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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has removed bitcoin from his Twitter bio, which he added last week.

Musk then went on to post a series of Dogecoin-related tweets, once again. Musk tweeted, ‘Doge’ and then minutes later, he wrote: “Dogecoin is the people’s crypto.”

“No highs, no lows, only Doge,” he wrote in a separate tweet.

The Musk support has led to a surge in Dogecoin’s price by about 37% within minutes. The coin is currently trading at around $0.05.

This is a developing story and will be updated…

© 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.

The non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Rarible has raised $1.75 million in a seed round.

The round was led by crypto fund 1kx, and was joined by ParaFi Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Bollinger Investment Group, MetaCartel Ventures and Rarible’s pre-seed investor CoinFund, among others. The fundraise — one of the first major seed rounds in the nascent NFT space — was an equity deal with a grant of tokens, the startup told The Block.

Funding in hand, some of the priority goals for the Rarible team include further decentralization, community ownership, building an NFT protocol, and solving current issues that users face today. In November, The Block reported on the marketplace’s problems wherein Rarible users with verification and high followings were resorting to artificially inflating their buying and selling activity for profit. 

According to Anjan Vinod, an investment analyst at ParaFi Capital, Rarible has emerged as a leading marketplace and community for NFTs in the past year.

“We believe all types of assets across gaming, art, music, and finance will become tokenized,” he said. “The Rarible team has built one of the best user experiences for creating, trading, and interacting with NFTs.”

© 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.

It’s PayPal earnings day, and the firm has released new details about its cryptocurrency plans.

These plans include a new dedicated business unit for PayPal’s crypto ambitions, according to CEO Daniel Schulman, who spoke during PayPal’s earnings call on Wednesday.

As he remarked:

“We all know the current financial system is antiquated, and we can envision a future where transactions are completed in seconds, not days; a future where transactions should be less expensive to complete; and a future that enables all people to be part of the digital economy, not just the affluent. We are significantly investing in our new crypto, blockchain, and digital currencies business unit in order to help shape this more inclusive future.”

A source with knowledge of the plans described the business unit plan as PayPal “going all in” on such services.

Schulman also said that PayPal is “excited to build upon this early success by allowing customers to use their crypto balance as a funding source whenever they shop at our 29 million merchants.”

“We anticipate the rollout of that capability to begin late this quarter, and we hope to launch our first international market in the next several months,” he went on to explain. A Venmo integration with crypto is expected “in the coming months.”

Schulman described such steps as “just the beginning of an extensive roadmap around crypto, blockchain, and digital currencies.”

PayPal made its crypto services official last October with the launch of a partnership with industry startup Paxos, as reported at the time. The services officially went live in the days following that announcement, opening it up to eligible U.S.-based users on November 12. 

The payments giant struck a bullish tone at the time, with Schulman noting at the time: “This is just the beginning of the opportunities we see as we work hand-in-hand with regulators to accept new forms of digital currencies.” He also suggested that PayPal might one day integrate central bank digital currencies should those gather steam in the future. 

Ryan Todd, Frank Chaparro and Aislinn Keely contributed reporting.

This story is developing and will be updated as more information becomes available.

© 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.

A bitcoin rally has been in full swing since the last quarter of 2020, but unlike previous cycles, large financial institutions are paying closer attention.

Morgan Stanley is no exception. 

In a recent interview with David Nage, principle at crypto investment firm Arca, Morgan Stanley digital asset markets head Andrew Peel outlined the bank’s crypto journey. Peel, who joined the firm in 2018, said Morgan Stanley — best-known for its financial advisory and investment banking businesses — explored how it could offer clients a swap product based on bitcoin futures. Indeed, Bloomberg reported in September 2018 that the firm would offer trading in derivatives tied to crypto. 

Peel told Nage:

“I was brought in actually 2018 — initial mandate was to oversee the launch of a swap-based product linked to CME and Cboe futures on bitcoin, discussed the view that bitcoin and crypto, specifically, would become more of an institutional asset class and discussed some of those expectations for how this asset class might evolve just at the end of the retail frenzy in 2017.”

“Fortunately for me at the time, the senior management at Morgan Stanley had some vision that this space, not just bitcoin, but the broader digital asset marketplace could become a topic which evolves to be something which we needed to have some expertise in,” he added. 

In September 2017, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman was among the few Wall Street chiefs defending bitcoin. At the time, he said that the cryptocurrency was “more than just a fad.”

Ultimately, Morgan Stanley didn’t go live with the swap product but held a number of client discussions about it. Peel told Nage that the firm has seen more “significant” interest in bitcoin from traditional financial services world since the end of 2020.

“I think it is definitely correlated with spot price and market activity in general,” Peel said. “Interest and focus is a function of the price action.”

As for what’s happening now, Morgan Stanley is engaging with regulated European exchanges about how smart contracts and distributed ledger technology can automate certain trading processes and structure certain products, according to a source familiar with the bank’s operations.

Peel alluded to this in his conversation with Nage:

“Since 2018, there’s been a large focus of traditional financial service infrastructure players the evolution of financial market infrastructure. So, I’ve been involved with some of the larger European exchange initiatives which are looking to use DLT, smart-contracts, automated processes of certain life cycle events for products. The ability to implement the developing crypto world functionality into traditional financial infrastructure.”

Unlike other large banks — including the likes of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan — Morgan Stanley is not actively exploring crypto custody, another source said. 

In an opinion piece in the Financial Times in early December, Ruchir Sharma, Morgan Stanley’s investment management chief global strategist, wrote that bitcoin is “starting to make progress on its ambitions to replace the dollar as a medium exchange.” Ruchir works in the firm’s investment management arm, whereas Peel reports to sales and trading. 

“Throughout 2020 we really saw a large evolution of the space in terms of significant players,  macro-legends if you will, obviously coming out to disclose their support for bitcoin as an inflation hedge,” Peel said. 

This report has been updated for clarity.

© 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.