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Elwood Technologies, the crypto-focused technology firm owned by hedge fund heavyweight Alan Howard, announced a “strategic integration” on Thursday with Bloomberg.

According to details shared with The Block, the integration is geared toward the institutional clients who use the Bloomberg Asset and Management Investment Manager, or AIM, a buy-side order management system used by about 15,000 clients who, collectively, manage more than $17 trillion in assets. The idea is to tie up Bloomberg’s AIM with the capabilities offered by Elwood’s trading platform. 

“The integration combines Elwood’s institutional cryptocurrency trading capabilities with Bloomberg’s data, analytics, and workflow tools, enabling the financial institutions and investment managers on the AIM platform to capture and manage their crypto investments alongside the rest of their portfolio for a unified investment process,” Elwood said in a press statement.

“We are very pleased to be able to offer Bloomberg AIM clients integrated access to Elwood’s market-leading cryptocurrency trading platform. It has always been our goal to provide clients with the cutting-edge capabilities

necessary to manage their entire investment portfolio in an integrated manner, and this increasingly includes alternative asset classes such as cryptocurrencies,” said Ian Peckett, Bloomberg’s Global Head of Buy-Side Product.

The integration is set to be completed and available for mutual Elwood and Bloomberg AIM clients in the second quarter of 2022. 

The tie-up is a significant development for the Howard-founded firm, which last year pivoted to the software business after an initial focus on asset management, as reported by The Block’s Ryan Weeks. Howard himself has backed an array of crypto firms, including crypto custodian Copper and exchange operator Bullish Global. 

© 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 price of bitcoin fell sharply early Thursday as reports spread of an intensifying attack by Russian forces in Ukraine.

According to market data, the price of bitcoin was trading just below $37,000 when media reports and social media postings began to spread, with videos depicting missile attacks, including on the main airport in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. Russian Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” in the country, prompting a flurry of condemnations from world leaders including US president Joe Biden. Thursday’s news followed an extended period of heightened tensions between Russia, Ukraine and members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including the US.

The price of bitcoin hit a local low of $34,322 on Coinbase, according to data from TradingView. At time of press, the price of bitcoin has recovered somewhat from the low, trading at roughly $35,300. 

Stock indices in Asia also tumbled and US markets futures indicate sharp declines at Thursday’s start of trading. The price of oil also jumped on the news of the Russian attacks. 

© 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 much-anticipated auction of more than 100 CryptoPunk NFTs ended before it began late Wednesday.

Earlier this month, the auction house operator announced the auction, which would see 104 CryptoPunk sold in a single lot. Sotheby’s had also planned a discussion panel and an afterparty to signify the event.

Yet shortly after 7 p.m. ET, Sotheby’s tweeted out that the auction was canceled. “Following discussions with the consignor, tonight’s Punk It sale has been withdrawn. Thank you to our panelists, guests and viewers for joining us,” said a message from Sotheby’s metaverse-focused Twitter account.

The cosigner, who goes by the moniker 0x650d, tweeted “nvm, decided to hodl” as word spread of the withdrawal. 

The value of the lot had been estimated to be between $20 million and $30 million, according to a statement from Sotheby’s at the time of its initial announcement. Sotheby’s had said that the planned sale represented “the highest valued estimate for an NFT or digital art ever offered at auction.”

Sotheby’s began moving into the NFT business last year, beginning with a digital art collection sale by artist Beeple that fetched nearly $70 million at auction. 

Signs on social media suggested a degree of criticism around 0x650d’s decision, though 0x650d appeared to continue celebrating the move in the aftermath:

pic.twitter.com/M0l9wvH3T5

— 0x650d (@0x650d) February 24, 2022

© 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 exchange FTX has appointed beauty entrepreneur Lauren Remington Platt as its head of global luxury partnerships, a newly-created position. 

With a decade of experience, Platt is the founder of Vensette, an on-demand beauty company where she launched partnerships with brands like Michael Kors, Vogue, and Saks 5th Avenue to bring pre-vetted makeup and hair experiences to professionals. 

“We are thrilled to have Lauren join FTX and lead our next marketing foray into luxury partnerships. Her wealth of experience in the fashion and luxury space will be essential for the next phase of growth of our team’s partnership and branding focus,” said Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX, in a statement.

In the coming months, Platt will bring crypto into the fashion and luxury industries through partnerships within overlapping areas including, but not limited to, payments, luxury goods authentication, and digital art, a rep for Platt told The Block. Platt will work closely with FTX’s head of environmental and social initiatives Gisele Bündchen.

The hire represents one of a number of expansion avenues for FTX. Earlier this week, The Block reported that the exchange launched a new gaming division

With Platt, FTX plans to capitalize on a $300 billion luxury goods market, which is estimated to grow by almost $34 billion by 2025. Fashion and beauty brands have been increasingly getting into the crypto space as the pandemic has forced people out of brick-and-mortar stores and into online and digital experiences. In February alone, many brands filed for metaverse-related trademarks, including Victoria’s Secret, Urban Decay, L’Oreal, Kiehl’s, Pink, and Dermablend. 

“Only 7% of women are investing in cryptocurrency, and that not only has financial implications but long-term societal effects,” Platt said in a statement. “Only 9% of women feel they understand crypto, and this means that the majority of women are being left behind from one of the most important opportunities for wealth creation of our generation. To achieve true gender equality, we must invite women to the conversation and provide the tools they need to lay claim to crypto’s ascension.”

© 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.

Music giant Warner Music Group is partnering with blockchain gaming developer Splinterlands.

The deal will give artists signed to WMG the opportunity to create and develop play-to-earn games that involve the use of crypto tokens.

“Warner Music Group is a leader in the music industry. They are innovating the music industry to meet the standards set by Web 3.0 community members,” said Jesse “Agreed” Reich, Splinterlands Co-founder and CEO, in a statement. ” We’re thrilled to be working with them and I look forward to new collaborations at the intersection of gaming, music, crypto, NFTs, defi, and blockchain.”

This isn’t WMG’s first move into crypto. Last year, the company worked with Genies to create avatars and create NFT merchandise for WMG artists. Last month, WMG partnered with digital collectibles platform Blockparty. 

“I don’t think we can underestimate how massive the opportunity around P2E gaming is. By partnering with Splinterlands to build custom tokenized games, we’ll unlock new revenue streams for our artists who have an interest in the space while elevating the role of fandom and community,” said Oana Ruxandra, Chief Digital Officer and EVP of Business Development at WMG, in a statement. “As the Web3 ecosystem continues to evolve, WMG is committed to making sure music is front-and-center.”

Splinterlands was founded in 2018, and the company says its fantasy-themed collectible card game supports 450,000 daily users. This is the company’s first major music partnership; WMG artists will be able to create mobile-friendly, arcade-style games using the app. 

Blockchain games are on the rise, as The Block reported in November. Nearly half of $3.4 billion worth of VC deals fell into this category in October. Numerous gaming firms have expressed interest in the technology, including giants like Square Enix, though such moves have prompted complaints from some quarters of their customer base. 

© 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.

El Salvador will inaugurate a new public pet hospital this evening, funded by what its president Nayib Bukele has described as a surplus in a government trust fund caused by bitcoin’s rising value at the time. 

Bukele first announced the idea for the pet hospital on October 9 in a series of tweets, saying it would be built with a $4 million surplus in a trust fund the government had set up to help with its adoption of bitcoin as legal tender. While Bukele did give some details explaining how it was able to allocate these funds, many have since questioned how this mechanism works considering that El Salvador has not announced the sale of any Bitcoin. 

Bukele tweeted that the launch of the pet hospital will be broadcast live on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and local news this evening at 8:00 p.m. local time. 

Local media noted earlier this week that the inauguration was originally planned for the evening of February 19, but the event was canceled without explanation. The website elsalvador.com published a screenshot showing a press conference announcement on that date via the presidential press secretary’s Twitter account but reported that it had been deleted.

The animal hospital is located near the capital of San Salvador off a busy thoroughfare, in the municipality of Antiguo Cuscatlán. Construction of the building started in early November. Renderings have shown the building to have spaces for vet appointment consultations, operations, emergency services, rehabilitation and grooming among other services. Each service has a symbolic cost of 25 cents. 

El Salvador has so far purchased at least 1,801 bitcoins, based on Bukele’s tweets.

When Bukele explained how the trust functions in his initial tweets about building the pet hospital, he noted that the government was not selling any bitcoin, but instead “using the USD part of the trust”.

Over the past few months, several industry watchers have taken to analyzing what the country’s running bitcoin balance would be worth based on the average cost of the purchases and current bitcoin prices. One of these, El Salvador Bitcoin Portfolio Tracker, calculated on February 21 that the country would have had a loss of about $18.2 million based on market conditions at the time. 

Whether El Salvador is making additional gains through trading is largely unclear, in part because the public does not have access to its wallet address. During a January broadcast of the local television news program Frente a Frente, a viewer asked El Salvador’s finance minister Alejandro Zelaya how El Salvador could have Bitcoin gains without selling the cryptocurrency.

“There is always some kind of trading going on,” Zelaya responded, noting that when the president announced a $4 million surplus, it is because trading had happened.

© 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

• The Proof of Personhood Passport (PoPP) is a “transportable proof of identity for the Web3 space” that aims to increase Sybil resistance and protect quadratic algorithms used for voting and funding
• We review the three proof-of-personhood protocols that currently carry the most weight in determining one’s PoPP personhood score: Proof of Humanity, BrightID, and Idena
• The PoPP holds potential for a variety of use cases such as enabling decentralized universal basic income (UBI) schemes; supporting the maturation of DAO governance systems that require verifiable credentials; and enabling Sybil-resistant airdrops, yield farming, and NFT distributions

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Quick Take

• Cryptovoxels is a metaverse platform built on the Ethereum blockchain that allows users to create anything and interact with one another.
• 35% of 1,185 points of interest in Cryptovoxels are galleries. This demonstrates that Cryptovoxels is a virtual world centered on art.
• Cryptovoxels’ team recently switched its land supply model from an inflationary to scarcity that may introduce profit-seeking monopoly.

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

A new study from the investment banking services firm BNY Mellon found that 77% of family offices are interested in or are involved in crypto. 

What’s more, 40% thought crypto was important to augmenting their investment strategy and over 66% intended to increase their crypto holdings within the next 12 to 24 months. 

The BNY Mellon’s survey process involved 200 participants, which included 56 single-family offices and 144 multi-family offices, all managing over $150 million in assets. 

Half of the participants were from the United States, with others from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Italy, Germany, India, Brazil, and others. The data collection occurred between October 14 and November 8 of 2021. 

The family offices’ main motivations for crypto investments were to follow the latest investment trends and the belief that crypto offers a good investment opportunity. 

BNY Mellon is based in New York and has $46.7 trillion assets under custody and $2.4 trillion assets under management across 35 countries, according to the firm’s website.

© 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.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) is shutting down its blockchain payment network project, citing slow business growth.

According to an announcement on Tuesday, Japan’s largest bank MUFG stated that it had already begun modalities to suspend the Global Open Network Japan (GO-NET Japan) blockchain payment network.

MUFG and US-based cloud service company Akamai Technologies established GO-NET Japan as a subsidiary of GO-NET in 2019. At the time, the blockchain payment rail was billed to deliver one million transactions per second with a planned Internet of Things (IoT) integration.

After three years, MUFG says the next step will be to coordinate with all stakeholders involved before liquidating both GO-NET and its subsidiary network.

Detailing the reason for abandoning its blockchain payment plans, the MUFG announcement pointed to the “slow growth of payment transaction numbers” occasioned by several factors including the COVID-19 pandemic.

MUFG stated that GO-NET Japan was unable to achieve the necessary network effect required to scale the business. As such, the banking giant concluded that the project will not be able to achieve tangible commercial success within a reasonable timeframe.

Despite the planned GO-NET liquidation, MUFG stated that it will continue to pursue other ventures in the emerging finance landscape. The bank partnered with Coinbase last year to launch a crypto exchange in Japan.

In addition to its yen-pegged stablecoin plans, MUFG is also one of the partner banks helping to conduct the Bank of Japan’s central bank digital currency tests.

© 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.