same services as traditional financial institutions but lacks similar consumer protections and financial stability.

Gary Gensler, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has also pushed for greater oversight from the agency over crypto.

“Frankly, at this time, it’s more like the Wild West,” he said during a speech in August.

Last week, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unfolded, public officials spoke out about concerns over the potential for crypto to serve as a way to circumvent economic sanctions, though definitive signs of crypto’s use for this purpose have yet to emerge.

Warren recently tweeted about the topic and later cosigned a letter with three other members of the Senate Banking Committee last week, seeking information from the Treasury Department about what it is doing to address these concerns.

© 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 EU’s Markets in Digital Assets, or MiCA, regulation is scheduled for a key committee vote next week following delays last week.

On March 7, Stefan Berger, who heads the European Parliament’s ECON Committee and is the rapporteur for MiCA, announced that the committee will vote on its finalized version of the bill on March 14. 

At the end of February, a provision that resembled a ban on proof-of-work tokens — most notably, Bitcoin — stirred up a controversy that ended up delaying the bill’s votes, which Berger had set for February 28. The coalition that had assembled to pass the bill through the committee and on to Parliament fell apart as a result of increased scrutiny from the industry and public.

The Greens, in particular, had been a key vote in favor of the bill but only if it maintained the PoW ban. The fact that Berger is rescheduling the bill suggests that he has successfully reassembled a coalition willing to move MiCA forward.

There are still, a few elements of concern for the industry in the most recent available edits of the current draft bill. Among other things, its proposed regulations for “asset-referenced tokens,” which most will know as “stablecoins,” are particularly stringent.

“To ensure the proper supervision and monitoring of offers to the public of asset-referenced tokens, issuers of asset-referenced tokens should have a registered office in the Union,” the regulation reads, which could well put decentralized stablecoins like DAI on notice. 

However, even after the coming votes in parliament, the bill will still have to go through trilogue debates including the European Commission, which put together the initial proposal, and the European Council, which passed its own version of MiCA months ago. Those competing visions will face consolidation before becoming law. 

© 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.

Quick Take

• Fintech funding has recorded its first figure below $10 billion since May last year. 
• That’s not to say investors have abandoned the sector — this month has been dominated by huge raises from FNZ and BNPL player ScalaPay. 

This feature story is available to
subscribers of The Block News Plus.
You can continue reading
this News Plus feature on The Block.

Quick Take

• StarkWare is a layer 2 scalability solutions company that aims to provide a permissionless decentralized ZK-rollup solution – StarkNet
• StarkWare secured $50 million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital and achieved unicorn status with a valuation of $2 billion in November 2021
• StarkNet Alpha went live on mainnet at the end of November 2021

This research piece is available exclusively to
members of The Block Research.
You can continue reading
this Research content on The Block Research.

The Fantom ecosystem has suffered a sharp drop in total value locked (TVL) after reports emerged that star developer Andre Cronje was quitting the decentralized finance (DeFi) space.

Data from DefiLlama shows that the TVL for the Fantom DeFi ecosystem is down more than 20% in the last 24 hours. This decline coincides with Anton Nell, a Fantom Foundation developer, tweeting on Sunday that both he and Cronje were exiting the crypto space, without stating reasons for their departures.

Cronje was previously reported to have quit DeFi last year, only for those reports to have proven false – or at least premature. The developer didn’t immediately respond to messages from The Block today seeking clarity on the situation.

Apart from quitting the industry, Nell’s tweet also announced they were terminating 25 apps and services on April 3, including the recently launched Solidly exchange. As previously reported by The Block, the Solidly launch was a major contributor to Fantom temporarily becoming the third-largest DeFi ecosystem among popular Layer 1 chains.

Solidly and its yield optimizer protocol Solidex contributed the largest TVL slump following news of Cronje’s exit. The removal of liquidity from these projects saw their TVLs fall more than 30% over the last 24 hours.

Fantom’s native coin, FTM, also took a nosedive during the period, sliding 20% from $1.71 to $1.32. FTM has since recovered somewhat and is trading at $1.44 as of the time of writing.

According to the Fantom Foundation, Nell and Cronje’s exit doesn’t sound the death knell for the network. Tweeting on Sunday, the Foundation stated that development on the chain will not be impacted by Cronje’s exit from the ecosystem.

© 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.

Immutable, the startup behind the NFT-focused scaling network Immutable X, has raised $200 million in a Series C funding round and is now valued at $2.5 billion.

Temasek, a Singapore government-owned investment company, led Immutable’s funding round. Animoca Brands, Tencent, ParaFi Capital, Arrington Capital, Mirae Asset, and Liberty Global also backed the round as new investors. Previous investors, including Alameda Research, AirTree Ventures, Declaration Partners, and Fabric Ventures, also participated.

With fresh capital in hand, the Australia-based Immutable plans to expand globally, scale its team and explore M&A opportunities. The firm’s current headcount is 165 people, and it plans to hire an additional 200 people over the next 12 months across various functions, including sales, marketing, engineering, and product.

Immutable also plans to acquire new customers for its Layer 2 network Immutable X, which is built on StarkWare’s StarkEx technology. Immutable X is currently used by several platforms, including OpenSea, TikTok, and GameStop.

Animoca Brands also plans to use the network. “We’re excited to explore integrations with Immutable X across Animoca’s portfolio of content — bringing next-level scale, security, and liquidity to the next generation of blockchain games,” said Yat Siu, co-founder and chairman of Animoca.

To meet its global expansion plans, Immutable has also hired four C-suite executives. Gill Findlay has joined Immutable as the chief operating officer, who is currently also a partner at AirTree Ventures. John Boris has joined as chief growth officer, Justin Hulog as chief studio officer, and Katherine Rau as chief people officer.

“Immutable is locked in on developing a leading, ambitious, and dependable web3 ecosystem for a new era of creators that desire scalable results in the world’s fastest-growing industry,” said James Ferguson, Immutable’s CEO. “Our investment partners understand the power and potential of the Immutable X platform and will play an integral role in this next phase of our growth.”

The Series C round brings Immutable’s total funding to date to over $277 million. Last September, the firm raised $60 million at a $410 million valuation.

The crypto funding spree continues at a rapid pace. As The Block reported last week, February saw the second-highest monthly investment in the history of crypto, one month after January that set the record.

© 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 said it has now fully resumed bank transfers for account holders in Europe, eight months after suspending the service following pressure from regulators.

According to an announcement today, Binance’s European users — except those in Switzerland and The Netherlands — now have access to both euro and British pound deposits and withdrawals via the Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) and Faster Payment Services (FPS) rails. 

SEPA and FPS allow users in Europe to make euro and pound transfers via their bank accounts. Binance said new deposits and withdrawals will take place via a partnership with UK payments company Paysafe.

Binance also said it has plans to expand SEPA bank transfers to its corporate clients as the service is currently limited to retail customers. The exchange first tested SEPA bank transfers in January, in preparation for Monday’s full-service rollout.

Bank transfers will have to be at least 3 EUR or 3 GBP to cover transaction fees, the company added in its announcement.

The news marks the resumption of fiat on-ramp access for Binance in Europe after the regulatory issues that characterized the exchange’s operations last 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.

Trading giant FTX announced on Monday it would expand its empire with a push into Europe after securing approval from financial regulators in Cyprus.

According to a press release, the company will start offering its products to European clients via a licensed investment firm with passportable licenses across the European economic area. The new entity will be headquartered in Switzerland. 

“As we continue to grow, we are constantly looking at opportunities to become appropriately licensed and regulated in every market we enter,” said CEO and founder Sam Bankman-Fried. “We’ll be interacting with regulators in various countries across Europe to continue to provide a safe and secure environment for people to trade crypto.”

The play for expansion follows a bumper fundraising round announced in January: a $400 million Series C that valued the crypto exchange-operator at $32 billion. That funding announcement came less than four months after FTX raised at a $25 billion valuation and just a few days after its US affiliate FTX.US announced that it had raised at an $8 billion valuation.

FTX’s US business has captured the attention of the financial press after growing its user base to 1 million and hinting at ambitions to go after household names like Robinhood with its own stock trading feature.

Its marketing budget has likely played a role in that success. FTX.US owns the naming rights to the Miami Heat stadium and it is the official crypto exchange of Major League Baseball. 

© 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.