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BCB Group has announced a $60 million Series A investment co-led by Foundation Capital in what it claims is the largest Series A investment for a UK blockchain startup to date. The London-based startup provides business accounts, payment services, and foreign exchange custody services for crypto clients such as Bitstamp, Coinbase, and Kraken. 

Alongside another undisclosed co-lead investor, Circle, Backed VC, and existing backer North Island Ventures also participated in the round.

In addition to forging new US and Singapore partnerships, the startup will use the extra capital to build out its yield product. It will also target high net worth individuals with crypto wealth, many of whom founder and CEO Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie said are turned away from traditional private banking options.

Its planned acquisition of Germany’s Sutor Bank, financed through this Series A round, will aid in this mission, he added. The deal is subject to approval from BaFin, the German regulator. 

Whilst a forthcoming tech acquisition is in the pipeline, Landsberg-Sadie said that to achieve its full M&A ambitions, it would have to raise even more money. He confirmed that the company is already exploring another $300 million funding round. 

© 2021 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.

Twitter is hiring a senior product manager for crypto, according to a tweet by the company’s crypto engineering lead Tess Rinearson. 

The position is described as a member of a new team at Twitter that explores “decentralized technologies, including blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and web3.” There’s a particular focus on creators, “especially creator monetization. In this capacity, we’ll be looking closely at NFTs and NFT tooling, membership tokens, DAOS, and more!” the post says. 

Twitter has been making big moves recently in moving into Web3. Yesterday, Twitter Blue, a paid subscription service offered by Twitter, began offering NFT profile pictures for users. 

Rinearson did not respond to a request for comment from The Block in time for press.

However, on Twitter, she did mention that the senior product manager will “really be my thought-partner in exploring all the opportunities for crypto x twitter.” More job descriptions for engineers will be coming soon, she added. 

© 2021 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.

Bitcoin’s price rose more than 11% during Monday afternoon trading after falling precipitously earlier in the day.

The fall to monthly lows below $40,000 that began last week continued into the new one, with bitcoin hitting a low of $32,933 on Coinbase, according to data from TradingView.

As of press time, bitcoin is trading hands at $36,600 – an increase of approximately 11.1%.

The price of ether, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, is up 12.9% from Monday’s low of about $2,159.

Given the impact of the global macroeconomic environment on digital asset markets – particularly worries about future action from the US Federal Reserve – it’s perhaps unsurprising that Monday also saw equities recover from their respective daily lows as well. The day’s trading session saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average fall by more than 1,000 points only to bounce back near the day’s end up 0.3%.

In what is perhaps a sign of the times, the Wall Street Journal deemed the event “extraordinary” as the Dow had never closed in the green after falling by that much within a session. 

As for what drove the equities action today, Bloomberg reporting pointed to retail selling pressure amid an existing decline.

Crypto stocks pare losses

Stock prices for publicly traded crypto companies were swept up in Monday’s early-day turbulence, adding to the woes seen on Friday.

Yet the late-day recovery helped those stocks end the day in a better position than they were earlier in the session.

Coinbase reversed its losses and closed down just 0.23% while MicroStrategy, which holds a significant amount of bitcoin on its balance sheet, ended the day down 1.45%. Both firms rose 17.8% and 16.1% from their Monday lows, respectively.

© 2021 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 startup Blockchain.com is adding Tom Horton, the lead independent director from Walmart, to its own board. 

The crypto startup is known for its blockchain wallet that manages digital currencies. Horton will add to Blockchain.com’s list of backers from other firms. The board recently added Marcie Vu, former head of consumer Internet banking at Morgan Stanley, and other financial backers include Google Ventures, Sir Richard Branson, and Lightspeed Commerce Inc. 

The company has raised a total of $537 million, with the most recent valuation at $5.2 billion in March last year, according to Bloomberg, who first reported the news of Horton joining the startup’s board. 

Blockchain.com has planned an initial public offering, which could happen in the “near to medium term,” Smith said to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s price continues to fall from its all-time high in November. 

Horton is on the board of General Electric and was previously chairman of American Airlines. In the new year, the company is launching new services like an NFT marketplace and is expanding internationally. 

© 2021 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 leading Republican on the House Financial Services Committee has written to the committee chair to call for more crypto legislation. 

In a January 24 letter to Maxine Waters (D-CA), Patrick McHenry (R-NC) wrote of rules for crypto: “We should not cede these important issues to regulators such as SEC or CFTC, or to the judicial branch, to determine. This Committee should do its work to appropriately categorize these assets and determine the rules that will govern their use.”

McHenry went on to write:

“While both Chairmen Benham and Gensler have been extremely vocal, neither the Commodity Futures Trading Commission
(CFTC) nor the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) positions on digital assets is based in statute. U.S.-based trading platforms are not currently under the direct jurisdiction of either the SEC or CFTC. The Committee should further examine whether increased federal regulation of cryptocurrency trading platforms is necessary or appropriate.”

The battle over the classification of digital assets has been ongoing for years, but the Biden administration’s regulators have been especially assertive. SEC chair Gary Gensler has forcefully pushed to regulate crypto exchanges as securities exchanges. The recently-confirmed CFTC chair Rostin Behnam, meanwhile, has asked Congress to make the agency the primary cop on the beat. Both commissions have also pushed to have their budgets increased after extensive cuts under the Trump administration.

While many in the crypto industry may like McHenry’s sentiment of restraint at these agencies, legislation that addresses crypto directly has floundered in nearly all cases. Many of the main figures in crypto lobbying are have also pushed back against the need for new laws as a whole. 

© 2021 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.

Blockchain-based predictions market Polymarket has added a geoblock to keep US users from trading on the platform. 

A representative for the firm said of the measure: “U.S. residents can view the information markets on the relaunched site, but cannot make trades. For those who reside outside of the U.S., Polymarket.com is available for trading. This geoblocking allows Polymarket to continue to provide individuals with an alternative source of information while working through the regulation process and focusing on the future of the company.”

Still, as is the case with many such measures, a reporter was able to circumvent the geoblock using a VPN, in this case the Cyberghost software. The Block did not submit a transaction as part of this process.

Polymarket’s new geoblock

The move to impose a geoblock was a condition of Polymarket’s settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission earlier this month.

Per that settlement, “By no later than January 24, 2022, Polymarket will certify to the Commission that it has fulfilled these commitments and has made funds available for full redemption by market participants.”

When reached, the firm’s founder and CEO Shayne Coplan declined to specify whether the firm was seeking new licensing to reopen to US users.

It was only in November 2020 that the CFTC gave its first designated contracts market designation to a crypto prediction market, Kalshi. 

© 2021 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 Coinbase has hired a Securities and Exchange Commission official as its senior public policy manager.

Thaya Knight was, until this month, counsel to SEC commissioner Elad Roisman. Roisman stepped down from his position on Friday, a move that came two years before the scheduled end of his term. 

“Friday was my last day at the SEC. While that departure was bittersweet, I’m very pleased to be joining the public policy team at Coinbase this week. Looking forward to doing great and exciting work with this terrific team!” Knight wrote in a LinkedIn post published Monday. 

Last year, Coinbase’s public policy push focused in part on the creation of a dedicated crypto regulator. The publicly-traded company’s moves come as Congress grows the scope of its regulatory focus on cryptocurrency, both in terms of legislative as well as executive-branch action. Bloomberg reported last week that the Biden administration is preparing an executive order focused on digital assets which could arrive next month and will likely seek input from federal agencies on benefits and risks. 

© 2021 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

• Ribbon Finance automates options selling to harvest and auto-compound premiums for its depositors, abstracting away the complexity of options writing.
• The strike price is currently selected by the team using backtested black-box algorithms, but the team has plans to decentralize the strike selection process.
• Total value locked on Ribbon rises steadily but is still dwarfed by existing yield optimizing protocols.

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this Genesis research on The Block.

Bitcoin was trading at levels not seen since July as macro concerns impact the cryptocurrency market. 

Bitcoin was trading near $33,000 on Monday, extending its losses by more than 50% since it hit all-time highs in November. The bearish moves were especially brutal last week, with ether falling by ~30% and other cryptocurrencies trading down by 40% or more. As of press time, bitcoin is changing hands at around $34,128, per Coinbase data. 

Cryptocurrencies and crypto company shares have fallen along with the broader market for tech stocks amid concerns about the US Federal Reserve’s plan to scale back its balance sheet and hike interest rates. In such a hawkish environment, investors typically flee riskier investments. As for what’s next, all eyes will be on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting this week which will begin the Fed’s efforts to reduce its balance sheet as a way to fight mounting inflation.  

Trading desk Genesis Global is expecting some “significant chop” in crypto prices leading up to the FOMC meeting. 

“The Fed is not going to curtail its aggressively hawkish stance without seeing much more downside in asset prices,” according to a message shared with The Block by Genesis head of derivatives Josh Lim. “We will possibly see a relief rally going into the FOMC on Wed.”

Investor and noted crypto bull Su Zhu said Monday that he underestimated the degree to which macro “contagion” would drag crypto prices. 

“I was undeniably wrong about how much crypto could fall from macro contagion,” he said. “I remain bullish on the space as a whole and think it is the most important mega-trend of our times.”

© 2021 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.

Share prices of companies in the cryptocurrency industry plunged after the market open on Monday, with names like Coinbase and Galaxy trading down by double digits. 

The bearish start to the week in crypto stocks follows a rough weekend for liquid crypto tokens, which extended into Monday. Bitcoin is down more than 7% since early Saturday. 

Coinbase kicked off Monday’s session down more than 10%, while MicroStrategy—the firm known for hoarding bitcoins on its balance sheet—was down 13.9%. Galaxy Digital—the merchant bank run by Michael Novogratz—was trading down 17%. 

Cryptocurrencies and crypto company shares have plunged along with the broader market for tech stocks, which has been seized by concerns about the US Federal Reserve’s plan to scale back its balance sheet and hike interest rates. In such a hawkish environment, investors typically flee riskier investments. As for what’s next, all eyes will be on the FOMC meeting this week which will begin the Fed’s efforts to reduce its balance sheet as a way to fight mounting inflation. 

Aside from crypto stocks, the Nasdaq Composite was down 1.5% at the time of writing. The Nasdaq 100 was down 1.56%

As per research from investment bank Goldman Sachs, more than half of the Nasdaq 100’s companies have declined by 10% or more since the index’s peak in November. 

© 2021 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.