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The startup behind the Kings of Leon’s foray into crypto is looking to disrupt the $15 billion live entertainment resale market with its own ticketing app.

YellowHeart and its app, “YellowHeart Wallet,” which was released Thursday, uses Ethereum and Polygon integrations to store tickets as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the app’s wallet, the company said in a press release.

Tickets can be purchased within the app using both crypto and fiat payment systems. The NFTs change their artwork once scanned, adding an element of collectibility for those who attend the event.

Just got my tickets for @MetaKovan’s @metapurse Dreamverse Gallery & After Party as an NFT!, designed by @money_alotta, best ticket ever! 😍 And there are still people that don’t believe in NFTs future 😁… wgmi
Can’t wait for November 🗽❤️‍🔥 #NYC
& My tickets to get its colors 🔥 pic.twitter.com/Pk8MxVJLWY

— Beryl (@berylbilici) October 16, 2021

Having tickets expressed as NFTs allows for venues and artists to more easily track their movement on secondary markets, taking a portion of the resale profits by programming fees into the NFTs themselves.

The company believes that tracking tickets with blockchain could reduce the impact of scalping, where third-party sellers buy tickets in bulk to resell at marked-up rates.

Purchasers of NFT-based tickets on YellowHeart’s app essentially become token holders for the acts they see, being granted access to exclusive content and perks similar to that of a social token, without any additional cost to the original tickets.

Read more: Miami Art Festival Sells VIP Tickets as NFTs

YellowHeart mentioned “discounts at selected stores or restaurants before or after a show, access to private events, and exclusive meet & greets” and potential rewards for holders of NFTs within the app.

A representative of YellowHeart told CoinDesk that while the company is currently focused on ticketing in the music industry, it sees the utility of the technology extending into other arenas, such as sports, in the future.

“Artists, teams and venues that don’t adapt will get left behind,” said Josh Katz, CEO of YellowHeart. “Providing fans with a technology that grants exclusive access to concert tickets and event-specific content is a real win for us, combining this with our focus on artist community tokens, exclusive album-connected NFT content and the possibilities for creativity from here are endless.”

YellowHeart raised a $2.9 million seed round in 2018 backed by the investment of pop duo The Chainsmokers.

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• In this weekly series, we dive into some of the most interesting data and developments across the Layer 1 blockchain landscape, from DeFi and bridges to network activity and funding
• As L1 ecosystems become more connected than ever before, pooling sufficient liquidity for assets has become increasingly important. As always, incentives are playing a critical role in concentrating capital. 
• This week, we dive into Terra, Cosmos, Solana, and Binance Smart Chain

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Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, has hired former General Electric and Edelman executive Patrick Hillmann as its first chief communications officer, the company announced Thursday.

• Binance said Hillmann will be responsible for leading its global communications and public affairs division as the exchange continues to grow.
• Hillmann will oversee Binance’s corporate communications, public affairs and media relations. He will also work with Binance’s compliance and security leaders.
• Prior to joining Binance, Hillman was the global head of innovation at Edelman’s crisis and risk practice, where he led the PR giant’s cybersecurity and counter disinformation offerings. And before Edelman, Hillman held senior government affairs and public affairs positions at General Electric and the National Association of Manufacturers.
• The new hire comes as regulators around the world have recently been scrutinizing Binance’s operations.
• “As we continue our evolution from a disruptive tech startup to a respected global financial institution, we recognized that it was paramount that we recruit leading compliance, communications, and government affairs experts,” said Binance co-founder Yi He, in a statement.
• Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) added: “We’re working hand-in-glove with regulators around the world toward our mutual goal of protecting users, encouraging innovation and further establishing the industry. Patrick’s fifteen years of experience working on global regulatory issues, such as GDPR, will be critical in advancing that work.”

Read more: Binance Not Authorized to Operate in the Cayman Islands, Regulator Says

Tesseract, an EU –based cryptocurrency credit innovator focusing on institutional clients, is now welcoming new Earn partners to its renewed offering. Tesseract has been offering credit services to crypto companies since its founding in 2017. One of these includes a white-label interest rate account solution. Dubbed Tesseract Earn, it allows crypto companies to provide a wide array of yield products, such as interest-bearing accounts and DeFi yield & staking, to their customers via an API –based solution. 

Who is Tesseract Earn for? 

The Earn partnership is ideal for cryptocurrency exchanges, on- & off-ramps, wallet providers, and FinTechs looking to expand into the crypto space. Among others, Tesseract has partnered with Coinmotion, a retail exchange focused on the Nordics, since 2018 enabling them to become the market leader in Finnish crypto.  

Tesseract Earn attracts more customers & diversifies revenue 

By offering a well-tailored set of yield products, crypto companies can attract more customers and reduce churn as customers with assets deposited in yield products become much stickier. Earn also helps companies diversify revenue and minimise the impact of downturns in trading activity. 

Tesseract is powering the crypto credit ecosystem 

Tesseract has been active in crypto credit since 2017 and is regulated by the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority, allowing it to operate globally. In June, it raised a $25M Series A, backed by investors such as Augmentum, Coinbase Ventures, Sapphire, and Wintermute. Tesseract’s partners include some of the largest in crypto; it offers custody solutions in cooperation with Copper and is the official credit provider for BitMEX. In addition to partnerships, Tesseract also provides crypto OTC lending and cross-exchange cross-asset margin lending. 

Tesseract is the first to bring DeFi solutions to businesses 

Tesseract was one of the first companies in Europe to launch a DeFi research & investment team in 2020. Since then, Tesseract has been iterating on its DeFi product offering, allowing its partners’ customers access to various high-yield DeFi strategies and staking opportunities.  

Easy integration ensures accelerated time to market 

With multiple Earn partnerships under its belt, Tesseract has mastered taking companies to the next level. The whole process can be squeezed in just under a month, allowing exchanges & crypto ramps to stay ahead of their competition. To learn more about getting started, you can drop Tesseract a line on their website. 

© 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.

Blockchain infrastructure provider Alchemy is the latest company to join the unicorn crypto club, closing a Series C funding round that values the firm at $3.5 billion.

The company, founded in 2017 by Nikil Viswanathan and Joe Lau, is among the myriad of industry firms to nab a hefty valuation amid an upswell in venture interest. What’s more, the round comes as the startup’s footprint in the non-fungible token (NFT) economy grows. Alchemy counts an array of NFT-focused companies on its client list, including unicorn-valuation companies like OpenSea, Dapper Labs and Axie Infinity.

The new round adds more than $250 million to Alchemy’s coffers. 

Andreessen Horowitz led the new round, with Lightspeed and Redpoint joining the firm’s cap table for the first time along with a16z. Existing investors Coatue, Addition Capital, Panter and DFJ also took part in the round.

Alchemy had raised $80 million in a Series B round announced in April. Since the spring, Alchemy has grown its revenues by 15x, according to the team. 

The company offers software tools that range from node management, handling the communication points within a blockchain network, to its so-called Alchemy Monitor, which helps developers view the functionality of apps built on their networks.

Those types of tools have placed Alchemy square in the sector for NFT services. In August, Viswanathan said that “[w]e’re seeing an explosion of new use cases, new types of users, and new products being built with NFT technology.

Activity in the NFT space surged over the summer, with OpenSea clocking in volumes topping $1 billion every month since August, as per data from The Block. 

Viswanathan told The Block that he expects a number of exchanges and brokers from the crypto and fintech worlds to enter the market in the coming years. 

“Crypto is no longer this theoretical research thing,” Viswanathan said. “It is something that today can add concrete value for firms by integrating Web3.”

Alchemy is far from alone in seeking to capitalize on interest in NFTs, including other unicorn-valuation firms like FTX and Coinbase. In a sign of the times, Coinbase’s waitlist for its upcoming NFT platform hit more than 1 million names within 24 hours of launch.

In a recent interview, Robinhood’s crypto COO, Christine Brown, told The Block the firm wouldn’t rule out exploring a product in that corner of the market. 

© 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.

ClubNFT, an NFT infrastructure project set up by the pseudonymous collector and commentator Artnome, has secured $3 million in seed funding, according to a press release. Today also marks the startup’s official launch.

Artnome, whose real name is Jason Bailey, has been writing about blockchain art since 2017 and claims to have been the first collector on SuperRare, the NFT marketplace.

ClubNFT wants to arm collectors with tools to discover, protect and share their NFTs. Its first product will allow users to download the media linked to their NFTs.

At present, while ownership of NFTs can be verified by blockchains such as Ethereum, the images associated with those transactions are liable to go up in smoke if the website that originally produced and hosts them closes.  

“As a first step, we want to solve a major problem: collectors are at the mercy of third parties in backing up their NFT media,” said Bailey, ClubNFT’s CEO. “So, we are providing a free, automated way for collectors to download the media associated with all their NFTs in a single click to ensure that their NFT investments are safe.” 

Galaxy Digital and Galaxy Interactive co-led the seed round, with Red Swan Ventures, CMT Digital, Sfermion, Draper Associates and Richard Entrup all participating.

ClubNFT’s other co-founders are former Google employee Chris King, who is CTO, and former manager of painting and sculpture at MoMa in New York Danielle King, who is the startup’s CFO and COO. 

© 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.

Crypto infrastructure company Alchemy said Thursday it raised $250 million, padding an already hefty venture war chest for building out crypto’s Web3 stack.

“We actually haven’t touched any of the money” from Alchemy’s $80 million Series B, announced in March, said co-founder Joe Lau, “because we’re profitable as a business.”

Thursday’s Series C valued Alchemy, which provides developer services to decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible token (NFT) and other crypto projects, at $3.5 billion.

Alchemy’s behind-the-scenes positioning makes it one of the most prolific rails for crypto infrastructure, though most end-users are unfamiliar with the brand. It focuses on Ethereum, its layers 2s and the Flow blockchain but has plans to stretch further.

Read more: ‘AWS for Blockchains’ Alchemy Closes $80M Funding Round at $505M Valuation

Adding a big backer to Alchemy’s term sheet was as important as stocking extra cash, CEO Nikil Viswanathan said in an interview. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), one of crypto’s most active venture firms – and one that invests in many of the companies Alchemy calls clients – led its Series C.

“We power virtually every NFT [marketplace], we power the majority of DeFi, we power most of the top apps in this space,” Viswanathan said. “Working with a16z is just another extension for us, so that we can see all the early projects get onboarded.”

Read more: Dapper Labs Taps Alchemy to Give Boost to Blockchain Powering NBA Top Shot

Added early investor Paul Veradittakit of Pantera Capital, “Alchemy pioneered the core developer platform that supports the entire blockchain industry.”

Nameless, a company that helps brands launch and manage non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has raised $15 million in a seed round led by Mechanism Capital at a $75 million valuation. Nameless will use the funds to build out its team.

Nameless develops Application Programming Interface (API) software for NFT creation, testing and sales to make it easier for brands to securely integrate NFTs into their platforms. Strategic partnerships and clients of Nameless include Sotheby’s, Snoop Dogg and Gary Vaynerchuk’s VeeFriends.

Other participants in the funding round included Velvet Sea Ventures, Red Beard Ventures, and Delphi Digital, among others. Several investors who participated in Nameless parent Nft42′s seed round earlier this year also joined in, including Sound Ventures and Gary Vaynerchuk’s VaynerFund. Nft42 counts entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and talent manager Guy Oseary among its backers.

“NFTs are revolutionizing digital ownership on a global scale. Whether it’s a single NFT drop or the creation of an entire marketplace, our technology makes things easy, cost effective, and secure,” said Jim McNelis, Founder and CEO of Nameless and Nft42, in a press release.

“We expect the nascent NFT industry to grow into a multi-hundred billion dollar market that disrupts many others along the way including art, gaming, music, fashion, and entertainment,” said Mechanism Capital Partner Marc Weinstein in the release. “We backed nameless because the company’s leadership had the foresight to see this massive wave years before everyone else. They remain ahead of the curve with a bold vision to develop critical infrastructure for all market participants from independent creators to large enterprises and the communities that support them.”

Read more: New Adobe Photoshop Feature to Support NFT Verification on Marketplaces

Crypto exchange operator Coinbase’s mobile app has hit the number one spot on Apple’s U.S. App Store, making it the most downloaded iOS app in the U.S. over the last few days.

This is not the first time Coinbase’s app has hit the top spot. In May, the app reached the same ranking and once in 2017 as well. The recent rankings suggest that crypto fever is currently seeing a lot of mainstream awareness.

Bitcoin is trading above $61,000, and the meme coin Shiba Inu’s (SHIB’s) market capitalization has surpassed that of another meme coin, dogecoin (DOGE).

Amid the bull market, Crypto.com’s iOS app has also become one of the most downloaded apps in the U.S., with the app reaching the fifth spot on Apple’s U.S. App Store.

© 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 government of El Salvador bought 420 more bitcoin ($25.6 million), President Bukele tweeted on Wednesday.

• Bukele said in a series of tweets, “It was a long wait, but worth it. We just bought the dip!” He added that “We’re already making a profit of the bitcoin we just bought.”
• Bitcoin is currently trading at $60,965 and dipped down to around $58,179 on Wednesday.
• Bitcoin officially became legal tender in El Salvador in September, three months after the country’s legislature passed the Bitcoin Law.
• El Salvador’s treasury now holds an estimated 1,120 bitcoin, according to a Reuters report.
• “We have a trust fund accounted in USD, but the trust is funded by both USD and BTC. When the BTC part revalues in comparison to the accounting currency (USD), we are able to withdraw some USD and leave the trust with the same total,” President Bukele said in a tweet.
• In September, Bukele said that the country is taking its first steps to harness massive natural power sources to mine bitcoin. He posted a short video of workers installing a shipping container full of cryptocurrency mining rigs at a geothermal power plant.

Read more: El Salvador’s Bitcoin Wallet Is Used by More Than Half a Million People, President Says