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Bitfarms has added 1,000 BTC to its bitcoin holdings, with the total outlay costing $43.2 million, the company announced on Monday.

The latest BTC acquisition sees the Canadian crypto mining outfit holding 4,300 BTC, an increase of about 30% from its previous bitcoin treasury balance. Monday’s announcement comes less than a fortnight after Bitfarms secured a $100 million loan from Galaxy Digital Holdings.

According to the company’s statement at the time, the credit facility did include a $60 million drawdown at 10.75% interest per annum.

As of Q3 2021, Bitfarms reported its cash and cash equivalents to be about $43 million, almost the exact sum spent in acquiring the 1,000 BTC. The company did, however, state that the size of Monday’s bitcoin purchase was in line with similar acquisitions in Q3 and Q4 2021.

Bitfarms, like other North American bitcoin miners, has stockpiled BTC as operations in the region benefitted from the East-West shift in hashrate dominance. This strategy that has characterized this increased bitcoin accumulation has come on the back of increased mining presence and debt financing.

As of the start of Q4 2021, North American bitcoin miners held over $1 billion worth of BTC.

© 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 fell to its lowest point since September on Monday.

The price of the cryptocurrency slid to $39,650, the lowest level seen since September 21, according to data gleaned from TradingView. Per Coinbase, bitcoin has since clawed back some of that decline, and as of the time of writing is changing hands at roughly $40,730. 

At current prices, bitcoin is more than 40 percent down from its call time high of $69,000, which took place on November 9.

Monday’s price action appears to be a continuation of last week’s dynamic, with factors such as the US Federal Reserve’s willingness to cut interest rates sooner than expected floated as one possible reason for the broad macro market environment. 

“For the first time in a while we’ve actually turned long vega (longer-dated options). We reckon actual “extreme fear” will kick in below 40,000 in BTC or below 3,000 in ETH. We intend to keep deltas (spot position) very short if these pivot levels break,” noted crypto trading firm QCP. “In the bigger picture, it seems likely that the all-time-highs in BTC + ETH will remain capped for most of 2022 as a result of central bank tightening.”

Coinglass noted $218.2 million in overall liquidations in the past four hours, including $80.29 million in the bitcoin segment specifically.

© 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

• As the NFT market grew at a breakneck pace, it also lured big brands
• Although corporations navigated the waters of the NFT market with caution initially, they started to have more skin in the game towards the end of the year
• While some brands indicated rather short-term thinking, others signalled genuine long-term interest in the space

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The world’s biggest inter-dealer broker TP ICAP said on Monday it has launched crypto-related exchange-traded products (ETPs) for its European clients.

The company facilitates trades between hedge funds, investment banks and large financial institutions.

It said it had already executed the first crypto trade with Wall Street heavyweight Goldman Sachs. It traded the ETC Group Physical Bitcoin, a physically backed equity instrument, which is traded on Xetra, against the CME Bitcoin Future. DRW, Flow Traders and Jane Street provided liquidity.  

These ETPs are a way for firms to gain exposure to crypto assets without directly touching them. 

TP ICAP has had a crypto working group since 2017 and first provided liquidity to its clients on CME crypto products in 2019, Duncan Trenholme, co-head of digital assets at TP ICAP told The Block. 

In the coming months, the company will look to expand to offer exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US. 

“It’s a natural progression for us, and is in line with client demand,” Simon Forster, co-head of digital assets at TP ICAP, told The Block.

TP ICAP’s focus for 2022 is the launch of its spot trading platform, which will allow customers to trade physical bitcoin for the first time. It’s an instrument that uses external custodians to clear and settle the product.

It is also exploring over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, such as swaps and OTC options.

New products will follow the company’s Financial Conduct Authority anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) registration requirements. 

“Once we get that we’ll be in a good position to launch the spot platform,” said Trenholme. The company is targeting the second quarter for spot trading and OTC derivatives will follow with internal approvals and client demand, he added. 

In recent years the company has expanded its customer base to what Trenholme called some of the “top tier” crypto firms. When asked for details he declined to name names. 

© 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.

NFT marketplace OpenSea has seen very strong trading volumes so far this month. A frenzy that, at this pace, puts it on track to set a new monthly record.

According to The Block’s Data Dashboard, NFT trading on OpenSea in January has already exceeded $1.36 billion — just 10 days in. By comparison, the platform’s highest-ever monthly volume, recorded in August 2021 was $3.16 billion.

If the first 10 days of January are any indication, then OpenSea could be set for a new all-time high in terms of its monthly trading volume, not long after it raised $300 million from backers like Coatue and Paradigm.

An NFT Renaissance

In December, the NFT market bounced back after four months of falling activity — a trend that has continued into the new year.

This was helped by the rise in demand for certain NFT collections, such as Bored Ape Yacht Club. This activity seems to have carried over, with over $100 million in Bored Ape NFTs changing hands in January so far.

Other collections have seen big sales too, with MoonPay acquiring a $3 million CryptoPunk earlier in the month.

While some NFTs are seeing price rises, this cannot be said for the rest of the crypto market. The bulk of the crypto market has suffered double-digit losses since the start of the year. As a result, the market capitalization of the entire crypto market has dipped below $2 trillion for the first time since late September.

© 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.

An upstart NFT platform called LooksRare has gone live today, as more marketplaces continue to crop up to try to take on market leader OpenSea. LooksRare claims to be a community-focused marketplace that will develop new features based on what its users want.

The marketplace explained in a blog post that it indexes all NFTs that exist on the Ethereum blockchain so that they can be traded straightaway — and offers can already be made on them. It also lets users buy and sell NFTs with ether or wrapped ether (WETH), or a mixture of both, and they can make offers using WETH.

LooksRare was launched by two anonymous co-founders, known as Zodd and Guts. It also has a small team of nine, mostly made up of engineers.

A vampire attack on OpenSea

LooksRare is built around the newly launched LOOKS token, which is being used to reward users of the platform — and attract existing users from OpenSea.

The token went live at 8:15 UTC this morning and is being traded on the decentralized exchange Uniswap. It saw a peak price of $4.71 before dropping to its current price of $2.69. With a total supply of 1 billion tokens, that gives it a fully diluted valuation (if all tokens were on the market) of $2.69 billion.

The marketplace is hoping to attract current NFT big spenders who have already used OpenSea by letting these individuals claim LOOKS tokens for free. Anyone who traded more than 3 ether (ETH) ($9,400) on OpenSea between June 16 and December 16 can claim a portion of tokens.

This is what’s commonly called a “vampire attack” in the crypto sector, since it uses tokens to try to poach a pre-existing project’s user base. LooksRare is the second major attempt at a vampire attack on OpenSea (the former being Infinity).

Furthermore, when someone buys and sells NFTs from eligible collections, they will receive LOOKS tokens (although this won’t kick in until Tuesday).

The maketplace also charges a 2% fee on all trades, which are all handed out to those staking LOOKS tokens. Currently the platform is offering an extremely high rate of 30,400% APR to those staking the token. However, this does mean the current supply is likely increasing at a rapid clip.

© 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 U.S. Department of Transportation’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program unveiled a raft of proposed research areas this week, including one that proposes investigating the use of crypto tokens to incentivize approaches to what it calls “modality use by consumers.”

The information was included in a pre-solicitation notice issued on January 6. Per the document, the research area envisions that, as the US economy emerges from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, parking space for consumers, workers and other drivers will become limited.

“This potential scarcity of shared parking resources, as well as the uncertainty of finding an open space without coordination, presents an opportunity to influence commuters’ decisions in real time,” the DOT says, going on to explain:

“A novel strategy utilizing blockchain technology would provide a dynamic approach to incentivizing alternatives to driving. For instance, travelers can spend tokens to reserve a parking space or receive tokens for agreeing to use a different mode of transportation. As spaces are reserved and become scarcer, the system may offer increasing incentives, or tokens, for travelers to choose not to reserve a space or to take a different mode, such as public transportation and other shared mobility options. Blockchain technology could facilitate tracked, trusted payment transactions and provide verification to ensure that users can access a reserved parking space or earned incentives.”

“Moreover, the use of blockchain technology could ensure real-time, transparent information on incentives to travelers; provide secure decentralized management of tokens and guarantee the credibility of data; enable the use of novel gamification strategies amongst users as a further incentive; and facilitate the coordination and scaling of the system to multiple facilities,” the DOT document continued.

To be sure, the research area as envisioned is early; the specific funding, a number for which is not determined according to the document, call for the production of a proof-of-concept report for a mobile application through which the incentives would be distributed. Follow-up phases would focus on a pilot program.

© 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

• 2021 was a breakout year for NFT projects
• The Block Research examined the geographic regions NFT projects are based on their launch dates to provide an overview of their operations
• 53% of NFT projects in our database are headquartered in the U.S.

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PayPal has confirmed that it is “exploring” a stablecoin backed by US dollars.

The Block first reported on this process last May. At the time, The Block’s sources said that the payments giant was holding talks with third-party startups in the crypto space as part of this process.

A spokesperson had said that the firm was exploring applications of digital currency as part of its offerings but “rumors and speculation are not predictive of the company’s future plans.”

Late Friday, Bloomberg reported that code embedded in PayPal’s iOS app highlighted a so-called “PayPal Coin” that included its own logo. A representative told the outlet that this code was developed during an internal hackathon.

“We are exploring a stablecoin; if and when we seek to move forward, we will of course, work closely with relevant regulators,” Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal’s SVP on digital currency issues, told Bloomberg.

 In October 2020, PayPal made waves with its announcement that it was adding crypto to its payments app, allowing users of its main service as well as Venmo to purchase and hold crypto. The payments firm has since expanded its work in this area as part of a dedicated business unit.

© 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

• Investors poured $11.5 billion into the fintech sector globally in December, with 24 megarounds of over $100 million.
• Like November, VCs splashed the cash on payments fintechs primarily — $2.2 billion went into the subsector in December.

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