This feature story is available to
subscribers of The Block Daily.
You can continue reading
this Daily feature on The Block.
Go to Source
Author: Ryan Weeks
A cluster of regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicate that Wall Street investment bank JPMorgan is giving its investor clients a way to gain exposure to crypto in the form of public-company stocks involved with digital assets.
The structured product documentation details so-called “Insight Notes Linked to the J.P. Morgan Basket of Companies with Exposure to Cryptocurrency.” The “basket” of companies includes names well-known in the crypto space, including market intelligence firm MicroStrategy, the Jack Dorsey-led payments company Square and PayPal, another payments company that is building support for crypto into its app and earlier this week announced its pending acquisition of crypto security firm Curv.
Other companies in the basket include Riot Blockchain, NVIDIA, AMD, semiconductor giant TSMC (in the form of American depository shares), Intercontinental Exchange, CME Group, Overstock and Silvergate.
JPM stresses in the product description that the exposure provided is not directly tied to any particular cryptocurrency, including bitcoin, and that performance of the notes is not tied to performance in the digital asset market itself. As the documentation explains:
“The notes are designed for investors who seek exposure to the performance of the J.P. Morgan Cryptocurrency Exposure Basket (Mar 2021) of unequally weighted Reference Stocks, which we refer to as the Basket, as reduced by the Basket Deduction of 3.00%. Notwithstanding the name of the Basket, the notes do not provide direct exposure to cryptocurrencies and the performance of the Basket may not be correlated with the price of any particular cryptocurrency, such as bitcoin.”
Per the documentation, the notes carry a pricing date of March 26, an original issue date of “on or about March 31, 2021” with observation and maturity dates on May 2, 2022 and May 5, 2020, respectively.
The existence of the structured product is perhaps another sign that demand among the Wall Street clientele for any kind of exposure to crypto, albeit indirect, is ascendant. A digital asset executive for Goldman Sachs recently spoke to this degree of investor interest around the asset class during a recent podcast appearance.
The developments come soon after JPMorgan distributed an educational deck to clients to help them understand the basics, risks and potential of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. The distribution took place in February, as previously reported.
© 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.
Go to Source
Author: Michael McSweeney
The decentralized finance exchange DODO announced Tuesday that attackers stole $3.8 million by exploiting bugs in DODO’s V2 Crowdpools smart contracts.
There were two seemingly independent agents in this attack, which is different from the typical solitary attacker seen in major exploits like Harvest Finance or KuCoin.
Ultimately, a total of $3.8 million was stolen from DODO. According to an update, the exchange recovered $1.89 million, comprised of about 1,140,000 USDT and 411 ETH, and plans to return the funds to affected parties.
The first actor, who DODO calls “Individual A,” essentially created counterfeit DODO tokens and exchanged them for real ones through the smart contract bug. After the hack, Individual A contacted prominent white-hat hacker @samszsun from Paradigm to help return the stolen funds to DODO. A white-hat hacker is someone who hacks a protocol to expose weaknesses and help strengthen the system rather than to merely gain a profit.
“Individual B,” who performed three exploits on the smart contract 10 minutes after Individual A, is a suspected bot based on their actions, such as using CHI gastokens, prefixing their contact address with numerous 0’s, and setting unusually high gas prices. It is unclear whether Individual B will return funds to the decentralized exchange.
DODO, which had a total valuation of $50 million by last September, says trading and DODO-approved wallet addresses remain unaffected by the exploits.
© 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.
Go to Source
Author: MK Manoylov
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will give all the proceeds from his minted tweet auction to charity, he announced on Tuesday.
His announcement follows the revelation that the first-ever published tweet was turned into a non-fungible token (NFT) and put up for sale on a service hosted by crypto startup Cent. Cent is a service built on the Ethereum blockchain that allows users to mint, sell and bid on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of tweets.
The highest bid for the NFT is currently at $2.5 million, placed by @sinaEstavi.
Ending this March 21st
Will immediately convert proceeds to #Bitcoin
And send to @GiveDirectly Africa Response
— jack (@jack) March 9, 2021
The auction will end on March 21, after which Dorsey said he will immediately convert the proceeds to Bitcoin. He said he plans to donate the proceeds to GiveDirectly, a non-profit organization operating in East Africa which helps families living in extreme poverty.
© 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.
Go to Source
Author: Saniya More
The market for non-fungible tokens and digital collectibles has been growing at a breakneck pace, with projects like Dapper Lab’s NBA Top Shot seeing user activity and transaction volumes soar.
Since the beginning of the year, the burgeoning market — which runs the gamut of sports collectibles to digital cats — has seen more than half a billion in weekly trade volumes, according to data compiled by The Block.
On this episode of The Scoop, Gary Vaynerchuk — the Internet personality, entrepreneur, and CEO of VaynerMedia—broke down what’s taking place beyond the hype and why he thinks NFTs are going to be the internet’s next big thing after the development of social media.
Vaynerchuk is best known for his angel investments in tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, Venmo, and Uber.
© 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.
Go to Source
Author: Frank Chaparro
Zhongjia Bochuang (ZJBC), a Chinese ICT company listed in Shenzhen with a $900 million market cap, is scaling up its bitcoin mining investments.
The firm said in a statement Tuesday that it has signed a partnership with Shenzhen-based manufacturer MicroBT. ZJBC plans to invest up to 1 billion yuan ($155 million) in MicroBT’s WhatsMiner bitcoin mining equipment over the next two years.
“The scale for the first year will be no less than 20,000 units with the first batch to be delivered by May 2021 with no less than 2,000 units,” ZJBC said in the statement.
Founded in 1997, ZJBC is one of the first Chinese companies that stepped into the telecommunication field and now focuses on ICT and financial services.
While MicroBT told The Block that the plan is in the form of a memorandum of understanding, it nonetheless shows how yet another Chinese firm with backing from state-owned capital has become increasingly public about its bitcoin investments. Based on ZJBC’s corporate filing with the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, about 2.8% of the firm’s equity is connected to Chinese state capital.
On Sunday, Hong Kong-listed Chinese beauty retouching apps maker Meitu said it purchased $40 million in bitcoin and ether as part of its treasury management. In December, Chinese online lottery platform 500.com disclosed its pivot into the bitcoin mining space after having quietly scaled up bitcoin mining farm businesses since early 2019.
But ZJBC’s scaling plan is also not entirely surprising given the firm’s existing investment in the bitcoin mining space. What’s more, its chairman – legendary entrepreneur Wu Ying – is already an angel investor in MicroBT through his investment fund.
According to ZJBC’s official responses to shareholder questions posted on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the company said on October 28, 2019, that its chairman is one of the main investors in MicroBT and the firm has been profiting from bitcoin mining farm businesses in Sichuan since 2018.
“Our fully-owned subsidiary Changshi Telecommunication has been involved in building and maintaining blockchain computing facilities since 2018 and brought in over 50 million yuan [$7.6 million] in revenue in 2018 already,” ZJBC told shareholders at the time.
Based on ZJBC’s 2018 revenue breakdown, the Changshi subsidiary generated $276 million worth of income, with 2.76% of it coming from mining farm businesses. For the first six months of 2020, Changshi brought in revenue of about $92 million for ZJBC, which, as of June 30, had 735 million yuan ($112 million) held in cash reserves.
To those who are old enough to have witnessed China’s technology boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Wu Ying’s name should ring a bell – at least a remote one – and so should the “Little Smart” device made by UTStarcom.
ZJBC’s chairman Wu, who is regarded as the father of “Little Smart,” co-founded Starcom in 1991 after studying in the U.S. in the 1980s and working for Nokia Bell Labs. Starcom merged with Unitech in 1995 to focus on the telecommunication business.
Around 1996, UTStarcom launched “Little Smart” in China, a handheld phone not based on mobile networks used today but on the so-called Personal Handy-phone System, or PHS technology.
After UTStar went public on NASDAQ in 2000, the success of Little Smart in China – which by the end of 2006 had nearly 100 million users – brought the firm as much as $2.5 billion in annual revenue at its peak. But the evolving technology of mobile cellular networks eroded the market shares of Little Smart, which was shuttered by Chinese regulators in the early 2010s.
© 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.
Go to Source
Author: Wolfie Zhao
The Taiwan New Taipei District Prosecutors Office has launched an investigation into bitcoin mining hardware maker Bitmain’s human resources conduct in the region.
According to Taiwan’s Central News Agency on Tuesday, the prosecutor inspected seven offices of two locally incorporated companies that have direct relationships with Beijing-based Bitmain, as well as 19 Taiwanese executives who are associated with these companies.
The investigation focused on whether these companies violated laws by disguising their ties with a mainland Chinese company but poaching local talent in Taiwan’s semiconductor industry.
The semiconductor industry – fab or fabless – is critical to the Taiwanese economy and is under local intellectual property protection.
During the Tuesday inspection, the prosecutor reportedly probed various corporate materials including company books, employee contracts, job offers, confidentiality agreements, employee roasters, computer logs and mobile phones.
The local report said that the prosecutor’s investigation showed that Bitmain incorporated two directly owned subsidiaries in Taiwan specifically in the chip business.
Further, the report said the prosecutor found Bitmain poached several hundred engineers over the past three years via these local subsidiaries from major bluechip companies like TSMC and MediaTek, with offers that could double their previous paychecks.
According to local laws, mainland Chinese companies or individuals can not invest in semiconductor businesses or set up subsidiaries in the sector in Taiwan.
In addition, any mainland Chinese company or individual that wants to set up businesses in Taiwan must obtain written approval from Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Bitmain has not responded to The Block’s request for comment.
© 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.
Go to Source
Author: Wolfie Zhao
A group of lawmakers on the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee has filed legislation that, if approved, would lead to a digital asset working group led by a pair of key U.S. regulators.
The bill directs the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to jointly establish a working group on digital assets to support innovation. The group would be composed of representatives of the two commissions and nongovernmental stakeholders appointed by the regulators, like members of firms that utilize, produce or research emerging technologies.
The working group would be charged with submitting an analysis of the U.S. legal and regulatory framework for digital assets to the CFTC and SEC within a year of formation. After submitting this analysis, the working group would be disbanded. The chairs of the two commissions could jointly extend another year. In that case, the working group would submit an amended report.
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) introduced the bill calling for such a move on Monday. Four other members co-sponsored the bill with McHenry. Reps. Tedd Budd (R-NC) and Warren Davidson (R-OH) have long taken an interest in blockchain technology, supporting Davidson’s Token Taxonomy Act.
Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) has also shown a growing interest in digital assets, focusing on bank licensing and stablecoins. He co-sponsored the STABLE Act, for example.
© 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.
Go to Source
Author: Aislinn Keely
NFL star player Rob Gronkowski, popularly known as “Gronk,” is launching his own non-fungible token (NFT) collection.
The NFT collection, which celebrates the player’s four Super Bowl championships, will feature five different trading cards, according to a press release shared with The Block.
The trading cards were designed by one of Gronkowski’s favorite artists, Black Madre. According to the release, the “crown jewel” of the collection is the 1-of-1 Rob Gronkowski Career Highlight Refractor Card. This card commemorates all four of Gronkowski’s Super Bowl Championships and is digitally signed by the player. The highest bidder will also have the chance to meet Gronkowski in person and attend a game as his guest
The collection auction will be hosted on NFT marketplace OpenSea starting at 7 PM EST on March 11.
According to media representatives, Gronkowski was the “visionary” behind the project and was involved in the creative process.
“With the rapid success of NFT’s across platforms like NBA Topshop and OpenSea, I wanted to take the business into my own hands and be the first professional athlete to launch my own NFT collection,” Gronkowski said in a statement. “Now fans will be able to get a piece of the action and share these iconic Super Bowl moments with me in this all new digital format with my Championship Series NFT.”
Bidders will be required to pay in the form of ETH, the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network. The auction will end on March 13.
As The Block Research recently noted, the NFT market as a whole has seen an uptick in activity on the back of hype and specific activities among artists and technology. Taco Bell’s recent foray into NFTs was one recent example of this trend.
Editorial image credit: lev radin / Shutterstock.com
© 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.
Go to Source
Author: Saniya More
Crypto investment firm Digital Currency Group has hired a veteran of the financial services world as its first-ever chief financial officer.
The firm said Tuesday that it hired Michael Kraines from Trading Technologies. Kraines, whose career on Wall Street includes more than 25 years in investment banking at Sandler O’Neill + Partners and Wasserstein Perella & Co, will lead DCG’s capital markets activity, ranging from raises to mergers and acquisitions.
“Given its leading role in the development of valuable crypto offerings across the financial services ecosystem, I am delighted to join DCG to help accelerate its growth and positive impact on the industry,” Kraines said in a press statement. “I also look forward to increasing the opportunity for DCG to foster a deeper series of conversations regarding the future of crypto across the institutional community.”
Kraines left Chicago-based Trading Technologies last month, shortly after its CEO, Rick Lane, announced his departure. The firm was reportedly in talks to be acquired by investment bank Goldman Sachs late last year before the prospective deal ultimately fell through. Kraines is also a board member at YCharts and crypto exchange CoinFLEX.
Based in Connecticut, DCG is the parent company of investment company Grayscale, trading firm Genesis Global Trading, and media outlet CoinDesk.
DCG’s hire of a chief financial officer comes amid an especially active period for crypto M&A. On Monday, payments giant PayPal confirmed it had acquired custodial services firm Curv in a deal reportedly valued at approximately $200 million. Earlier in the year, Coinbase, which could go public this spring at a near-$100 billion valuation, announced its acquisition of Bison Trails.
Eric Risley, managing partner for Architect Partners, expects M&A activity will continue to grow in 2021, noting in an email to The Block that “the first two months suggests we’re on track to double transaction volume.”
Last year, DCG made headlines for two acquisitions after it bought custodial service Vo1t and crypto exchange Luno.
“We will continue to be opportunistic and expect to ramp up our M&A activities at both the DCG and subsidiary level,” a DCG spokesperson 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.
Go to Source
Author: Frank Chaparro
20
20
20
20