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Quick Take

• The Senate’s most outspoken crypto advocate is seeing a sizeable portion of her campaign donations coming from players in the crypto industry.
• As the crypto industry has become an increasingly viable force in Washington, DC, its role in political funding has been on the rise. 

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Music stars Diplo, DJ Khaled, Martin Garrix and Future have bought NFTs from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection via MoonPay’s ‘concierge service’. 

In the last week, all four musicians have changed their profile pictures on either Twitter or Instagram to flaunt their purchases. 

Yesterday, alongside changing his profile picture to Bored Ape #5384, producer Diplo tweeted a Spotify Wrapped image featuring the item. On November 28, rapper Future posted #4672 with the caption ‘gm’. 

All of these items from the Bored Ape Yacht Club can be traced back to MoonPay’s OpenSea account. The account page shows that each of the pieces was bought by MoonPay and later transferred to another address.  

Of the four stars, only Diplo has a named OpenSea address, but a person close to the situation confirmed that the other addresses are affiliated with the other stars and that MoonPay facilitated the purchases. 

To the MoonPay? 

Last week, The Block revealed that MoonPay had quietly launched a ‘concierge’ service targeting high-net individuals interested in buying digital collectables and crypto. Its first customers included rappers Lil Baby, Post Malone and talk show host Jimmy Fallon. 

Yet aside from transferring the NFTs to clients and invoicing them, the exact mechanics of how concierge deals are negotiated remain unclear. 

The nature of the deals has drawn scepticism from crypto Twitter, with users questioning the relationship between the artists and MoonPay. 

CEO and co-founder Ivan Soto-Wright recently confirmed that he first met Fallon at NFT.NYC, and it was during this meeting that the host agreed to shout out the payments company on his show, according to Soto-Wright. A MoonPay spokesperson confirmed last week that the company has no commercial relationship with Fallon. 

The addition of four more celebrities to MoonPay’s client roster suggests the service is gaining traction in the wake of the company’s $555 million Series A round, which was led by Tiger Global and Coatue. 

© 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.

Maven 11 Capital, an Amsterdam-based crypto investor, has closed its second venture capital fund with a total of $120 million raised, according to an announcement.

The vehicle, named Venture Fund II, is a closed-end fund that wrapped up a $40 million ‘first raise’ in June. Since then, the Maven team has made 28 investments — primarily in DeFi protocols and Web3 apps.

Maven has been venture investing since 2017, and through its two funds has backed projects such as Celestia, Qredo, Naym Technologies, Spectral Finance, Merit Circle, Maple Finance, Anoma and Zapper.

Balder Bomans, a partner at Maven 11 Capital, said the company invests in both tokens and equity. But he added that he “very strongly believes that tokens are going to be the go-to in terms of crypto and the development of this asset class.”

Like a growing number of crypto-native investment firms, Maven also plays an active role helping the protocols it has backed to grow. It is, for example, acting as a ‘pool delegate’ for Maple Finance — which entails managing a collection of lenders and borrowers whose contracts are buttressed by blockchain technology.

“As a venture capitalist we think our model will massively change within the coming years. It’s already changing in terms of what our roles are within these ecosystems,” said Bomans.  

The capital for Maven’s first fund came primarily from wealthy individuals, whereas its second vehicle also manages money contributed by crypto entrepreneurs, family offices and institutions such as fund-of-funds.  

As for where that capital will be directed, Bomans said Maven is bullish on the ability of DeFi to make financial markets more efficient, and highlighted options and insurance as two underdeveloped areas that the firm is keen on.

It is also looking closely at non-fungible token (NFT) infrastructure players, and has already invested in NFTfi, a marketplace for NFT-backed loans.

© 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.

DeFi protocol BadgerDAO has fallen victim to a large hack. According to security researchers PeckShield, $120.3 million was stolen from users of the protocol.

BadgerDAO is a DeFi protocol focused on providing yield for bitcoin. The idea is that you bridge your bitcoin over onto a smart contract platform like Ethereum, as wrapped bitcoin, which you can then use within DeFi applications. BadgerDAO provides a variety of vaults where users can park their wrapped bitcoin and earn yields depending on the yield generation strategies used by the vaults.

“Badger has received reports of unauthorized withdrawals of user funds. As Badger engineers investigate this, all smart contracts have been paused to prevent further withdrawals,” BadgerDAO tweeted today, confirming the exploit.

PeckShield documented the variety of assets stolen in the hack, which range from tokens like wrapped bitcoin (WBTC) and convex finance (CVX) to more complicated tokens like “ibbtc/sbtcCRV-f.” Many of the tokens represent assets held in a vault, meaning they can be redeemed for multiple tokens with varying values — making it harder to total the amount of funds stolen.

One user had around 900 bitcoin ($50.8 million) worth of tokens stolen in a single transaction. Another lost $5 million worth of tokens in one go.

The front end to the BadgerDAO website was reportedly acccessed, according to comments in the project’s Discord channel, and used to intercept transactions. One admin said it appears that an API key for Cloudflare was compromised.

While protocols like BadgerDAO are decentralized and can be interacted with directly, it requires specialised knowledge to do so. Most users will use a front end like the BadgerDAO website (although alternative front ends can be used). But this does have an element of risk: if the front end gets comprised, as in this case, then it can lead to loss of funds.

© 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.

Jack Dorsey’s payment firm Square is rebranding the name of its corporate entity to “Block,” according to a company announcement on Wednesday. The change will become official on December 10. 

The name change stems from the firm’s desire to become more deeply embrace decentralized and blockchain technology, citing that the name change has been in the works for the past year. 

“We built the Square brand for our Seller business, which is where it belongs,” said Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Block, said in the release. “’Block’ is a new name, but our purpose of economic empowerment remains the same. No matter how we grow or change, we will continue to build tools to help increase access to the economy.”

In addition to Square’s name change to “Block,” “Square Crypto” will rebrand to “Spiral.” However, Block’s New York Stock Exchange symbol will remain SQ, the firm wrote on Twitter. 

The name change comes just two days after Jack Dorsey stepped down as the CEO of Twitter.

© 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.

Meta, the social media company formerly known as Facebook, changed its requirements for businesses who seek to advertise digital asset-related products. 

The firm announced Wednesday that it is increasing the number of acceptable regulatory licenses from three to 27, according to a company release, in addition to publicly listing eligible licenses on their policy page. 

Prior to the change, the company required that businesses submit an application including details such as relevant crypto licensure and whether the business was publicly traded or not. Now, the firm is focusing on whether the business has one of the 27 approved licenses, a list of which it now hosts online.

“We’re doing this because the cryptocurrency landscape has continued to mature and stabilize in recent years and has seen more government regulations that are setting clearer rules for their industry,” Meta wrote in the release. 

“These changes will help to make our policy in this space more equitable and transparent and help more advertisers, including small businesses, grow their audiences and reach more potential customers.”

The firm’s advertising rules for companies related to cryptocurrency exchange, trading, lending, wallets and mining have not changed in this new update. 

© 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.

After hinting that this feature would come soon, the U.S.-based crypto exchange FTX.US now allows users to buy, sell and display Ethereum NFTs on its previously Solana-only non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace. 

According to a tweet from the exchange, Wednesday marks the first time the company has allowed Ethereum NFTs onto its nascent NFT marketplace — which launched more than a month ago on October 11. 

FTX.US is now the first and so far only NFT marketplace to offer both Ethereum and Solana NFTs. 

Ethereum remains the top blockchain for NFTs. As The Block’s data shows, this is because many of the top NFT marketplaces, such as OpenSea and SuperRare, primarily mint and sell their NFTs as ERC-721 tokens — the native currency of the Ethereum blockchain. 

As a result, many of the most prized — and most expensive — NFT collectibles such as Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and CrypToadz are Ethereum-based. These NFTs collectibles and more are now on the FTX.US marketplace. 

© 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.

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On December 1, Maxine Waters, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, announced the witness list to a hearing on cryptocurrencies, which will be heavy on executives from leading U.S. crypto firms.

Scheduled for December 8, the hearing is entitled “Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: Understanding the Challenges and Benefits of Financial Innovation in the United States.”

The witnesses are CEOs from leading crypto firms: Circle’s Jeremy Allaire, FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, Bitfury’s Brian Brooks, Paxos’ Chad Cascarilla, Stellar’s Denelle Dixon and Coinbase’s Alesia Haas.

Interestingly, Coinbase’s global CEO, Brian Armstrong, will not be appearing, despite the firm being in the crosshairs of legislators and regulators looking to clamp down on crypto. 

No written remarks have yet appeared. 

The Financial Services Committee has been the House’s front line when it comes to crypto law. A number of its members are also on the Blockchain Caucus, while Waters herself assembled a working group of the committee’s Democrats to focus on crypto earlier this year. 

© 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

• Indian politicians have been arguing about crypto for years, making it difficult to understand the true nature of the discussions.
• But in recent weeks, the tone has shifted towards cautious optimism about crypto.
• These comments and other signs suggest that the Indian government intends to regulate crypto — and soon — rather than ban it.

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