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Ethereum-based crypto lending startup Notional Finance has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round led by Pantera Capital, according to a Thursday announcement.

The funding round included participation from Parafi Capital, 1Confirmation, Spartan Group and more. The influx of capital will be used to hire finance and technology professionals and continue to expand the team developing the protocol. 

Notional is a decentralized Ethereum-based protocol for borrowing and lending at fixed rates. The protocol launched earlier this year. According to the release, the protocol has over $17 million in total locked value (TVL) and has executed $9.5 million in loans. 

The team behind the protocol is currently working on Notional v2 and said the funds will be used to continue developing the protocol’s next iteration. 

“This fundraise helps us put the right team in place to make it happen and build high-quality products that meet the demands of a new financial system,” the announcement read. 

Notional’s Series A round is the latest in a string of fundraises for crypto startups focus on lending in the decentralized finance space. These include Greenwood, Element Finance and Liquity, all of which have raised funding rounds in the past month. 

© 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.

Socios, a firm building crypto infrastructure geared towards sports fans, is expanding its offerings to the U.S. The firm is starting with hockey, announcing a marketing partnership today with the New Jersey Devils.

Socios has thus far enabled European soccer teams to directly engage with their supporters via fan tokens. The firm has brought fan tokens, which allow supporters to cast votes for certain club decisions, to clubs like Juventus and FC Barcelona among others. 

Though it’s mostly focused on bringing crypto infrastructure to European soccer teams and fighting leagues like UFC and PFL, it’s now looking to expand to the U.S. The firm is opening a New York headquarters and looking to invest at least $50 million in partnerships with major U.S. sports leagues.

In the meantime, Socios is starting with an NHL marketing partnership to create a presence in the Tri-State area, according to CEO Alexandre Dreyfus. The firm has partnered with the New Jersey Devils as its first stateside commitment with a U.S. pro-sports franchise.

“Given the power and influence of the Tri-State Region, the dynamic engagement rates of the New Jersey Devils fanbase, and the forthcoming installation of a regional headquarters for Socios.com; we felt this team was the natural launchpad for our U.S.-focused endeavors,” said Dreyfus in the announcement.

To be sure, it’s only a marketing partnership. The Devils have not yet signed on to utilize Socios’ blockchain technology or issue fan tokens. The main addition is that Socios’ branding will be displayed as virtual glass signage for all home and away games broadcast by MSG Network for the rest of the season.

Still, this is a first step, according to Dreyfus. Socios is already in talks with other franchises across the U.S.

“We’re working on dozens more partnerships with teams and franchises from a wide number of sports and look forward to greatly increasing our presence in the US and globally throughout 2021.”

© 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.

CME Group execs discussed the firm’s bitcoin futures offerings during an earnings call on Wednesday, with next week’s expected launch of micro bitcoin futures predicted to open the door to a potentially wider customer base.

According to a published transcript, CME brought in $4.7 million in revenue from its bitcoin futures offering. Senior managing director Sean Tully remarked that “if you look at our first quarter of this year, the revenue was higher than the entirety of last year, and it was about $4.7 million in the first quarter. So it was a positive and for the first time, much stronger than in the past.”

Yet he went on to note that despite the product’s success, its characteristics limit the number of customers who are able to interact with its bitcoin futures.

“It’s 5 Bitcoins,” said Tully. “And the margin requirements run typically more than $105,000 per contract. Obviously, that is extremely restrictive in terms of the number of participants and the types of participants who can be involved in that.” 

Pointing to the micro bitcoin futures, expected to launch on May 3, Tully remarked:

“With the new micro Bitcoin, it’s going to be 1/50 of the size. The micro Bitcoin future will have approximately $2,000 margin. So you can see how that opens up a much wider potential customer base for that product. In addition to that, while the notional size of that product is 1/50, the size of the large contract, it’s at 1/10 of a Bitcoin, the rack rate fees are 1/2 of our existing Bitcoin futures. So we’re looking forward to that launch. In addition to that, the fees relative to other exchanges will be significantly lower even at that fee rate. So we’re looking forward to that launch.”

The official CME fact sheet for the micro bitcoin futures can be found here.

© 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’s chief executive discussed the payments firm’s ambitions in the area of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) during a Thursday earnings call.

Though the company has long been clear about its interest in serving as a private-sector partner for CBDCs — Mastercard unveiled a testing environment platform for central banks last fall — CEO Michael Miebach’s comments, according to a transcript, added a new degree of specificity and suggested that this work could extend beyond the realm of payments.

“Specifically in CBDCs, I would describe it as relatively early days,” he said in response to a question about Mastercard’s efforts in this area, going on to note that “where we see our role to start with is to answer the question as you just asked, in partnership with governments, is what is the right construct.”

Miebach highlighted how some central banks have envisioned a “two-tier system” involving both public and private sector entities, including banks and payments firms. The question, according to Miebach, is “what else could it do other than facilitating a payment.”

Referencing the CBDC project undertaken in the Bahamas, Miebach said:

“There’s this last mile issue but there’s also, then, the questions of what other applications can ride on this infrastructure. As you heard us talking about, in the context of real-time payments, our go-to-market is always underlying infrastructure, application services. And we intend to do the same thing here. And that is, what is an application that could ride on top of this, it could be a smart trade contract.”

As previously reported by The Block, Mastercard has previously outlined a multi-pronged strategy when it comes to digital currencies, including direct support for stablecoins. 

© 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.

Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange Coinbase now allows customers in the U.S. to buy cryptocurrencies using PayPal.

The development means debit cards and bank accounts linked to PayPal can now be used to buy crypto on Coinbase. PayPal-linked credit cards and e-checks cannot be used, said Coinbase.

Until now, customers in the U.S. could buy crypto with a connected bank account via ACH or wire transfer, a debit card, and funds in their Coinbase USD wallet.

The addition of PayPal in payment methods makes crypto purchasing faster and simpler, said Coinbase, adding that users can “instantly” fund crypto purchases with PayPal.

The limit to purchase crypto through PayPal is up to $25,000 a day, and Coinbase charges 3.99% fees. Depositing USD from PayPal into Coinbase costs 2.5% fees.

While the option is currently only available for U.S. users, Coinbase said it would support more countries “in the coming months.”

Coinbase already supports cash withdrawals to PayPal in the U.S., Canada, EU, 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.

On Thursday, financial services firm Fidelity Investments announced SherlockSM, a digital asset data and analytics tool geared toward institutional investors.

Users can see data from blockchain, development ecosystem, market, and social media, then use this information for modeling and back-testing purposes off the platform. 

“We’ve heard from institutional investors that there’s still a need for a comprehensive and accessible data solution,” said Kevin Vora, Vice President of Product Management at the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology. “That’s what we’re introducing with Sherlock — robust and insightful datasets paired with highly intuitive tools to help clients make data-driven digital asset investment decisions.”

In 2019, a Fidelity survey found that nearly half of questioned institutional investors were interested in including digital assets in their portfolios. The company began offering bitcoin custody services to its clients that same year.

With that “incredibly successful” custody business, according to the firm’s CEO Abigail Johnson, the new tool could provide another way to service its bitcoin-enthusiastic institutional clients.

© 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

• Low-volatility tokens are loosely pegged to a certain price band in the near term, but their price can drift over time with their ever-changing target price determined by algorithms
• Reflexer, Float Protocol, and Olympus DAO are some of the notable examples of low-volatility tokens that borrow a lot of features from existing decentralized and algorithmic stablecoins
• These tokens need to generate organic demand regardless of their underlying algorithms that dampen short-term price volatility

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members of The Block Genesis.
You can continue reading
this Genesis research on The Block.

German stock exchange operator Deutsche Borse and Commerzbank, the lender, have invested in a new fintech firm named 360X that aims to create digital asset marketplaces.

Deutsche Borse has invested €10 million for a stake of nearly 50% in 360X’s holding company, while Commerzbank holds a significantly lower double-digit stake, according to a Deutsche Borse spokesperson. The remaining shares in the company are held by its founders and private investors.

360X will initially focus on supporting art and real estate investments, with debut transactions in each asset class scheduled for later this year. Further asset classes are expected to be added in due course.

A spokesperson for Deutsche Borse told The Block that, as part of 360X’s strategy to build new marketplaces and ecosystems for existing assets, “it is aimed at supporting the trading of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs).“ 

Carlo Kölzer, founder and CEO of 360X, said in a statement that art and real estate were selected because they have historically proven illiquid investment markets.

“Our mantra is ‘making things investable – bridging the gap between asset classes and capital markets’. We create transparent and liquid trading venues for assets that have not yet existed in digital markets,“ he said.

Kölzer and his colleagues founded another firm named 360T, an electronic foreign exchange trading platform, in Frankfurt in 2000.

Deutsche Borse and Commerzbank have been experimenting with blockchain technology since 2019 when the pair executed a joint transaction on distributed ledger technology for the first time.

© 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.

Bitcoin mining firm Genesis Digital Assets has ordered $93.63 million worth of new machines from Canaan.

The order is for Canaan’s latest AvalonMiner A1246 model, which produces a hashrate of 90 tera hashes per second (TH/s). It is not clear when the order will be dispatched as there is already a global chip shortage. Canaan declined to comment when contacted.

When shipped and deployed, the machines will help Genesis add 117 megawatts (MW) of bitcoin computing capacity to its existing 140MW power, according to Canaan.

Founded in 2013, Genesis claims to have a 1.2% share of bitcoin’s global mining hashrate. The firm says it has brought over 250,000 miners online and mined over $1 billion in bitcoin since inception. Genesis Digital Assets is part of Genesis Mining that was spun off into a separate entity earlier this week.

As for Nasdaq-listed Canaan, the order appears to be one of its largest. Its rival Bitmain, on the other hand, has seen orders worth millions of dollars in recent months.

Earlier this week, for instance, Core Scientific ordered 112,800 bitcoin mining machines from Bitmain. That order alone is reportedly estimated at worth more than $400 million.

Bitcoin mining firms continue to order and purchase new machines to expand their capacity amid the bull market. The monthly revenue of bitcoin miners also reached an all-time high in March. According to data compiled by The Block, bitcoin miners made a total of $1.75 billion in revenue in March.

© 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.

“You have to make hay while the sun is shining.”

Chad Cascarilla, CEO and founder of Paxos, has had a lot of time to think about hay while staying in rural, upstate New York during the coronavirus pandemic. 

He used the analogy to describe why his firm has raised a $300 million Series D fundraising round. The firm, which announced a Series C just a few months ago, said Thursday the latest round was led by Oak HC/FT with participation from previous investors such as Declaration Partners, PayPal Ventures, and the Peter Thiel-cofounded Mithril Capital, among others. The fundraise values Paxos at $2.4 billion.

In an interview with The Block, Carscarilla cited the company’s existing performance and opportunities as to why it’s raising more money now. It’s not so much price-based, but rather tied to the number of inbounds it is getting from large potential clients. The firm—known for powering the crypto trading offering for PayPal and Venmo—has several similarly sized clients it is engaging with seriously, according to Cascarilla, who cut his teeth as a hedge fund executive during the financial crisis. 

“We want to be able to invest in the team and the platform” he said. “Those clients want to make sure we are well-capitalized. These are the things we want to take advantage of in that window of opportunity.”

Cascarilla spoke ambitiously about Paxos’ recent growth. “We thought we could add one customer the size of PayPal this year. I think we can add three to five,” he told The Block.

Paxos announced in October that it would power the back-end of PayPal’s crypto offering, providing the liquidity and regulatory capabilities for crypto buys and sells. While Paxos’ native exchange itBit has sat on the lower end of crypto exchange rankings, it has seen significant growth since it stuck the deal. And new deals could lead to further growth. 

Paxos thinks its regulatory approach to the crypto market will serve as a differentiator for would-be clients. Indeed, Paxos became the third crypto firm to nab a trust license from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency last week. 

Elsewhere, Paxos continues to wait for full clearance from the Securities and Exchange Commission to operate as a clearing agency. It was granted the go-ahead to clear stocks on the blockchain via a no-action relief from the agency. 

That blockchain-based settlement business, though not a money-maker today, could be the long-term business play that proves to be a boon for deep-pocketed investors, according to Cascarilla. 

“Crypto is a $2 trillion market,” he said. “But there is $70 trillion in market cap elsewhere and being able to operate in tokenizing real-world assets is part of our mission.”

© 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.