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Cosmos-based project Evmos is planning to launch its token airdrop on February 15, according to co-founder Federico Küllmer.

Evmos is a project that seeks to link up the Cosmos and the Ethereum ecosystems. Cosmos is a network of blockchains, which are all designed so that tokens can be sent between them. While blockchains in the Cosmos ecosystem aren’t natively compatible with Ethereum (specifically the Ethereum Virtual Machine), Evmos seeks to be the first that is. And in doing so, it’s hoping to bring Ethereum users to Cosmos.

The airdrop, which was announced on December 15, will reward users of Ethereum as well as two Cosmos-based blockchains.

“We wanted to reward Ethereum users because we want their adoption in the Cosmos ecosystem,” said Küllmer. “We see Evmos as the gateway to Cosmos.”

On Ethereum, users will receive tokens who have used the most popular Ethereum applications, such as Aave, Uniswap and Compound. It will even reward those who have made MetaMask swaps (something many users have done in the hope of a MetaMask token airdrop). It will also reward those who have used bridges from Ethereum to other chains. Plus it will send tokens to those who lost funds in a number of high-profile hacks and rug pulls (including those who have lost funds to a form of frontrunning, known as MEV).

There will be some eligibility requirements. “Just MetaMask swap gave us 1.4 million addresses. Most of these addresses were just a few dollars’ worth of swaps. Even though the fees were super high. So we had to set up a threshold,” said Küllmer.

On Cosmos, the airdrop will be applicable for users of Cosmos Hub and Osmosis. It will apply to those staking the native tokens of each blockchain, as well as those engaging with the blockchains in other ways, such as providing liquidity within decentralized exchanges.

The airdrop won’t be quite as simple as other ones have been in the past. For users to claim portions of their tokens, they need to make some blockchain interactions. They need to do four tasks, each unlocking 25% of their tokens. These tasks include staking, governance voting and sending an IBC transfer (the way tokens are sent across blockchains within the Cosmos ecosystem).

The snapshot for the airdrop was taken on November 25, 2021. Evmos is launching a dashboard that will let users determine if they are eligible for the airdrop across their different wallets.

© 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.

Intel announced on Friday that it would ship its blockchain accelerator later this year, with a roster of high-profile clients already on its books. 

In a post on its website, the US multinational said it was “declaring [its] intent to contribute to the development of blockchain technologies, with a roadmap of energy-efficient accelerators.”

Argo Blockchain, BLOCK (formerly known as Square) and bitcoin mining company GRIID Infrastructure are among its first customers.

It said it would engage and promote an open and secure blockchain ecosystem, aiming for sustainability while it develops its products. The tech will be implemented on a tiny piece of silicon so that it has minimal impact on the supply of current products.

Intel has been building up to such an announcement, quietly striking deals and making bids for patents on mining technology. In January, filings showed that GRIID had struck a deal to provide the conglomerate with hardware. Intel also revealed in January that it would debut what it called an “Ultra-Low-Voltage Energy-Efficient Bitcoin Mining ASIC”, dubbed “Bonanza Mine.”

© 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.

One River—the crypto investment firm backed by Alan Howard—is teaming up with Coinbase to offer a platform that would allow wealth managers to offer crypto exposure to their clients. 

As per a press release shared Friday, One River will offer wealth managers access to One Digital SMA. An SMA allows a wealth manager to deploy the same strategy across a number of client accounts. The idea is to make it easier for registered investment advisors to offer exposure to their clients in the same way they offer exposure in bonds, stocks, and mutual funds via a portfolio. 

“The ability to offer Separately Managed Accounts’ through  RIA channels is a critical way for a broader cross-section of the investing public to gain exposure to crypto investing,” commented Greg Tusar, head of institutional products at Coinbase. Coinbase’s institutional unit powers the new platform. 

Wealth and financial advisors are becoming increasingly interested in the digital asset space, with the number of financial advisors allocating to crypto in client portfolios increasing from 6.3% in 2020 to 9.4% last year, according to Bitwise. 

“Registered investment advisors and private wealth platforms have been asking for best-in-class digital market access, research perspectives, and investment opportunities,” One River noted in a press release. 

This isn’t Coinbase’s first big push into crypto asset management. The exchange launched an index fund that would give institutional investors exposure to the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization in 2018. It ultimately shut down the product.

Coinbase and One River are not be the only firms operating in the burgeoning sub-section of the market. Grayscale, one of the largest asset managers in the space, offers a number of trust products that trade over-the-counter and are offered to retail clients through platforms like Fidelity and Wealthfront. 

At the end of last year, Onramp and WisdomTree partnered with Ritholtz Wealth Management on a diversified crypto product offered to retail clients through financial advisors. Wealth management firm Betterment, meanwhile, announced its own acquisition of crypto robo-advisory platform Makara, which the firm could use to help its financial advisor clients offer crypto exposure to their end customers. 

As for One River, the firm gatecrashed the crypto space in September 2021 when it announced it had raised $41 million from investors including Howard, Coinbase, and Goldman Sachs. Founded in 2013, the Greenwich-based firm manages a bitcoin and Ethereum fund that is designed to offer passive exposure for investors. 

© 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.

From March 9, the decentralized exchange platform PancakeSwap will reportedly start blocking access to Iranian IP addresses.

On Thursday, a Persian language cryptocurrency community hub called CryptoClub showed a message from PancakeSwap indicating plans for the ban. According to the tweet, PancakeSwap will begin geoblocking users from Iran and nine other jurisdictions on March 9.

The other countries included in PancakeSwap’s geofencing are Belarus, Cuba, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Zimbabwe, and Crimea.

PancakeSwap is the largest DEX in the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) ecosystem. Data from DeFiLlama shows PancakeSwap controlling over a third of the total value locked in that ecosystem.

While such geofencing is common with centralized exchanges, it is not so common when it comes to their decentralized counterparts. The reality, however, is that some DEX platforms have also started restricting access to certain IP addresses.

1inch, the popular DEX aggregator, is an example of such a situation as the platform geoblocks users from the United States.

While such restrictions are often bypassed using VPNs, this has also come under the radar of the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) especially regarding U.S. sanctions. In October 2021, OFAC published guidance that included calls for crypto businesses to monitor the use of VPNs on their platforms.

© 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.

South Korea’s sovereign wealth fund has outlined plans to up its investments in Silicon Valley startups as it looks to increase its exposure to the metaverse, AI and alternative assets. 

The head of the $200 billion fund, Korea Investment Corp (KIC), said it was looking past tech’s recent stock market nosedive and the risk of an interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve, according to a report by Bloomberg. 

CEO Seoungho Jin told Korean media that while some argue that Silicon Valley is “saturated,” it is still a source of global growth. 

Alternative assets could make up 25% of KIC’s portfolio by 2025, he said, which would increase the fund’s exposure from around 17% last year.

The fund’s allocation to alternative assets, including private equity and hedge funds, will increase by about 2 percentage points in 2022, Bloomberg’s report said. 

Assets under management will eventually rise to $300 billion. 

In May last year, Jin replaced Heenam Choiat the helm of the fund, which has nearly doubled in size over the past five years. Previously, he had spent most of his career at the finance ministry, which owns 100% of KIC.

© 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.

2021 was a landmark year for Genesis Global. 

The trading firm — which operates a wide-range of businesses spanning lending and prime services — clocked in more than $100 billion in spot crypto volumes in 2021. On the lending side of the house, cumulative loan originations stood at more than $130 billion.

On this episode of The Scoop, head of derivatives at Genesis Joshua Lim helped unpack the dynamics shaping the market behind its headline Q4 numbers.

In addition to a compression in the popular, and once very juicy, basis trade, Lim explained that the market became more dynamic with big new hedge funds entering the fold. At the same time, existing participants become more engaged with the market – holding crypto on their balance sheet for not just investment purposes, but for operational use as well.

“It could be linked to receiving payments denominated in tokens from projects that they had executed for other firms. It could be related to running nodes on a blockchain,” Lim said. “It could be more traditional kind of crypto native use cases like receiving a percentage of whatever assets under custody as sort of a revenue stream.”

“We saw those types of firms really engaging on derivative hedges that would, you know, protect them on the downside, which was actually kind of useful.”

Lim added that as more firms enter the space through the metaverse and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), demand for such hedging tools could extend beyond the crypto native investors that Genesis is used to dealing with. The firm has already started accepting NFTs as collateral for certain loans. Still, it’s early days for NFT-related lending.

“It’s not something that we do on a regular basis,” Lim said. “I think from a business perspective, it’s still, let’s say, less than 50 basis points of our overall lending business in terms of the magnitude of the collateral value.

On this episode, Lim and The Block’s Frank Chaparro also discuss:

• How volatility has changed in the crypto market
• The impact new, esoteric structure products could have on crypto market structure
• Why traders are looking for stablecoin insurance
• What Lim looks for when he’s hiring new traders to the desk

© 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 couple accused of laundering $4.5 billion in stolen bitcoin will continue negotiating their bail agreement in Washington DC, according to a new transport order.

Heather Morgan, known also by the rap moniker “Razzlekhan,” and her husband Ilya Lichtenstein, were arrested in Manhattan on February 8 on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The couple allegedly laundered $4.5 billion in bitcoin related to a 2016 breach of crypto exchange Bitfinex. The Department of Justice has since recovered $3.6 billion. They face up to 25 years if convicted on both counts.

To resolve disputes around whether or not Morgan and Lichtenstein should be detained ahead of any court proceedings, they’ll be transported to DC. A transport order granted today by DC District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell indicates the couple will be moved from the Southern District of New York to DC for a February 14 hearing.

“Ordered, that the United States Marshals Service transport the Defendants forthwith from the Southern District of New York to the District of Columbia for further proceedings in this matter, to wit: hearing at 2PM on February 14, 2022,” said the order.  

At Morgan and Lichtenstein’s pretrial appearance, the government moved for pretrial detention, which would keep the two in custody until their trial. The government argued that Morgan and Lichtenstein “posed a serious risk of flight.”

A judge denied this request and set bail at $5 million for Lichtenstein and $3 million for Morgan, but the government filed a Motion for Emergency Stay and Review of Release Order, which effectively pauses the decision on whether to release a defendant on bond.

“In order to resolve the pending motion to review the release determination made by the Magistrate Judge in the Southern District of New York, and to conduct further proceedings in this matter, the Defendants, who remain temporarily detained, need to be transported to the District of Columbia by the United States Marshals Service,” argued the government’s request for the transport. 

Now, those further proceedings will take place in DC at the start of next 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.

The popular subscription platform OnlyFans, known for its adult content, will now let users post verified NFTs as profile pictures. 

The platform will only support NFTs minted on the Ethereum blockchain and will show an Ethereum icon on NFT profile pictures to mark them as authentic. The company said it introduced NFT profile pictures in December, according to Reuters, which first reported the news. 

OnlyFans, launched in 2016, has become a popular way for content creators to make money for content by selling it to subscribers. The move is just one by many recent several social media companies who have jumped into launching NFT profile pictures, including Twitter, as The Block previously reported.

On Thursday, YouTube noted in a blog post that technologies like “blockchain and NFTs can allow creators to build deeper relationships with their fans.”

OnlyFans has been reached for comment to provide more details on the launch, and this article will be updated if they respond.

© 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.

Dom Hofmann, the co-founder of the now-defunct short-form video platform Vine and creator of the non-fungible token (NFT) project Loot, has a new venture — Blitmap, a decentralized science fiction project where the community guides the story.  

Paradigm led a $12 million seed funding round for Sup, a parent firm that’s building out Blitmap. Through the funding, Blitmap intends to scale as well as develop other projects and universes, according to a tweet from Sup. 

Blitmap is an Ethereum-based NFT project in which users who own a Blitmap NFT can collectively decide key features of the story’s universe, such as who the enemies are. The community also guides decisions surrounding merch, with the possibility of potential play-to-earn features. As of publication, the floor price for a Blitmap NFT is 9.37 ETH (about $30,000 USD). 

Paradigm launched a $2.5 billion venture fund last November, as previously reported. 

© 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.

As Congress mulls new stablecoin laws, members clearly want to keep anything like the stablecoin Tether from cropping up again.

For context, the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee have been hosting Treasury undersecretary Nellie Liang’s testimony on stablecoins. The two hearings — one this week, one next — come as a follow-up to a report on stablecoins from the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, a report that Liang spearheaded. 

The PWG report specifically focused on the risks that unbacked or underbacked stablecoins could pose to investors holding them, which has been a central concern of those examining the subject. Though the report itself avoided naming specific firms, Tether is top of mind for many lawmakers, as demonstrated by this week’s hearing in the House.

In prep materials seen by The Block, committee staffers specifically named Tether as a currency not fully backed, noting among issues “User protection: many are not fully backed by reserve currency (e.g. Tether).”

In an exchange between Liang and Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), Posey asked “Can you tell us if tether is backed by a dollar or cash equivalent?”

Liang answered, “My understanding from what they disclose is that their backing includes assets that are not risk-free.”

Posey continued: “Has tether been issued that is not totally or fully collateralized.”

To which Liang replied: “I suspect that is the case. They are not regulated. They publish data, but from what I understand they may not be able to deliver.”

And yet when Posey asked about specifically condemning Tether, Liang struck a broad tone: “I do have concerns about the opacity of the reserve assets of stablecoin issuers.”

The Block has already reported on the feelings of Warren Davidson (R-OH), who also sits on the Financial Services Committee. And in a hearing that featured executives for other leading stablecoin issuers in December, Brad Sherman (D-CA) drew attention to the fact that “Tether didn’t even show up.” 

As stablecoins head to the Senate Banking Committee on February 15, these comments will be fresh, as will similar concerns that have already appeared before the upper chamber.

Among those concerns are the fact that Sherrod Brown (D-OH), the committee’s chairman, was frustrated while trying to contact Tether’s executives. Even in February, Brown’s office would not tell The Block whether they had received responses from all of the issuers contacted.

In a February 9 hearing before the Senate Agriculture Committee — one at which Brown made a surprise appearance — one of the witnesses presented the same problem. University of Pennsylvania professor Kevin Werbach lamented to the committee, “The stablecoin Tether continues to play an outsized role in the digital asset world despite having been found to be lying about their backing.”

In a statement to The Block, Tether said: “Tether has led the way in shedding light on the composition of its reserves.” The firm further pointed to its latest attestations as showing a “clear reduction in commercial paper investments in percentage terms. The reduction in commercial paper exposure comes as a response to community feedback.”

Unspecified commercial paper still accounts for over 40% of Tether’s declared reserves. Representatives for the firm did not respond to The Block’s request for a timeframe for a formal audit, which the firm’s leaders have said for years is on the way.

© 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.