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Genesis Trading’s chief technology officer Pat DeFrancesco is no longer with the cryptocurrency trading and lending firm, according to a source familiar with the move. 

DeFrancesco, a veteran of the trading technology world, joined the firm in June 2019. He previously worked as the chief technology officer and chief operating officer at 7Chord, a firm that develops AI systems for the corporate bond market. Earlier in his career, he was the head of information systems and later chief technology officer at Creditex, which Intercontinental Exchange acquired in 2008. 

As The Block reported in 2019, DeFrancesco was originally brought on to help build out the firm’s technology infrastructure and quantitative research. CEO Michael Moro hinted at building out an integrated platform where trading and lending could be accessed through a single GUI. 

Genesis is one of the largest trading firms in the multi-trillion-dollar crypto market. According to its most recent quarterly report, Genesis traded more than $37 billion across derivatives and spot in Q3. 

A spokesman for DCG declined to comment. 

© 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 has named Parag Agrawal as CEO as Jack Dorsey steps down, according to an announcement today.

“I’ve decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders. My trust in Parag as Twitter’s CEO is deep. His work over the past 10 years has been transformational. I’m deeply grateful for his skill, heart, and soul. It’s his time to lead,” said Dorsey.

© 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 Citigroup executive Matt Zhang has launched a $1.5 billion crypto venture fund called Hivemind Capital Partners, according to an announcement on Monday.

Hivemind, a new crypto investment outfit based out of New York will focus on four strategies — yield staking, trading, venture capital investments, and play-to-earn (P2E) gaming. Following its interest in the latter area, the company has also hired former Goldman Sachs analyst Sam Peurifoy.

Peurifoy quit his job at Goldman Sachs to pursue a career in the play-to-earn gaming space under the moniker “Das Kapitalist,” a likely nod to Karl Marx’s magnum opus “Das Kapital.”

According to Zhang, having Peurifoy leading the company’s P2E gaming arm is one way the fund can differentiate itself from others in the market. Peurifoy is a major community leader in Axie Infinity, the most popular crypto play-to-earn game.

The Hivemind announcement is the latest in a flurry of crypto venture funds established in 2021. In November, venture capital firm Paradigm launched a $2.5 billion cryptocurrency-focused venture fund.

Hivemind’s inclusion of P2E gaming in its investment strategy is also in keeping with the growing popularity of crypto gaming. Several blockchain gaming startups have also received backing from VC firms as of late, such as Avocado, a blockchain gaming guild that received $18 million from investors including Solana Ventures earlier 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.

Serj Tankian, the GRAMMY® Award-winning musician, activist and painter, has brought his latest art exhibition, “Not For Touching – The Intangible Composition,” online with a unique mix of the virtual and terrestrial via a collection of animated NFTs and archival giclée prints.

Presented by CurioNFT, the 21 pieces will be unveiled, and on-sale, on Dec. 6 via an online interactive gallery with various simulated rooms, large scale animated graphics masterfully created by Roger Kupelian (The Lord of The Rings, Hugo), and music scored by Tankian. A range of editions will be available including several one of one NFTs with an accompanying signed giclée print, four series of one of 25 NFTs with signed giclée prints as well as four one of 100 NFT only releases.

“I got into painting to see my music,” explains Tankian, who also discussed the collection in a newly published Rolling Stone piece. “By adding musical compositions to art, we’ve created a more powerful encompassing experience for lovers of art and music. NFTs are a natural progression allowing the art and music to move within the scopes of our retinas and our creative minds. I called it ‘Not For Touching’ (NFT) cause it’s a lot sexier than non-fungible tokens. ☺”

Tankian and CurioNFT will offset any environmental impact from the showing with the use of “lazy minting,” a process that reduces emissions, minting NFTs at times of low Ethereum usage, generating 2% of the emissions of a typical NFT minted on Ethereum. For context, when CurioNFT mints an NFT it generates carbon emissions equivalent to sending approximately 17 emails with attachments. Committed to carbon neutrality, CurioNFT has offset emissions by planting over 12,000 trees and counting. As of September, CurioNFT’s environmental efforts have offset over 300% of the carbon created by NFT sales. 

The partnership has also pledged to donate 10% of sales to TUMO. The TUMO Center for Creative Technologies is a free-of-charge educational program that puts teens in charge of their own learning. With locations worldwide, the program is made up of project labs revolving around 14 learning targets, from animation to web development.

ABOUT CurioNFT

CurioNFT delivers a new universe to serve fans through digital collectibles, driven by state-of-the-art non-fungible token (NFT) technology. Working with the biggest names in the entertainment industry, CurioNFT brings innovative, cutting-edge engagement opportunities to delight fans and provide new ways to enhance their relationship with brands. 

To learn more, please visit: www.curionft.com

To learn more about Serj Tankian, please visit: Serj Tankian

© 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.

Tornado Cash, a popular Ethereum transaction mixing protocol, is ready to integrate the Layer 2 network Arbitrum.

“The protocol’s smart contracts are all set and ready to spin on Arbitrum. They just need help from the community to get deployed & fly with their own wings,” said Tornado Cash in a blog post on Monday.

As an Ethereum mixer, Tornado Cash improves transaction privacy. It does so by breaking the on-chain link between the sender and recipient address. In other words, it allows withdrawals to a different address, which cannot be linked with a deposit address, thus ensuring privacy. Tornado Cash uses zkSnark proof technology and is non-custodial, meaning users retain full control of their deposits to the protocol.

Tornado Cash’s launch on Arbitrum means its users will be able to process Ethereum transactions faster and cheaper. Arbitrum uses optimistic rollups for its scaling technology. Rollups allow for the execution of Ethereum transactions off-chain and store only transaction data on-chain. This reduces the network’s congestion, increases its speed, and reduces transaction fees.

Tornado Cash said a transaction costs ~2.5 Gwei on Arbitrum versus ~130 Gwei on Ethereum, citing data from tracker CoinTool. Gwei is a small unit of ether (ETH). A gwei or gigawei is defined as 1,000,000,000 wei, the smallest base unit of ether.

Ethereum Layer 2 solutions appear to be picking up steam. Since launching its mainnet on August 31, the total amount of value locked (TVL) in Arbitrum has increased sharply. Its current TVL stands at over $2 billion, and the three biggest contributors for that are DeFi protocols Curve, AnySwap, SushiSwap, according to tracker DefiLlama.

Arbitrum’ s TVL is higher than that of rival Optimism, according to The Block’s Data Dashboard.

Tornado Cash community members that are willing to support its deployment on Arbitrum can contribute to the deployment, it said. The Ethereum mixing protocol has recently been deployed on Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, xDAI Chain, and Avalanche.

© 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.

Software company MicroStrategy announced Monday that it had bought an additional 7,002 bitcoins for around $414.4 million in cash.

The company bought these bitcoins at an average purchase price of $59,187 per coin. It purchased these bitcoins as part of its fourth-quarter purchase, i.e., during the period between October 1 and November 29.

MicroStrategy now holds a total of 121,044 bitcoins, worth nearly $7 billion at current prices. The company is currently sitting on a huge paper profit of over $3 billion as it bought these bitcoins at an aggregate purchase price of $3.57 billion. Its average purchase price is about $29,534 per bitcoin, and bitcoin is currently trading at around $57,280.

While MicroStrategy’s bitcoin bet is paying off so far, what happens if bitcoin crashes at some point in the future? Some observers recently told The Block that if the price of bitcoin were to plunge far enough, MicroStrategy could struggle to pay its over $2 billion debt that it has taken on to purchase its bitcoins.

© 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.

SK Square, a non-telecoms investment subsidiary of South Korea’s largest wireless carrier Sk Telecom, has invested 90 billion won (about $75 million) in crypto exchange platform Korbit.

According to a statement from the company quoted by Korea JoongAng Daily, SK Square is looking to grow its net asset value by holding Korbit shares. Korbit is one of the “big four” South Korean crypto exchanges alongside Bithumb, Upbit, and Coinone.

Following the investment, SK Square now owns a 35% stake in Korbit. SK Square’s equity stake puts the company as the crypto exchange’s second-largest shareholder behind South Korean investment giant NXC.

Monday’s announcement constitutes SK Square’s first foray into the crypto space since its establishment in August. According to a press release quoted by South Korean news agency Newsis, SK Square and Korbit also plan to jointly promote popular crypto niches like non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the metaverse.

SK Square has already made some strides in the metaverse scene, investing 8 billion won ($6.7 million) in Onmind, a Kakao-backed 3D avatar production outfit. Yoon Poong-young, the company’s chief investment officer, said SK Square will continue to invest in emerging technologies like blockchain and metaverse to improve its standing as an investment company.

© 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.

Thought Machine has raised $200 million to help banks move into the cloud age, according to a statement. Thought Machine plans to use the extra cash to expand globally, especially in Asia, with its eyes on Malaysia and Japan.

Founded in 2014 by former Google employee Paul Taylor, Thought Machine operates as an infrastructure-as-a-service for banking, helping legacy players take the leap into cloud-native core banking.

It’s a mission that has convinced certain banking giants, with institutional investors including ING Ventures, JP Morgan Chase and Lloyds Banking Group helping the startup hit unicorn status. At the same time, its investors also happen to be some of the company’s biggest clients. 

“The deployment of Thought Machine is tied to our digital banking strategy, as we have adopted Thought Machine as the core banking software for our digital banks in Singapore and Hong Kong,” says Alex Manson, head of SC Ventures. 

It’s not alone in the cloud banking space, however. 10x, also backed by JP Morgan, was chosen by the multinational to build out its banking platform, Chase UK.  Berlin’s Mambu also raised a $135 million fund led by TCV to assist banks moving into the cloud. 

© 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.

A senior official for France’s central bank said earlier this month that regulators in Europe need to more directly supervise decentralized finance (DeFi).

In a speech from November 19 that was published Sunday by the Bank of International Settlements, Denis Beau, first deputy governor of the Banque du France, primarily focused on the development of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and his institution’s pilot program in this area. France’s central bank is also a participant in the long-term project to potentially introduce a digital euro, an initiative being spearheaded by the European Central Bank.

During his remarks, Beau commented on the development of crypto-focused regulation in Europe and remarked that “other regulatory changes will have to be introduced which are also very important.” 

Beau went on to say:

“I’m referring in particular to the supervision of the development of decentralised finance, where the usual regulatory frameworks are constrained by the fact that issuers and service providers are not easily identifiable in an environment where protocols are automatically executed without intermediaries, and there is no fixed jurisdiction for the services offered.”

One of the regulatory proposal referenced by Beau, the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA), does not contain any provisions specific to DeFi. 

Beau didn’t comment further on this particular topic, but his contention echoes those made by regulators in the United States who have also expressed a desire to strengthen oversight of DeFi-related activities. 

Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner Hester Peirce told The Block last year that DeFi would “challenge the way we regulate.”

© 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.

Monthly data for decentralized exchanges (DEXs) indicates that the ecosystem has seen nearly $100 billion in volume for the month of November.

According to The Block’s Data Dashboard, the total for November is approximately $99.5 billion as of November 28. Monthly volumes have climbed since hitting a low for the year of $56.35 billion in July, with the November figure surpassing October’s $89.15 billion.

As expected, Uniswap v3 and v2 exchange protocols have constituted the bulk of the monthly volume for November, reporting $47.37 billion and $24.07 billion, respectively.

According to CoinGecko, the USDC/ETH trading pair was the most active on Uniswap v3, accounting for approximately 654.4 million in volume during the past 24 hours. CoinGecko reports $1.49 billion in overall volume for the protocol in the past day. 

To date, monthly volumes peaked in May, when DEXs reported a total of $162.83 billion in volume. 

© 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.