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The Korea Teacher’s Credit Union, which manages $40 billion in assets, plans to start investing in bitcoin next year, according to The Korea Economic Daily.

The credit union won’t be buying bitcoin directly but getting exposure to it via investment products, such as bitcoin ETFs. The plan is to start doing so when the first Korean-based company launches a bitcoin ETF in the first half of 2022.

This will be the first instance of a pension fund in the country investing in bitcoin.

This comes shortly after the first bitcoin ETF was approved in the U.S., with two now live on the market. Currently both of them are based on bitcoin futures, rather than spot trading.

H/T to @iamjosephyoung and @cryptounfolded for highlighting this story.

© 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.

Mastercard and Bakkt are partnering to allow merchants and banks to build cryptocurrency into their offerings, the firms announced Monday. The two plan to also shake up the way consumers can collect loyalty rewards.

Mastercard said in a statement that consumers can buy, sell and hold digital assets through custodial wallets offered by Bakkt, and customers can collect and spend loyalty rewards through cryptocurrency.

The move brings the universe of cryptocurrency one step closer to bridging the gap with the traditional credit card payment industry. Bakkt is also appealing to younger consumers, according to its executive vice president of loyalty rewards and payments.

“As brands and merchants look to appeal to younger consumers and their transaction preferences, these new offerings represent a unique opportunity to satisfy increasing demand for crypto, payment and rewards flexibility,” Bakkt’s Nancy Gordon said in a statement.

Read more: Mastercard to Acquire Crypto Tracing Firm CipherTrace

Last week, American Express CEO Stephen Squeri said he doesn’t currently see crypto as a threat to traditional credit cards.

Bakkt began trading on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this month after a SPAC deal.

The Bakkt-Mastercard tie-up is a continuation of the card company’s recent foray into the crypto sector, following last month’s acquisition of compliance firm CipherTrace.

Chinese crypto venture capital firm Sino Global Capital is launching a $200 million fund, backed by derivatives exchange FTX.

• The news was first reported by The Block early on Monday. Sino Global confirmed the news to CoinDesk in an official statement.
• The fund, dubbed Liquid Value Fund I, is hard-capped at $200 million, the statement said. Most of that has already been committed by partners like FTX, according to The Block.
• Liquid Valve Fund I will invest in DeFi, Web 3.0 and “mass consumer protocols” on Solana and Ethereum ecosystems, and will focus on projects in Asia and particularly India, according to the statement.
• Sino Global’s CEO Matthew Graham tweeted earlier in October that they were looking for interns-to-hire in India.
• Beijing-based Sino Global has invested in over 20 crypto projects according to the statement, including FTX, Solana, Serum and Mask Network.
• Some of the VC’s existing investments will be purchased by the new fund, including LayerZero, Orca and Clearpool, according to the statement.
• It is the first time the VC is accepting outside capital to make investments, according to the statement.
• FTX raised $420 million in a Series B-1 last week, following its $900 million in July.

Read more: FTX Raises $420,690,000

Bitcoin was pushing back up Monday after experiencing a price dip below $60,000 over the weekend, down from the all-time high near $67,000 reached last week.

As of press time the cryptocurrency was up 4% over the last 24 hours, trading around $62,900.

The drop in funding rates is the most notable indicator seen over the weekend, according to Matthew Dibb, chief operating officer at Stack Funds.

“This is extremely bullish given where we are,” said Dibb.

Funding rates across major exchanges were lower over the weekend, making it cheaper for traders to take more long leverage on bitcoin. Funding rates are payments to long or short traders based on the difference between the perpetual contract market and the current price, according to the crypto exchange Binance.

When funding rates drop, it’s generally a sign that there’s less demand from traders for leverage (borrowed funds) to bet on price gains – an indication that the market is becoming less overheated. The lower funding rates also make it cheaper for traders to put on new leveraged positions.

Dibb said he sees the rally continuing from here and that the recent pullback was needed to cool down speculators.

Bitcoin is still down 6% from its all time high reached last week on Oct. 20, at $66,974.77.

VanEck Bitcoin Futures ETF

In contrast to Dibb’s bullish take, Laurent Kssis, director of CEC Capital, an independent crypto financial services firm, thinks a downward trend is more likely around the $50,000 channel before the market starts to appreciate again..

The increase in price comes ahead of the expected launch on Monday of the third bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF), from VanEck, which will trade under the stock ticker XBTF.

ProShares was the first to secure the long-awaited approval of a bitcoin futures ETF by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and started trading last week. Another bitcoin futures ETF, from Valkyrie Investments, launched on Friday.

Alternative cryptocurrencies such as ether (ETH), solana (SOL) and cardano are all up between 1% and 11% on the day.

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© 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.

While Fantom, Harmony, Avalanche and Celo have all launched nine-figure ecosystem development funds, NEAR may be setting a new high water mark with the launch of a mammoth $800 million grants fund.

Announced Monday, the high-speed and self-styled “climate neutral” chain has established the fund with major tranches earmarked for specific purposes, including $250 million in ecosystem grants which will be distributed over four years, a regional fund of $100 million, and $100 million specifically for startups.

Additionally, DeFi is a major focus of the program, with a devoted $350 fund from Proximity Labs. A newly-formed ‘DeFi DAO’ will govern how those funds are spent, and protocols will be able to apply for liquidity mining programs via the DAO. Proximity is a group of early NEAR contributors that spun out of the parent company as an independent entity with funding from the NEAR Foundation.

In an interview with CoinDesk, NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin said that the program has already distributed $45 million in funds this year, with a particular focus on early-stage ecosystem building blocks.

“A lot of the projects so far have been infrastructure,” Polosukhin said. “Croncat allows the ability to send transactions at different times, Cartosis is testing smart contracts – so supporting new programming languages, supporting storage, so a lot of it was, ‘what are the building blocks we need to unlock exponential composability?’”

Earlier in October, ecosystem project Aurora raised $12 million to enable Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) contracts on the NEAR blockchain, what may be the first step towards a full DeFi ecosystem.

Read more: NEAR’s Aurora Raises $12M to Expand Ethereum Layer 2 Network

“Before there was the feeling that you had to pull the ecosystem, but now the ecosystem is pulling you,” Polosukhin said. “Now it’s time for the DeFi money legos spawn.”

OnChain Studios has raised $7.5 million in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) to develop Cryptoys: a new non-fungible token (NFT) platform that combines digital toys and gaming.

Cryptoys are interactive digital toys that consumers can buy, play with, collect and sell. They will launch soon on Flow, a blockchain designed for NFT collectibles and crypto games. Flow was developed by Dapper Labs, which also participated in the funding round alongside Draper & Associates, CoinFund, Sound Ventures, Collab + Currency and WndrCo.

Crytopys can “respond to you in a variety of ways, grow smarter, and can acquire more skills the longer you interact with them,” according to the official website. Consumers can personalize Cryptoys with NFT clothing and accessories, which can be bought or sold, as well as Gems that award new talents and capabilities. Consumers can play with Cryptoys within games, applications and experiences inside the Cryptoverse, a blockchain-based virtual world.

Launched earlier this year, OnChain Studios co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Will Weinraub created the company as a side project for his daughter, who was interested in the blind bag and surprise unboxing trends in the physical toy industry. The other founders are Emilio Cueto, Alfonso Martinez, Freddy Oropeza and Jhonathan Torres, who also fill out OnChain’s executive team.

“Cryptoys is a perfect example of the compelling new NFT gaming and entertainment experiences that are now possible with the advent of web3 – a fully-interactive 3D universe with custom toys for each participant,” said a16z General Partner Arianna Simpson in the press release. “We’re thrilled to partner with the world-class team at OnChain Studios to bring Cryptoys to life and introduce the joys of NFT gaming to mainstream audiences.”

Nigeria’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), the eNaira, is live following an announcement by President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday.

• The official unveiling of the eNaira – designed to complement Nigeria’s physical currency, not replace it – took place Monday having been announced last week.
• The eNaira was developed by fintech company Bitt, whose digital currency management system (DCMS) is also behind the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank’s CBDC.
• Two applications for using the CBDC – eNaira speed wallet and eNaira merchant wallet – are available for download from the Google and Apple app stores.
• The eNaira was originally slated for launch on Oct. 1, but was delayed in deference to the 61st anniversary of Nigerian independence that same day.
• Some 500 million eNaira ($1.21 million) have already been minted, central bank Governor Godwin Emefiele said at the official launch.
• Nigeria’s government and central bank struggled with the rise of cryptocurrency in the country, leading to a ban on crypto transactions within the banking sector in February. Four months later, plans were announced to introduce the eNaira.

Read more: Nigeria’s CBDC: The Good, Bad and Ugly

The ink has dried on an acquisition announced by FTX.US in August, revealing a multipronged approach by the American arm of Sam Bankman-Fried’s trading empire.

Regulated futures exchange LedgerX will now be known as FTX US Derivatives, FTX.US said Monday.

The deal gives the crypto exchange a slew of licenses granted to LedgerX by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. In doing so, FTX.US can offer crypto futures, swaps and options to U.S. retail traders.

“We believe the integration of the two organizations provides us with not only a technological advantage, but also furthers our working relationship with the regulatory community in a positive, constructive and transparent manner,” FTX.US President Brett Harrison said in a statement.

Since August, Harrison’s outfit has rolled out a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace. The parent company also raised a meme-friendly $420 million from 69 investors.

Sino Global Capital, the China-based crypto venture capital firm led by Matthew Graham, has launched a $200 million fund with backing from FTX.

Sharing the news exclusively with The Block on Monday, Sino Global said the fund, Liquid Value Fund I, is close-ended. That means it has a hard cap of $200 million. A “substantial” portion of that amount has already been hard committed by partners like FTX, said Graham.

“We are excited to support the launch of Sino Global Capital’s institutional fund,” said FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. “From the very beginning, Matthew and the Sino Global Capital team supported the FTX vision and then worked with us to help make it a reality. The Fund will now provide more opportunities to projects that are pushing crypto and blockchain technologies to the next level.”

This is the first time Sino Global has accepted outside capital for a fund. Until now, the firm has used proprietary capital to invest in crypto startups. Sino has invested in over 20 crypto projects to date, including Solana, FTX, Serum, and Wintermute.

Some of these investments will be transferred into the new fund, said Graham. These include LayerZero, Clearpool, Orca, and some yet-to-be publicly announced investments.

Solana has been one of the most successful investments of Sino to date. When asked how the firm will replicate that performance for the new fund, Graham said the same “bottom-up” investment approach will be applied to it. “We will be using our same approach of betting on and then working with and supporting entrepreneurs that have similar values of a high-trust and long-term approach to the ecosystem,” he said.

The Liquid Value Fund I will invest across crypto projects, including DeFi and NFT infrastructure, and focus more on the Solana and Ethereum ecosystems.

While the fund will invest globally, its key market focus is Asia, including India. “We see India as an extremely important, yet idiosyncratic, market for crypto,” said Graham, praising the country’s engineering talent.

“We have been active in finding and engaging with the best entrepreneurs in the crypto space in India and will continue to do so aggressively,” he said.

This is despite the lack of crypto regulatory certainty in India. Graham said he remains hopeful and believes that the country’s government will regulate crypto as a commodity.

There are currently 13 people working for Sino Global, and the firm is looking to hire more people for managing the new fund, said Graham.

© 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.