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The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority granted Fidelity Digital Assets registration for its digital asset custody and trade execution services, Fidelity announced today.

Previously, the firm was listed as a temporary member, but the FCA has now moved it to the permanent register. With this comes a money laundering regulations (MLR) license, meaning the FCA considers Fidelity compliant with money laundering regulations related to crypto. 

The FCA took over as the AML watchdog for crypto firms operating in the UK at the start of 2020, and it swiftly introduced a mandate that crypto firms register with the regulator. Firms were originally supposed to meet a January 10, 2021 deadline to register their activities or close up shop, but the agency extended that deadline as it struggled to keep pace with the wave of applications. Some firms found hundreds of days passed with their applications under review.

In response, the FCA increased resources for handling the applications. Since then, the FCA has granted approval to a number of firms, including Kraken, two Gemini entities, Digivault and Mode, among others.

© 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

• The House Financial Services Committee will hear testimony from executives from six major players in U.S. crypto tomorrow. 
• The Block takes a look at the significance of the hearing, as well as the committee’s priorities for crypto legislation. 

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On December 7, Saule Omarova, who had been President Biden’s nominee to serve as Comptroller of the Currency, withdrew from the running. 

“At this point in the process, however, it is no longer tenable for me to continue as a Presidential nominee,” wrote Omarova. 

The comptroller leads the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates federally chartered banks. The crypto industry’s engagement with the OCC peaked during the brief tenure of Brian Brooks, who subsequently took on roles at the head of Binance and then Bitfury. 

Omarova’s nomination faced opposition from Republicans and moderate Democrats like Mark Warner and John Tester on the Senate Banking Committees. Members were concerned over her writings as a Cornell Law professor, which they identified as being fundamentally anti-bank. 

Omarova’s background lent a measure of ugliness to the proceedings. A Kazakh national born and educated in the USSR, Omarova faced questions over, for example, an undergraduate thesis on Karl Marx.

In her confirmation hearing before the Banking Committee, Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) attacked Omarova’s membership in the Komsomol, a communist youth organization ubiquitous within the Soviet Union. In a statement upon Omarova’s withdrawal, committee chairman Sherrod Brown denounced the process as “a relentless smear campaign reminiscent of red scare McCarthyism.”

For the time being, Michael Hsu remains at the head of the OCC in an acting capacity, with some speculating that he will be the administration’s new nominee.  

© 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.

Ubisoft has become the first major gaming firm to step into the world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), with an announcement that hints at expanding a broader blockchain-based metaverse. 

As per a Tuesday release, Ubisoft has launched the beta version of a new platform called Ubisoft Quartz, which allows users to acquire NFTs of items that can be used in-game, such as a weapon, clothing or vehicle. Ubisoft Quartz is calling these NFTs “Digits,” and has opted to base them on the Tezos blockchain.

The first Digits tested on Ubisoft Quartz will be compatible with the computer game Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Starting on December 9, players who have reached level five in the game can claim Digits of a gun, helmet and pair of tactical pants. 

“Ubisoft Quartz is the first building block in our ambitious vision for developing a true metaverse,” said Nicolas Pouard, VP of Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab, in a statement. “And it can’t come to life without overcoming blockchain’s early-form limitations for gaming, including scalability and energy consumption.”

Pouard also described Ubisoft’s five-year vision of blockchain gaming to include play-to-earn models in a December 3 company post. 

However, not all gaming platforms have embraced NFTs. Valve, the company behind the popular video game distribution platform Steam, banned NFTs in October.

© 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

• Blockchain gaming and NFT startups continued their fundraising hot streak, raising over $1 billion in venture capital during November.
• Investment in the DeFi vertical has also begun to pick up again after hitting a low in August.

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BTG Pactual has launched a new multimarket fund with exposure to ether (ETH), the Brazilian investment bank announced today. 

The fund, called BTG Pactual Reference Ethereum 20, has 20% exposure to ETH, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, and 80% to fixed income. It requires a minimum investment of 100 Brazilian reais ($17.74) and a 0.5% annual administration fee. 

BTG Pactual Reference Ethereum 20 joins two other bitcoin-focused funds the bank launched earlier this year—BTG Pactual Reference Bitcoin 20 and BTG Pactual Reference Bitcoin 100. It will be the 14th fund in the bank’s “Reference” family, a series of funds that track the performance of tech companies, semiconductors and biotech among other sectors.

“Democratizing access to the crypto asset market has been one of our goals in creating these products,” André Portilho, partner and head of Digital Assets at BTG Pactual said in a Portuguese-language press release. “Crypto is already known practically all over the world and Brazilian investors have been following the growing relevance of this sector, but they do not necessarily [have a handle on] the bureaucracy necessary to operate this asset. Now, they can have this exposure with the same ease they’re used to when investing in any fund.”

Brazil has seen several crypto funds launch this year, including QR Capital’s Ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF) QETH11.

© 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.

10T, the crypto investment firm run by hedge fund veteran Dan Tapiero, is launching a third digital assets fund just two months on from closing its second.

The company is raising $500 million for the latest vehicle, which is named 10T DAE Fund 3.0, according to a Form D regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission published on December 6.

Like the first two vehicles, 10T’s third fund will target mid-to-late-stage digital assets firms. “They have to be making significant revenue already. We don’t invest in startups,” Tapiero told The Block.  

The third fund will invest in a fresh batch of those more mature cryptocurrency businesses, with a particular focus on those that “broaden and deepen the digital assets ecosystem,” according to Tapiero.

Crypto unicorns

Founded in 2020 as a vehicle offering traditional investors exposure to larger cryptocurrency firms, 10T currently has $770 million in assets under management, according to its website. Tapiero said that more than 90% of its first two funds have already been deployed.

The company’s past bets include the likes of Kraken, eToro, Ledger, Figure, Gemini, Bitfury and Huobi. In total, there are 14 companies in the 10T portfolio, of which 12 are valued at more than $1 billion — meaning they have achieved so-called ‘unicorn’ status.

10T closed its second $750 million fund in September, having secured the backing of British billionaire Alan Howard and the Municipal Employees’ Retirement System of Michigan (MERS), the state pension fund.

Howard, who, like Tapiero, earned acclaim as a macro investor across nearly two decades as CEO of Brevan Howard, has also invested considerable amounts of capital in crypto firms. Indeed, both Howard and Tapiero’s 10T have invested in Ledn, the Canadian crypto lender.

© 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.

TRM Labs has raised $60 million in a Series B funding round led by the fintech-focused investment firm Tiger Global.

According to a Tuesday announcement, TRM’s Series B also drew participation from Visa, DRW Venture Capitalist, Marshall Wace, and PayPal Ventures. Other investors included Block (formerly known as Square Inc.), Citi Ventures, and Amex Ventures, the venture capital arm of American Express.

Esteban Castaño, CEO of TRM, said the company will use the newly realized capital to continue offering “the most reliable data and most innovative technological solutions” to its customers.

As a blockchain intelligence firm, TRM offers crypto forensics services focused on detecting cryptocurrency-related fraud. Blockchain forensics often involves wallet blacklisting, transaction monitoring, and anti-money laundry compliance (AML) protocols among others. Customers of the firm include the DeFi startup Uniswap Labs.

Established in 2018, the company raised $5.9 million from early-stage backers in 2019 before securing a $14 million Series A investment round in June. The announcement also stated that TRM’s revenue has grown 600% year-over-year.

Other crypto surveillance outfits have also recently attracted backing from notable investors. In October, Elliptic completed a $60 million Series C while Solidus Labs secured $15 million from investors 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.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has joined Chainlink Labs as a strategic advisor, according to an announcement issued on Tuesday.

Schmidt led Google for over a decade, first as CEO between 2001 and 2011 as well as executive chairman of the search engine giant from 2011 to 2015. He also served as executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. — Google’s parent company — between 2015 and 2017.

According to the announcement shared with The Block, Schmidt will help Chainlink Labs — the developer behind blockchain oracle solution provider Chainlink — to achieve its multi-chain interoperability goals.

In the DeFi space, oracles usually provide information about the price of an asset. They can, however, be put to more uses pertaining to the provision of real-world information including sporting events and weather data among others.

In October, the Associated Press partnered with Chainlink to put journalistic information on the blockchain.

© 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

• Bitcoin dominance of Binance volumes steadily decreasing, with spot volume shares hitting lows of 8% in November 2021
• Altcoins siphon significant trade flows away from major cryptocurrencies during periods of significant growth or volatility

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