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Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is encouraging the Federal Reserve to take a closer look at a possible digital dollar.

In a March 1 letter to Chair Jerome Powell and Governor Lael Brainard, Brown said he strongly supports the central bank’s study of central bank digital currency (CBDC).

“The Federal Reserve must lead the way on CBDCs and other digital payments, just as the Federal Reserve has done in moving forward with its faster payments system, FedNow,” read Brown’s letter. 

The letter, dated March 1, warns that private actors and other nations are attempting to dominate the payment system, meaning the Fed must move swiftly to avoid being “left behind.”

It also points to companies’ recent bitcoin purchases as a sign of the times. Brown said bitcoin and other “non-sovereign crypto assets” pose monetary policy and climate risks.

“They are highly volatile and speculative, can be used for illegal activity, and consume incredible amounts of energy, driving up electricity use rates, and putting the resilience of local grids at risk,” said the letter. 

Brown also pointed to Facebook’s Libra, now renamed Diem, as a possible threat to the regulatory regime. Regulating private actors is not enough to curb the threat, according to Brown. 

“But the Fed must not stop at regulating a privately-issued digital currency,” said his letter. “It must go further and explore a publicly issued digital dollar.”

Brown also reiterated Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s digital dollar sentiments. Yellen recently said a CBDC could further financial inclusion in America despite her concerns about other digital assets. 

Last year, Brown put forth a digital dollar bill in the Senate to advance the issue. The Banking for All Act would issue a digital wallet called a “FedAccount” to residents. Government payouts would be deposited to these accounts in digital dollars, and residents could use them for basic banking purposes, like direct deposit, withdrawal and payments. 

© 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.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has minted the first tweet ever posted on the social media platform on Ethereum-run service, Cent. 

Published by Dorsey on March 21, 2006, the tweet, which reads “just setting up my twttr,” has already received a bid for $88,888.88 by a user called “@Crypto888crypto.” 

Cent is a service built on the Ethereum blockchain that allows users to mint, sell and bid on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of tweets.

© 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.

Non-fungible token (NFT) platform Curio has raised $1.2 million in a seed round.

The seed round was led by early-stage venture capital firm Future Perfect Ventures, with participation from A195 Capital, LongHash Ventures, MoonWhale Ventures, as well as former Time Inc. CEO and Fox Entertainment executive Rich Battista.

Curio, which allows brands and content owners to create digital fan experiences and collectibles, plans to use the cash influx to expand its team and operations, as well as further develop its technology and partner integrations that “enable fans to engage in a more modern way around the content and entertainment brands they love,” according to the press release. 

The platform also plans to integrate with payment protocols Filecoin and Polygon to “enhance the functionality” of the platform for brands that want to create non-fungible tokens. 

“Curio is on a mission to usher in the future of fandom, providing deeper emotional connections with their biggest fans,” said Curio CEO Juan M. Hernandez. “The modern fan expects to be able to do more with the things they love. We enable engaged digital natives to own a piece of the action wherever they go, in a manner that is certified and authentic.” 

© 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.

ARK Invest has had quite the year so far. 

Since the beginning of 2021, the investment manager’s assets under management have soared.

ARK has also been buoyed this year by its bets on high-growth tech stocks. Many of the names the firm has backed overlap with the stocks that have become darlings among the Wall Street Bets crowd. Indeed, ARK has grown into a heavy-hitter on Wall Street. The Wall Street Journal said in early February that founder Cathie Wood had “Wall Street’s hottest hand.”

During the last few trading sessions, however, the firm has experienced somewhat of a reckoning. The firm’s Ark Innovation fund — which includes Tesla, Square, and Silvergate — has fallen sharply relative to the overall market, as The Journal noted today. The $23 billion fund is down more than 30% from its high. 

On this episode of The Scoop, Brett Winton — ARK’s head of research — breaks down the firm’s rise, the recent market volatility and macro backdrop, Wall Street Bets and the explosion in retail trading, and the big ideas in the crypto and bitcoin that have captured the fund’s attention lately. 

© 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.

Robinhood has reportedly picked Nasdaq as the venue for its initial public offering (IPO), according to a CNBC report published Friday. 

According to CNBC, sources familiar with the matter say it’s still unclear if Robinhood will go with a direct listing or a traditional IPO. In any case, the online brokerage is set to file an S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Companies can choose to debut as soon as one to two months after such a filing goes live.

The firm, which offers trading in crypto, options, and stocks, has faced regulatory and legal backlash for suspending trading for several stocks including GameStop and AMC amid unprecedented retail trading activity. 

Still, it continues to witness breakneck growth. For instance, Robinhood recently announced it had added six million new customers to its crypto platform since the beginning of 2021. 

The Block has reached out to Nasdaq and Robinhood and will update this report if we learn more. 

© 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.

PAID Network, a crypto project that utilizes an Ethereum-based token, has suffered a contract exploit, resulting in the minting of nearly $160 million worth of tokens by the attacker.

Network data shows that just over 2,000 ETH — worth roughly $3 million at press time — was obtained by the attacker after some of the 59.7 million minted PAID tokens were traded on the decentralized exchange service Uniswap. Roughly 2.5 million PAID tokens were sold over the course of 13 transactions, according to Etherscan data. 

Per Etherscan, the minting took place just after 6 p.m. UTC, with the transactions to Uniswap occurring between 6:07 p.m. UTC and 06:27 p.m. UTC. 

The price of PAID was trading at roughly $2.86 per token prior to the price plunge, giving the minted tokens a value of about $159.3 million at the time of their creation. The token’s price is currently trading at about $0.32, representing a 24-hour decline of more than 88%, according to data from CoinGecko.

Source: CoinGecko

Liquidity for the token had hovered above $3 million on Uniswap prior to the exploit; there is now roughly $316k in liquidity available.

PAID Network describes itself on its website as “an ecosystem DAPP that leverages blockchain technology to deliver DeFi powered SMART Agreements to make business exponentially more efficient.”

A message to the PAID Network team was not immediately returned as of press 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.

Quick Take

• Polkadot has been attracting many development teams and significant outside investment lately.
• The vision behind the project is to make it possible for ‘multichain’ applications to use multiple interoperable blockchains at once.
• First, though, more developers must become familiar with its complicated new features.

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John McAfee has been indicted in the Southern District of New York on crypto-related charges, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District. 

The charges include conspiracy to commit securities fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy for activity related to his cryptocurrency venture the “McAfee Team.”

Jimmy Watson, the executive adviser of the McAfee Team, is also facing charges. Law enforcement arrested him last night in Texas. Meanwhile, McAfee is currently detained in Spain on separate tax evasion charges filed last year by U.S. prosecutors, for which extradition to the United States is being sought.

McAffee and Watson allegedly used Twitter to build interest in various digital assets through “false and misleading statements,” resulting in gains of more than $13 million. The indictment accuses the two of engaging in pump and dump schemes, purchasing publicly traded coins and then endorsing them to drive up the price before selling for financial gain. Prosecutors also alleged the two promoted initial coin offerings (ICOs) on their accounts without adequately disclosing their investments or positions.

“The defendants allegedly used McAfee’s Twitter account to publish messages to hundreds of thousands of his Twitter followers touting various cryptocurrencies through false and misleading statements to conceal their true, self-interested motives,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a statement.

McAfee and Watson could face prison time, as each count of the indictment carries a maximum sentence of at least five years. They also carry possible financial penalties. 

In a parallel action, the CFTC filed suit Friday against McAfee and Watson in connection with the alleged pump-and-dump schemes. 

The SEC has already brought a civil case against McAfee, seeking disgorgement and civil penalties related to his ICO activity.

© 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.

Across the spectrum of clients, from hedge funds to wealthy individuals, Goldman Sachs sees demand for bitcoin, according to Matthew McDermott, the firm’s head of digital assets.

During the most recent episode of Exchanges at Goldman Sachs, the UK-based executive described the growing institutional demand the bank has seen. As The Block reported Thursday, the bank just wrapped up a client survey that showed more than 60% of respondents expect their digital asset holdings to increase. 

“The team have fielded well over 300 conversations,” McDermott, who was selected to lead the crypto business in August, said. “And when I talk about the broad spectrum, I’m referring to hedge funds, to asset managers, to macro funds, to banks, to corporate treasurers, insurance, and pension funds.”

The bank has also picked up on interest within its wealth management division, which once said bitcoin wouldn’t make for a good investment. 

“You know, we see continued appetite both internally and externally through the private banks,” he said. “So, yes, we see a huge amount of demand institutionally, but we’re also seeing that reflected in the private wealth management space as well.”

Corporate treasurers, in McDermott’s view, are increasingly becoming interested in bitcoin as a balance sheet investment to hedge negative rates and “general fears around asset devaluation.”

Although it doesn’t seem like Goldman would be working with firms on such allocations, it appears Goldman Sachs is taking cryptocurrency as a subject matter more seriously. During the episode, McDermott confirmed reports that the firm would relaunch its cryptocurrency trading desk, offering trading of derivatives rather than physical bitcoin itself. 

“We’ll focus on CME features and non-deliverable forwards,” McDermott said. “And we’re also now disseminating bitcoin content to our institutional clients through our Marquee platform.”

Listen to the full episode 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.

Quick Take

• Hegic Protocol is a decentralized, American-style, cash-settled options protocol that utilizes a peer-to-pool model
• Underwriting liquidity providers co-underwrite options and earn algorithmically-determined premiums paid by options buyers 
• HEGIC token holders can govern the protocol and earn settlement fees from options buyers

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