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Zak Williams, son of the late actor Robin Williams, met NFT artist Jesus Martinez through a mutual friend at a Shabbat dinner in Los Angeles back in November. The two instantly hit it off. 

“We bonded over stories about our dads. He saw his father struggle with mental health, and I see my father struggle with that. So, we related to that and our similar childhoods,” said Martinez in an interview with The Block.

They also bonded over NFTs. Over dinner, the two began to discuss ways they could connect mental health initiatives and NFTs to raise money. And they came up with an idea for a project. 

Williams is the founder and CEO of a company that sells chewable dietary supplements. He’s also an active investor in several companies and sits on the board of a nonprofit organization called Bring Change to Mind, which is focused on mental health-related issues. Bring Change to Mind is a 501(c)(3) organization co-founded by actress Glenn Close.

Martinez is an NFT artist who mentors other artists in the LA area who want to break into crypto. Last summer, a surreal, animated landscape piece he created sold on OpenSea for $38,000 USD.  

Williams and Martinez decided that they would hold an auction for one of Martinez’s pieces and that the money raised from the NFT sale would go directly to Bring Change to Mind. The NFT is going live Friday on the SuperRare marketplace for a twenty-four hour period.

“The money raised from the NFT sale will actually go directly to supporting communities in low-income areas and schools,” said Williams. 

Charities of all kinds are increasingly turning to NFTs to raise money. Many artists have also started to see them as a new way to use their art to support causes.  For Williams, crypto art seems like a natural way to raise money and awareness. 

“NFTs as a medium for me is the future of ownership. It’s the future of new decentralized economies,” he said. “It’s where young people are interacting and transacting. Why not leverage that medium to support causes relating to mental health?” 

“What we’re starting with the early stages of developing is a community that will be a web3 community focused on mental health,” Williams added. “And a focus on specifically the mental health of artists and creatives.”

The artwork is inspired by Williams’ family and, in particular, his father. The image, which features a large glowing heart against a dark background “represents the many ethnicities, identities, passions, languages, words or forms of expression we have in the world,” said Martinez. 

“My dad loves hearts. He always thinks of love and light. And I wanted to fully immerse myself in Robin Williams’s world. The best way to describe him was… in every film in every way possible he always tried to spread love and that’s how the artwork came to be — from darkness grows love.”

© 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 judge in the Southern District of New York has granted an application from the US Securities and Exchange Commission for an order requiring Terraform Labs to comply with investigative subpoenas. 

The SEC previously served Terraform CEO Do Kwon with a subpoena during a 2021 conference in New York City. The subpoena was part of an investigation into whether Terraform Labs had violated US securities laws with its Mirror Protocol, a platform which creates crypto assets for users to buy and sell popular stocks like Microsoft or Tesla. These stocks are normally sold on the NYSE, but with Mirror Protocol, users can buy them on the blockchain. The SEC stated that it had reason to believe Kwon and Terraform Labs “participated in the creation, promotion and offer to sell assets and MIR tokens to U.S. investors.” At the time, the SEC said the subpoena was part of a “fact finding investigation.” 

Kwon and Terraform pushed back against these requests. Yesterday, the Court held oral arguments on the issue via a telephone conference. During those proceedings, the judge ordered Terraform and Kwon to comply with the SEC’s subpoenas and requests for testimony in its Mirror Protocol investigation. 

“For the reasons stated on the record at the February 17, 2022 conference, the SEC’s application is GRANTED, and Terraform and Kwon are hereby ordered to comply with the above-referenced subpoenas,” said the case filing. “This order is STAYED for 14 days to permit further briefing regarding a potential stay pending any appeal of this order.”

In the wake of the SEC’s initial subpoena, Kwon had filed a separate civil lawsuit claiming that his rights to due process were violated by the SEC. In that case, the two have just submitted arguments over a motion to dismiss from the SEC. 

© 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 Federal Reserve has barred senior officials from a number of investment activities, particularly those involving individual stocks, bonds, cryptocurrencies and commodities.

The Federal Open Markets Committee announced the new rules on February 18. They specifically bar covered officials: 

“[F]rom purchasing individual stocks or sector funds; holding investments in individual bonds, agency securities, cryptocurrencies, commodities, or foreign currencies; entering into derivatives contracts; and engaging in short sales or purchasing securities on margin.”

Notably, officials can still hold existing stocks, while crypto seems to be completely off-limits. There are exceptions for commodities and foreign currencies “owned for noninvestment purposes” — presumably because officials may want to travel or put gas in their cars — but no such carve-out for crypto.

The new rules follow the controversial tenure of Richard Clarida, a governor of the Fed Board who announced his resignation in January following revelations of a number of stock trades he made in February 2020. The Fed, as the US’s central bank, wields enormous economic power. For example, the stock market has faced turbulence in recent weeks since Fed Chair Jerome Powell indicated that it planned to raise its benchmark interest rates. 

Critics suspected Clarida of trading on insider knowledge of the stock market crisis that was impending as the first wave of Covid and lockdowns hit the US. Many members of Congress are discussing new legislation in a similar vein.

Fed officials covered by the new rules include Board members; presidents, first vice presidents and research directors at Federal Reserve Banks, Board division directors; and managers or deputy managers of the System Open Market Account.

The Federal Reserve Board currently features a number of vacancies. Allegations of corruption against Sarah Bloom Raskin, a former Board governor who is a current nominee, have led to a standoff in the Senate Banking Committee. 

© 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.

Helium has raised a $200 million Series D at a $1.2 billion valuation, according to Axios.

Tiger Global and FTX Ventures have reportedly joined existing backers such as Khosla Ventures and Multicoin Capital. Previously, the company held a $111 million token sale led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). 

Helium is building a crypto-powered decentralized wireless network that provides bandwidth and collects data from internet of things devices. Owners of network hotspots receive Helium tokens, with the amount increasing the more the hotspot is used. Companies like scooter startup Lime and mousetrap company Victor use these devices to connect their products.

This network has reportedly amassed over half a million miners across the world in just two years. 

Helium declined to comment when reached by 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

• This weekly series explores the most interesting insights in NFTs, blockchain gaming, and virtual worlds
• Apart from blockchain gaming, the NFT market has continued to bleed
• As proof of the blockchain gaming industry’s continuing advancement, a plethora of different economic models have been brought to light

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members of The Block Research.
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Legislation filed earlier this week indicates that George is the latest US state to consider potential tax incentives for cryptocurrency miners that operate in the state.

Georgia House Bill 1342, filed on February 14, aims to “exempt the sale or use of electricity used in the commercial mining of digital assets.” The bill was introduced by a quintet of Republican state lawmakers. 

The focus on sales and use taxes mirrors the approach taken last year by Kentucky, which passed a similar law in a bid to draw in miners. 

The move is perhaps unsurprising given the existing footprint for miners in Georgia. Fortune profiled the landscape earlier this year, noting that major American firms like Foundry have operations in the state.  Reporting by 13WMAZ last year indicates that access to nuclear power had the state an attractive option for mine operators. 

Illinois lawmakers are also considering the amendment of data center incentives to account for crypto miners, as The Block reported earlier this week. 

© 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.

Cynthia Lummis, US Senator from the Wyoming state, has suggested that the Federal Reserve should hold bitcoin on its balance sheet.

Speaking on a panel hosted by the Orrin G. Hatch Foundation on Thursday, Lummis said, “I think it’s a great idea to be honest” for the Fed to buy bitcoin as it holds over $40 billion in foreign currency reserves. Lummis was replying to a question by the panel moderator Matt Sandgren, executive director of the Hatch Foundation, who hosted the panel on the future of the crypto economy.

“Once there is a statutory and regulatory framework, that will make a lot of sense,” said Lummis. “The fact that [bitcoin] is completely decentralized, is going to make it over time more ubiquitous, and I think it’s going to be something that the Fed should hold on its balance sheet.”

Randal Quarles, former vice chairman for supervision at the Fed, was also present on the panel, but he doesn’t think that the central bank will add bitcoin to its balance sheet anytime soon.

“For a lot of political, economic reasons, I think that it’s best to keep the Fed’s balance sheet, which it isn’t currently, [but] it needs to move more in that direction — [that is] entirely treasuries,” said Quarles.

As for Lummis, she has been pro-crypto and a vocal advocate for the crypto industry for a long time. The lawmaker, 67, first bought her bitcoin in 2013, when its price was about $350. Bitcoin’s price today is around $41,000.

Lummis disclosed on the panel that her son-in-law taught her how to purchase bitcoin. As for how she first got involved in crypto, Lummis said her previous job as Wyoming treasurer made her explore a mix of assets — some that could have led to short-term income and others that represented a store of value — and that’s when she learned more about bitcoin and viewed it as a store of value.

“Bitcoin is digital gold. It’s hard money. There will only be 21 million ever produced,” she said on the panel.

Lummis also believes that traditional banks will eventually integrate bitcoin and other digital assets into their offerings and set up crypto divisions.

The senator has taken several crypto initiatives recently. In December, Lummis sent a draft bill “quietly” among regulators and the crypto industry. The bill looks to provide crypto regulatory clarity in various areas.

The bill, which was redrafted after feedback, is currently at the legislative council, said Lummis, adding that it should be made public “very soon.”

The bill has proposed a self-regulatory organization or SRO for crypto that would make some initial calls on whether a crypto is a commodity or a security. And if either of the CFTC or the SEC agencies disagrees with that assessment, they can have a mechanism to pull it in their direction from a regulatory framework perspective, explained Lummis.

“This bill can be broken logically into about five or six pieces that are stand-alone, said Lummis. “We’re working with other senate offices in both parties to see who’s interested in sponsoring the banking component, the privacy component, the consumer protection component of this legislation.”

© 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.

After a year of exponential growth, North American Bitcoin mining companies have raised billions of dollars in 2021 through equity and debt instruments to invest in both new top-of-the-line equipment and additional power capacities.

The latest special episode of The Scoop Mining Report features The Block Research’s mining analyst Wolfie Zhao and host Frank Chaparro as they discuss the state of mining in North America, which is steadily growing its market dominance with the state of Texas rising to be the new global hub for Bitcoin mining.

Some of the topics covered in this episode include:

1. The potential growth of the network’s hashrate in 2022
2. The current power capacity supply crunch
3. The rise of traditional energy companies that are increasing their market shares in Bitcoin mining

© 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 Kraken CEO Jesse Powell said today that any users concerned about governments seizing their crypto without judicial approval should take their funds off crypto exchanges — including his own.

The comments were made in the context of the Canadian government freezing the bank accounts and crypto wallets of truckers protesting against Covid-19 rules — and even threatening to take their dogs under certain conditions.

In response to a comment that crypto exchanges will likely freeze people’s crypto at the request of police, even without judicial consent, Powell agreed that such action was inevitable.

“100% yes it has/will happen and 100% yes, we will be forced to comply,” said Powell. “If you’re worried about it, don’t keep your funds with any centralized/regulated custodian. We cannot protect you.”

He added that users should get their coins off centralized services, such as crypto exchanges, and only trade peer-to-peer (this means directly with other crypto owners).

© 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.

Two companies have gone head-to-head in recent weeks to launch the world’s first DeFi exchange-traded funds in Brazil.

The first firm to announce a DeFi ETF launch on Brazil’s B3 stock exchange was Hashdex, a crypto asset manager with offices in Menlo Park, California, and Rio de Janeiro. It launched DEFI11 today after notifying the market about the listing on January 19. This ETF “mirrors” the CF DeFi Composite Index, which tracks 12 digital assets spanning across dApps, service protocols and settlement networks. 

In an early Thursday press announcement shared with The Block, Hashdex said the DeFi ETF had attracted 2,200 confirmed investors and raised $10.5 million. However, the Brazilian finance publication InfoMoney reported that this amount was just more than 10% of the firm’s initial estimate. Hashdex has a total of more than $1 billion in assets under management.

Despite Hashdex being the first to announce a DeFi ETF launch, Rio de Janeiro’s QR Capital beat it to the punch on February 8 when its asset management business listed its own on B3. The ETF known as QDFI11, references the Bloomberg Galaxy DeFi Index, which tracks nine assets. According to the QDFI page, this ETF currently has the equivalent of about $7.4 million in net assets. QR Asset Management has the equivalent of about $145.2 million in assets under management.

Interest in crypto ETFs has taken off in Brazil over the past year or so, with both Hashdex and QR Capital leading the charge. 

© 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.