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In just 3 years LMAX Digital has established itself as the No.1 institutional crypto exchange. Leveraging LMAX Group liquidity relationships and ultra-low latency technology, we’ve been at the forefront of helping move crypto into the mainstream since 2018 – ultimately creating the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading and custodial services.

• Over $400 billion of crypto traded since launch
• 450 institutional investors now trading on LMAX Digital globally (US, Europe, Asia)
• Record daily volume of $6.6 billion registered on 19 May 2021
• $2.5 billion Average Daily Volumes (ADV); 10x growth (May’21 vs May’20)
• 100% exchange uptime

Offering global institutions a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, the deepest pool of crypto liquidity and robust, familiar trading infrastructure.

• Central limit order book: streaming institutional limit order liquidity only
• Access: FIX 4.2/4.4, API, ITCH, web GUI & mobile
• Full custody solution: safe, secure, offline multi-sig. cold wallets and vault storage

And as a primary price discovery venue, LMAX Digital streams real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms, enhancing the quality of market information to investors worldwide.

LMAX Digital: secure, liquid, trusted crypto trading & custodial services. Regulated by the GFSC.

© 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.

British banking giant Standard Chartered is set to launch an institutional crypto brokerage and exchange for European clients.

To that end, Standard Chartered’s innovation and ventures unit SC Ventures has partnered with BC Group, the parent company of the Hong Kong-regulated crypto exchange OSL.

SC Ventures and BC Group will set up a joint venture to connect institutional traders to counterparties and let them trade in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether. The joint venture aims to launch in the fourth quarter of 2021, subject to regulatory approvals.

Usman Ahmad, the chief information officer of BC Group, will be the CEO of the new entity. Nick Philpott, executive director and head of market structure at Standard Chartered will be COO of the joint venture.

“We have a strong conviction that digital assets are here to stay and will be adopted by the institutional market as a highly relevant asset class,” said Alex Manson, head of SC Ventures. “The new company will provide a brokerage and exchange platform to enable safe adoption and trading by the world’s largest and most demanding investors.”

SC Ventures is also in the process of launching an institutional crypto custody service, Zodia Custody. For that initiative, SC Ventures partnered with Northern Trust last December.

SC Ventures has also invested in blockchain firm Metaco and is collaborating with the Bank of Thailand and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to explore distributed ledger interoperability for cross-border fund transfers.

© 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.

Beijing, China’s capital city, is set to give away 40 million yuan (around $6.3 million) in its latest digital currency test.

Announcing the news on Tuesday, the Beijing Local Financial Supervision and Administration Bureau said it will give away 200,000 red envelopes, containing 200 digital yuan (around $31) each, to local residents.

Residents willing to participate in the lottery will have to register through apps of the Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. The deadline to register is June 7.

This is Beijing’s second giveaway. In February, the city distributed 10 million digital yuan (worth about $1.5 million at the time) to 50,000 local residents. Beijing eventually plans to use digital yuan in the 2022 Winter Olympics.

To date, China has conducted 10 digital yuan lottery campaigns across 5 cities, according to The Block’s calculations. Those campaigns started in October 2020, and a total of 230 million digital yuan (worth around $36 million) has been given away.

Specifically, Shenzhen and Suzhou have each conducted three giveaway campaigns. Beijing is currently going through its second run while Chengdu and Changsha have each completed their first trial.

China has more than doubled the total giveaway amount in digital yuan tests in recent months. As of February, that amount was $17 million across three cities.

China started researching and developing digital yuan in 2014 and is yet to announce an official launch date. But it is much ahead of other major economies, which are still exploring the idea of a digital currency, including the U.S. and the U.K.

© 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.

Binance-backed Indonesian crypto exchange Tokocrypto is looking to go public in the next two to three years.

Tokocrypto CEO Pang Xue Kai told Nikkei-owned DealStreetAsia that the exchange operator is already profitable, but before public listing, it has to be profitable for at least more than two years. Thus, an initial public offering or IPO is still two to three years down the road, said Kai.

In the meanwhile, Tokocrypto is aiming to grow its business, expand its operations to more parts of Indonesia and make crypto mainstream in the country, according to Kai.

Binance acquired a controlling stake in Tokocrypto last year. Founded in 2018, Tokocrypto is regulated by Indonesia’s commodity futures trading regulator, Bappebti. Earlier this year, Tokocrypto launched its token offering via Binance and raised $7.5 million by issuing its native token TKO at $0.1, according to tracker Cryptorank. One TKO is currently priced at around $2, according to CoinGecko.

In separate news, Digital Currency Group-owned crypto exchange Luno is also reportedly looking to enter Indonesia. “Two people familiar with the development” told DealStreetAsia that Luno is in early-stage talks with conglomerate Lippo Group to set up a joint venture to start operations in the country. Luno is currently based in London and has a regional presence in Singapore and Cape Town, South Africa.

Trading cryptocurrencies is legal in Indonesia, though they are banned as a payment method in the country. The government of Indonesia recently said it is also planning to tax profit on crypto trades.

© 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.

Jeff Currie, Head of Commodities Research for Goldman Sachs, says the “digital gold” narrative for crypto assets doesn’t fit — crypto is more like digital copper, in his view.

During an interview with CNBC Tuesday, Currie said the risk that comes with cryptocurrencies means their value is different from that of safe-haven assets like gold, even though both are something of a hedge against inflation.

“The digital currencies, they’re not substitutes to gold,” he said. “If anything they’d be a substitute to copper, and I argue that because they’re pro-risk.”

Bitcoin is correlated to the business cycle, according to Currie, since it’s linked to an underlying payment structure. For that reason, it’s a better substitute for “risk-on inflation hedges.”

These types of inflation hedges, which include copper and oil, hedge against “good inflation,” according to Currie, which results from increased demand. Gold, in comparison, hedges against “bad inflation” which results from a change in supply. 

© 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.

Dogecoin, the popular and volatile meme-themed cryptocurrency, is headed to Coinbase’s pro-oriented crypto exchange.

In a Tuesday blog post, Coinbase said it was allowing DOGE account transfers starting June 1 with an eye to go live, provided sufficient liquidity exists, on June 3. 

“Support for DOGE will generally be available in Coinbase’s supported jurisdictions. Trading will begin on or after 9AM Pacific Time (PT) Thursday June 3, if liquidity conditions are met,” Coinbase said in the post.

The move comes several weeks after Coinbase executives signaled that the exchange firm would add support for dogecoin, which saw eye-popping price moves in May. Dogecoin’s price has fallen since it rose above $0.70 — a development that came after significant media attention around the support given by the likes of Elon Musk and other prominent investors, as well as the enthusiasm for the cryptocurrency among younger investors on platforms like TikTok.

At press time, DOGE is trading at $0.34. 

© 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.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols built on Ethereum produced all-time high revenues in May, according to data compiled by The Block. 

Taking the top spot for the month was Uniswap, reaching $153.9 million (41.4%) of the $371.6 million total monthly DeFi protocol revenue. Sushiswap had the next largest portion at 20.3%, followed by Aave at 16.6%. 

As expected, much of the revenue went to the supply-side — that is, those providing liquidity to the protocols.

More broadly, Ethereum also saw record-breaking metrics, as noted by The Block Research’s report breaking down May by the numbers. These include record-breaking revenue figures for miners as well as overall on-chain activity on the network. 

© 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.

An upstart crypto project is looking to add a bit more trust to the generally “trustless” market for decentralized finance. 

ARCx revealed its new “DeFi Passport” Tuesday. With the DeFi Passport, users can leverage their on-chain activity to prove their creditworthiness and thus qualify for additional benefits across various crypto protocols — similar to how high credit scores can help investors clinch lower rates. 

The project has clinched the backing of a number of big investors in the crypto market, including Dragonfly Capital and Scalar Capital. Those crypto funds poured $1.3 million in a recent round for the firm alongside LedgerPrime. To date, the project has raised $8.2 million. 

A user’s passport score will be based on a scale from 0 to 999, with the 999 score “being the most lucrative,” according to a press release. 

In an interview with The Block, ARCx founder Kerman Kohli said that projects can leverage the product to offer high score DeFi-era higher allocations or more leverage. “You can create a yield farming strategy that only targets users with the highest score,” he said. 

“The vision moving forward is to make the ARCx DeFi Passport and Credit Score a key lego-block within Decentralized Finance,” the release added. “Beyond the initial proof of concept with the ARCx Credit Score, the opportunities for pseudonymous profiling and scoring of identities based on on-chain activity in a decentralized manner are endless.”

© 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.

Data for the month of May shows that on-chain transaction volume and mining revenue figures for Ethereum hit all-time highs. 

The monthly mining revenue figure hit $2.35 billion, an increase in total revenue by 42.4% compared to April. Ethereum miner transaction fees also broke past $1 billion for the first time in May, increasing 43.9% from April to reach $1.03 billion. 

The revenue figure was buoyed by ETH hitting an all-time high price last month above $4,300. At press time, the price of ETH is about $2,570, per Coinbase.

The adjusted on-chain volume figure surged to a high of $666 billion, representing a 92.7% increase from April. 

As noted by The Block’s Lars Hoffmann in his by-the-numbers research report, May represented the first time that the on-chain volume figure for Ethereum surpassed that of bitcoin. Bitcoin’s on-chain volume declined by 8.9% in May, falling from $446.9 billion in April to $407.3 billion.

© 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

• Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest currently holds over 4 million shares of Coinbase stock.
• Here’s why Ark is so bullish on the stock despite the steep price declines since its debut.

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