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The New York-based investment platform Public.com has expanded its crypto offering one month after its initial launch. Previously, the platform offered trading in ten currencies, including ether (ETH), bitcoin (BTC) and Dogecoin (DOGE). 

Today’s announcement sees DeFi coins such as Uniswap (UNI) and SushiSwap (SUSHI), and Ether-challenger Solana (SOL) added into the mix. Two weeks ago, memecoin of the moment Shiba Inu ($SHIB) was also added, taking Public.com’s coin count to 21. 

This doubling down on crypto will add to the investment platform’s plethora of services ranging from themed investment plans to traditional stocks and ETFs. 

The news follows the recent surge in neobroker platforms expanding into crypto investment services. In April, Germany’s Trade Republic expanded into crypto trading. The Block recently revealed that AI-investment app Plum is also gearing up to a mid-2022 crypto asset launch.

It’s not just brokers getting in on the crypto game either — neobanks, such as N26 and Revolut, are expanding their verticals into crypto investment, with BNPL lenders such as Afterpay following suit. 

© 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.

Coinbase (COIN) shares slid by as much as 10% Wednesday after the U.S. crypto exchange reported third-quarter revenue that fell short of expectations and weaker trading volumes than in the second quarter. The shares recently pared their drop to trade at $339 by publication time.

Some Wall Street analysts are taking a longer-term view of the crypto exchange. That stance backs Coinbase’s view that cryptocurrency volatility and rising prices in recent months should feed through to an increase in its transacting users and trading volumes in the fourth quarter.

Still, the decline in retail trading revenue divided by retail trading volumes is keeping Mizuho cautious. “Most significantly, 3Q saw a dramatic decline in the retail take rate, likely among the most dramatic compression in COIN’s short history as a public company,” analyst Dan Dolev wrote to clients in a note. Dolev maintains a neutral rating and $300 price target.

MoffettNathanson sees a bright spot in revenue from Coinbase’s subscription and services, or non-trading services, which rose 41% from the previous quarter. Analyst Lisa Ellis sees the “expansion of these services as the most notable source of upside to Coinbase’s financial performance” over the next three to five years. Ellis maintains a buy rating and $600 price target.

Needham is also looking ahead to different product launches, such as non-fungible tokens (NFT). “We continue to be positive on revenue diversification and new product launches (NFTs, futures, additional staking opportunities),” analyst John Todaro told clients in a note. Needham maintains its buy recommendation and $420 price target.

Coinbase should benefit from overall crypto adoption, JPMorgan said. “We see Coinbase continuing to outpace peers and still see the company as a strong investment based on continued growth of the cryptoeconomy,” analyst Kenneth Worthington wrote. He maintains an overweight recommendation on COIN and while boosting JPMorgan’s price target to $447 from $375.

Much decline. 

Robinhood — the crypto and equities broker — has released financial data showing that trading in meme-coin Doge declined from 62% of its cryptocurrency transaction revenue in Q2 to 40% in the most recent quarter. 

“For the three months ended September 30, 2021, 40% of our cryptocurrency transaction-based revenue was attributable to transactions in Dogecoin, as compared to 62% for the three months ended June 30, 2021 and 34% for the three months ended March 31, 2021,” the firm said in a filing reviewed by The Block Research on Wednesday. 

The dogecoin data shouldn’t come as a surprise given the sanguine quarter for Robinhood’s crypto business in Q3. The firm reported earnings for the third quarter at the end of October, showing a broader decline in interest in the crypto market during that period. 

Popularity in Dogecoin trading translated into a strong second quarter for Robinhood’s crypto business. Still, crypto traders are a fickle bunch, often moving quickly between tokens. That could be a disadvantage for Robinhood relative to its competitors given that it is in no rush to list new coins. 

The firm’s crypto lead, Christine Brown, said at an industry event that its strategy is not to “list as many assets as possible right now.”

“We think that the short-term gain we might get is not worth the long-term trade-off for our users,” 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.

MediaMarkt, Europe’s largest electronics retailer, has reportedly been hit by a Hive ransomware attack with demands to pay $50 million in bitcoin.

• Following the attack on Sunday, the attackers were initially demanding a ransom payment of $240 million, Bleeping Computer reported Monday.
• A subsequent report by retail news site RetailDetail said the amount had been reduced to $50 million, with payment demanded in bitcoin.
• The attack by the Hive ransomware group encrypted MediaMarkt’s servers, causing the retailer to shut down its IT systems to prevent further problems. That caused many stores, mainly in the Netherlands, to be unable to accept credit and debit card payments.
• Germany-based MediaMarkt has more than 1,000 stores across the continent.
• Recent research by the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) found that payments linked to ransomware attacks this year have amounted to $590 million so far, already exceeding the total for all of 2020. It isn’t clear what proportion of those transactions involve crypto.
• Hive’s modus operandi involves gaining access to a network to steal encrypted files, while also deleting backups to prevent the target from being able to recover their data. Hive has also been known to steal files and publish them on its data leaks site unless a ransom is paid, according to Bleeping Computer’s report.

Read more: Crypto Isn’t the Cause of Ransomware. It Might Be the Cure

Bitcoin has long been touted as an inflation hedge asset among its proponents. Billionaire Paul Tudor Jones told CNBC in October that he viewed bitcoin as a superior inflation hedge to gold. 

“Clearly, there’s a place for crypto. Clearly, it’s winning the race against gold at the moment,” he said.

In a similar spirit, JPMorgan released a note last month that said institutional investors see bitcoin as a “better inflation hedge than gold.”

“The reemergence of inflation concerns among investors has renewed interest in the usage of Bitcoin as an inflation hedge,” the bank wrote.

In any case, this morning’s price action illustrates the degree to which the cryptocurrency can be impacted by traditional market forces.

“More and more of the traditional econ numbers [are going to] affect bitcoin markets [in a] very short time frame with all these quant firms plugged in now,” a trading executive in the market told The Block. 

© 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.

Tether has launched its USDT stablecoin on the Avalanche blockchain after first announcing its support in May.

The launch comes as Avalanche’s ecosystem is growing at a rapid pace. The total value locked (TVL) in Avalanche-based DeFi protocols has increased dramatically over the past three months — from around $300 million in August to over $10 billion currently — according to tracker DeFi Llama.

USDT on Avalanche could further boost this growth as stablecoins play an essential role in the DeFi market. Traders use stablecoins to swap tokens and to lend them out to earn high yields from DeFi platforms.

Emin Gün Sirer, director of the Avalanche Foundation, called the USDT’s launch on Avalanche “an essential building block for DeFi users.”

USDT has also seen strong growth this year. Its total supply has grown from around $22 billion at the start of this year to about $78 billion currently.

Avalanche-based USDT has also been integrated directly with Bitfinex, meaning users can access the stablecoin via the crypto exchange. Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino told The Block that users can also deposit USDT on other blockchains and swap them for USDT on Avalanche.

Avalanche is the ninth blockchain USDT now supports. The other eight blockchains are Algorand, Bitcoin Cash’s Simple Ledger Protocol, Ethereum, EOS, Liquid Network, Omni, Tron, and Solana.

Earlier this year, Tether said it will also launch USDT on the Polkadot and Kusama networks. Ardoino said the firm is reviewing more blockchains to support as well in the near term, without disclosing any specific names.

CENTRE Consortium is also reportedly looking to support more blockchains for its USDC stablecoin, including Avalanche and Polkadot.

© 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.

Perceived store-of-value assets like bitcoin and gold are rising as investors reassess the stickiness of inflation in the wake of a hotter-than-expected October reading in the U.S. consumer price index (CPI).

The bitcoin (BTC) price has increased by nearly $3,000, hitting a new record high of $68,950, since the Labor Department’s CPI report was released at 13:30 coordinated universal time (8:30 a.m. ET).

The report showed that the cost of living in the U.S. rose 6.2% year-on-year in October, marking the highest since 1990. Core inflation, which strips out the volatile food and energy component, rose 4.6%, the highest since August 1991.

The cryptocurrency is now trading 2.7% higher on the day. The descending trendline breakout seen on the hourly chart has exposed the psychological resistance at $70,000.

#CPI comes in above expectations at 6.2% overall and 4.6% core. Markets go back to pricing in faster and earlier #Fed #RateHikes. pic.twitter.com/klz9rXne5P

— Kathy Jones (@KathyJones) November 10, 2021

Bitcoin rallied 40% in October. The popular narrative was that the launch of a bitcoin futures-based exchange-traded fund (ETF) would bring in mainstream money, pushing up demand for the cryptocurrency and thus the price. But analysts at JPMorgan attributed the rally to rising inflation expectations and bitcoin’s appeal as a hedge against rising prices.

The trend looks set to continue, with equity markets showing few signs of stress. Futures contracts tied to the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of large U.S. stocks were down a meager 0.2% at press time.

Gold, a traditional inflation hedge, has broken above a long-held resistance at $1,830 to trade at a five-month high of $1,853.

The U.S. five-year “breakeven rate” – a gauge of inflation expectations over the next five years, as derived from bond-market indicators – has jumped above 3%, the highest since at least 2001, according to Bloomberg.

What will the Fed do?

Traders in the market for futures contracts on the Federal Reserve’s key interest rate now see a 38% chance of a rate hike in June 2022, up from 28% prior to the CPI report.

Meanwhile, the two-year U.S. Treasury yield, which is more sensitive to rate hike expectations than the 10-year yield, has jumped eight basis points to 0.5%.

Should markets price in faster and earlier rate hikes, bitcoin’s momentum may slow.

St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard told CNBC on Tuesday that the U.S. central bank may hike its benchmark rate twice in 2022, after winding down its $120 billion-a-month bond-buying program.

Crypto miner MineOne has raised more than $20 million for its first round of funding since launching the company last month.

• The company said it plans to both raise $200 million and expand its global operating capacity to 400 megawatts by the end of 2022.
• It currently has 80,000 miners, and expects to increase that to 135,000 by the end of next year.
• The miner has fully operational capacity of 50 megawatts in Russia and Kazakhstan and plans to deliver an additional 30 megawatts in the U.S. by the end of this year, according to the company’s website.
• MineOne is building up its East Point, Georgia mining site for its U.S. operations and expects about half of its miners there to be operational in Dec. 2021 and the other half in April 2022.
• The company is also constructing a mining site in Alberta, Canada. It expects the site to go online in December with 20 megawatts of operation capacity, with an additional 70 megawatts by April 2022..

Foundry, the Bitcoin mining and financing subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, has launched a staking business-as-a-service targeting institutions.

The firm said in an announcement on Wednesday that Foundry Staking will stake for the firm itself and external crypto holders on proof-of-stake (PoS) protocols. It will also offer infrastructure as a white-glove service for institutions like crypto exchanges, hedge funds and custodians.

Foundry said it started staking internally for DCG in the summer of 2020 and is now launching with more supported protocols, targeting institutions. 

Per Foundry Staking’s website, it now supports 20 protocols including most of the PoS networks that are within the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization such as SOL, ADA, DOT, LUNA, AVAX and MATIC.

Foundry CEO Mike Colyer said in the announcement that the firm has made “significant investments” in engineering talent and PoS infrastructure to replicate its growth in the proof-of-work mining pool business.

Foundry started testing its Bitcoin mining pool last year and mined its first block in October. It didn’t officially launch the Foundry USA Pool until March this year.

Thanks to not only the growth of the North American Bitcoin mining community but the decline of their Chinese rivals, Foundry USA Pool has grown to the third largest Bitcoin mining pool by real-time hash rate, after Bitmain’s Antpool and F2Pool.

© 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.

La Haus, a Latin American proptech company, is now accepting bitcoin for home purchases through on-chain transactions and the Lightning Network, the company announced Wednesday.

Payment with bitcoin will be available for investing in condominiums in Kahaal, a luxury housing development in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, the company said, adding that it plans to soon expand cryptocurrency acceptance to more properties in its inventory of more than 80,000 listings.

“As we expand across Latin America, bitcoin can solve some of the problems that come with buying a home with local currencies. The bitcoin and real estate worlds have excellent synergy,” Rodrigo Sánchez-Ríos, president of La Haus, said in a statement.

La Haus, with presences in Colombia and México, facilitates more than $1 billion in gross transactions per year, with more than one million monthly users, the company reported.

Launched in 2017, the company has raised over $150 million in venture capital funding from firms such as Acrew Capital, Bezos Expeditions, Kaszek Ventures and TIME Ventures.

The company has also recruited Jehudi Castro-Sierra, former advisor to the Colombian presidency on digital transformation issues, as vice president.

“Bitcoin enhanced by Lightning allows instant, global settlement in a more efficient way,” said Castro-Sierra, who added that the company will explore initiatives around Web 3, tokenization and disintermediation.

In April, the largest e-commerce player in Latin America, MercadoLibre, unveiled a bitcoin-only real estate section within its platform for the purchase and sale of properties with that cryptocurrency.