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The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) has launched a research program centered around digital assets in partnership with big names like ​​Goldman Sachs, EY, Visa and Accenture.

Titled the Cambridge Digital Assets Programme (CDAP), the new initiative is bringing together 16 banks, public sector agencies and private organizations as collaborators, CCAF announced on Tuesday in a statement.

Other organizations involved in the initiative are Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub, British International Investment, Dubai International Financial Centre, Fidelity, UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Inter-American Development Bank, International Monetary Fund, Invesco, London Stock Exchange Group, Mastercard, MSCI and World Bank.

“As the digital assets ecosystem grows, so too does the need for data and insights that inform thoughtful dialogue about the associated opportunities and risks,” said Chris Tyrer, head of Fidelity Digital Assets in Europe.

Ultimately, those involved hope the project will help inform regulation and policy discussion around a number of fast-growing digital asset ecosystems.

 “We believe that this programme will provide decision-makers with the objective analysis and empirical evidence that they need to navigate the digital assets maze,” said Michel Rauchs, CCAF’s digital assets lead, in a statement. 

The research will look into three specific areas: environmental implications, processes and configurations of distributed financial market infrastructure and emergent money systems. This includes crypto-assets, stable-coins, central bank digital currencies and enterprise and consumer tokens.

CDAP will build upon the university’s existing digital assets tools, such as the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), which provides estimates on Bitcoin’s total energy consumption with a geographical breakdown.

The CCAF has also published a series of reports on alternative finance, such as the Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study and Global COVID-19 FinTech Market Rapid Assessment Study.

© 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.

Sky Mavis, the company behind the popular play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, has poached a director from Jump Capital to serve as an evangelist of its Ronin blockchain.

Previously a director of market development at Jump Capital, Kathleen Osgood has joined Sky Mavis as a director of business development. While the role is a commonplace one within an organization, the hire by Sky Mavis points to its broader ambitions beyond Axie Infinity, which became one of the most visible titles of the play-to-earn phenomenon last year.

Osgood plans to ramp up Sky Mavis’s efforts to draw in game developers to Ronin’s blockchain ecosystem. Ultimately, the push by Sky Mavis — which raised fresh capital at a multi-billion valuation last year — could make the company associated with serving as a broader infrastructure play versus simply acting as the backbone of Axie, which has seen activity fade according to data collected by The Block Research. 

“Sky Mavis’ vision for Ronin is to become the industry standard for blockchain gaming,” Osgood told The Block in a message. “I’m super excited to find ways to collaborate with the broader gaming industry to create an ecosystem that shares a massive user base, community-owned protocols, applications, and deep asset liquidity with the goal of enabling the next generation of blockchain game developers to unlock their creations.”

Osgood brings financial technology experience to the role, which in addition to expanding Sky Mavis’s presence among gamers, studios, and developers could help drive its efforts in decentralized finance.

“However, on the DeFi side of things, our community base is so strong that we are beginning to funnel our users into a wide variety of DeFi services,” she told The Block.  

© 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

• Parallel is a digital trading card game positioned at the center of a broader blockchain gaming ecosystem
• A wide array of different digital asset classes interlock in Parallel’s in-game economy and offer owners a variety of options to modify their rewards
• Based on demand fluctuations, players could organically control the card supply by spawning existing cards

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Legislative language that appeared poised to bar proof-of-work tokens from the EU is gone from a bill that is set for votes in coming weeks.

In news that BTC-Echo broke and European MP Stefan Berger confirmed on March 1, the latest version of the EU’s “Markets in Crypto-Assets” or MiCA directive has been stripped of a passage that many feared would lead to a ban on cryptocurrencies that use proof-of-work — namely, Bitcoin.

The rapporteur for the legislation as the head of the ECON Committee, Berger last week delayed votes that he had scheduled for February 28 in response to outcry over the offending language. Today, in announcing that the paragraph in question had been removed, he also said that the committee still needed to vote on the provision.

Richtig ist: Der Paragraph ist nicht mehr im Text. Der Bericht muss erst noch im Ausschuss abgestimmt werden. Bei dieser Abstimmung sehen wir dann, wo die Mehrheiten liegen. Die Entscheidung ist noch nicht gefallen #MiCA https://t.co/4obZWZa5rh

— Stefan Berger (@DrStefanBerger) March 1, 2022

In a copy of the latest version of the draft bill obtained by The Block, the part of the bill redacted began:

“As from 1 January 2025, crypto-assets issued, offered or admitted to trading in the Union shall not be based or rely on environmentally unsustainable consensus mechanisms. The consensus mechanisms shall comply with minimum environmental sustainability standards.” 

Berger’s office told The Block that the voting date was to be “in two to four weeks, 14 March or early April.” In the meantime, the draft bill is not expected to change dramatically. If it passes those votes, the bill will face trilogue debates including the European Commission and Council, as well as Parliament.

Read the latest draft in full below: 

   MiCA Compromises v7 (28 Feb 2022) Track Changes by Mike McSweeney on Scribd

© 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 Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) announced plans to launch micro bitcoin and ether options, opening the crypto derivatives market to smaller investors. 

These micro BTC and ETH options will have a contract size equivalent to a tenth of their respective underlying tokens and will launch on March 28, according to a statement today. At present, CME offers full-size options trading for bitcoin with a contract size of 5 BTC.

These options settle into bitcoin and ether futures contracts, rather than physical crypto. CME is pitching them as allowing “greater precision and flexibility” for both individual and institutional traders.

Options give the holder the right to buy or sell the underlying security – in this case, BTC or ETH futures contracts – at a pre-agreed strike price. Based on the FAQs listed on the CME website, the micro options are European-style, meaning that it is not possible to exercise them before the last day of trading.

Since CME launched micro bitcoin and ether futures in 2021 it has seen nearly 5.2 million contracts change hands, the company stated. The launch of the micro crypto options will be subject to regulatory approval.

© 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.

Remittance fintechs Zepz (previously known as WorldRemit), TransferGo and Remitly have suspended their services to Russia amidst its invasion of Ukraine.

The news follows money transfer fintech Wise’s decision to halt its services in Russia.  A Wise spokesperson told The Block that this was due to the impact of the ongoing sanctions in the region.

These include the planned move by the Western powers of the US, EU, UK and Canada to cut out the Russian central bank and some of its commercial bank intermediaries from the SWIFT system, an international payments messaging system. The list of Russian banks to be cut out of the system is still in the process of being drawn up by the European Union. 

Whilst TransferGo and Remitly have yet to make an official statement at the time of publication, customers are currently met with an error message when attempting to transfer money to Russia.

Zepz confirmed via Twitter yesterday that it was no longer permitting transfers to Russia and Belarus. The $5 billion remittance fintech did not respond when The Block asked if the suspension was linked to the sanctions currently leveled at the country. 

A different path 

Not every remittance fintech appears to be following in Wise’s footsteps, however. Remittances to Russia via the SoftBank-backed neobank and remittance app Revolut still appear to be available in-app despite a successful transfer being dependent on a SWIFT code.

A Revolut spokesperson confirmed to The Block whilst remittances to and from Russia are yet to be suspended, it has put in place measures to comply with all sanctions issued by the EU and the UK against Russia. 

“We continue to monitor the situation closely and adjust our controls as the situation develops,” they said. “We will also continue to provide our customers with the ability to send money to Ukraine.”

© 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.

With Russia becoming increasingly closed off to the financial world following its invasion of Ukraine, it appears Russian investors are becoming increasingly active in the cryptocurrency market.

Since Russia staged its invasion, average volumes of ruble pairs on crypto exchange Binance have surged, increasing to an average of $35.8 million per day compared to $11 million per day before the invasion began. The heightened activity represents one of the few places where Russians can move rubles.

“Exchanges that allow onboarding of RUB pairs will see a huge demand, given that is almost the only way to get out of RUB for many (banks shut down fx facilities),” one exchange executive told The Block.

The backdrop of this action is a tightening of access to financial markets, perhaps best signified by moves to restrict some Russian banks from the SWIFT payment messaging network and efforts to block Russia’s central bank from accessing foreign assets. Economic sanctions have served as the primary retaliation vehicle against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which continues to intensify. 

Yet crypto exchanges offer a kind of oasis from the financial restrictions. Exchange operators, including Binance and Coinbase, have rebuffed requests from Ukraine’s government to commit to blanket bans of Russian users. 

The impact on Russian markets has been significant, with the VanEck Russian ETF losing more than 60% of its value in February. This week, the ruble cratered to below one penny as sanctions roil its markets. Russia’s central bank also moved to close the Moscow Stock Exchange and sharply raised interest rates. 

Market observers who spoke with The Block pointed to signs that crypto is serving as somewhat of an escape hatch, though the full extent of this activity remains uncertain.

“There is evidence of increased BTC demand,” said Michael Safai, a partner at Dexterity Capital, who added:

“BTC is outperforming ETH atm, and BTC dominance is at a high, which aligns with the proposition that there is increased demand for capital flight.”

Elsewhere, Konstantin Shulga, co-founder of Finery Markets, told The Block that “we don’t deal with any Russian counterparties, but i assume the demand is quite big.” 

Still, trading could wane if Binance’s ruble on-ramps are disrupted.

As noted by The Block Research’s Larry Cermak, Binance is using two payment providers — Simplex and Mercuryo — for ruble onboarding. If those relationships are disrupted, then Russians could only trade with other fiat currencies or trade crypto-to-crypto pairs. 

“Once they stop working, it’s over,” Cermak said in a message. 

© 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-focused venture capital firm Electric Capital has raised $1 billion in new funding — a massive capital infusion that will be used to continue investing in crypto startups.

The firm looks to invest in various projects, including web3 infrastructure, DeFi protocols, and platforms powered by NFTs and DAOs. The average check size will be between $1 million and $20 million, and both equity and tokens deals will be sought, the firm announced Tuesday.

Electric Capital says it is an engineering-focused VC, meaning it uses software and data systems to support projects it invests in. “We use the infrastructure we have built to provide liquidity, run validators, help teams better understand their ecosystems with our novel data, and more,” said Electric Capital co-founder Curtis Spencer. “We look forward to continuing to push the frontier of how investors and protocols can create value together.”

Electric Capital was founded in 2018 by Spencer and Avichal Garg, and to date, it has invested in projects including Bitwise, dYdX, Gitcoin, Immunefi, NEAR, and Syndicate. The firm last raised $110 million in August 2020.

Electric Capital now joins the list of largest crypto funds raised in recent months, including Paradigm’s $2.5 billion fund, FTX’s $2 billion venture fund, and Pantera Capital’s $1 billion fund.

Last month, Sequoia Capital announced that it is launching its first-ever sector-specific fund for crypto. The Sequoia Crypto Fund, worth $500-600 million, will primarily invest in tokens.

© 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

• With exactly one month to go until the deadline for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to process firms’ AML applications, the pressure higher than ever.
• Firms that continue cryptoasset-related business in the UK after the deadline will be committing a criminal offense. 

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Kenneth Griffin, the founder and CEO of Citadel, told Bloomberg in a new interview that his firm is on the path to market-making in the cryptocurrency sector in the coming months.

The comments came during a wide-ranging interview piece published Tuesday, during which the billionaire touched on subjects like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the overall temperature in the market.

In response to a question about Griffin’s past stance on crypto and the recent participation of VC firm Paradigm in Citadel’s $1.15 billion funding round earlier this year, Griffin said that crypto “has been one of the great stories in finance over the course of the last 15 years.”

“And I’ll be clear, I’ve been in the naysayer camp over that period of time. But the crypto market today has a market capitalization of about $2 trillion in round numbers, which tells you that I haven’t been right on this call,” he continued. Last fall, Griffin told the Economic Club of Chicago that regulatory uncertainty was keeping the market-making firm out of the crypto space.

In this week’s published remarks, Griffin conceded that “I still have my skepticism” but went on to say that “there are hundreds and millions of people in this world today who disagree with that.”

“To the extent that we’re trying to help institutions and investors solve their portfolio allocation problems, we have to give serious consideration to being a market maker in crypto,” he remarked. “It’s fair to assume that over the months to come, you will see us engage in making markets in cryptocurrencies.”

Last November, it was Griffin who prevailed in a multimillion-dollar auction for a rare copy of the US Constitution, beating out the crypto group ConstitutionDAO that had rapidly raised funds to fuel the effort. 

© 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.