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Ross Stevens, founder and chairman of the New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), predicted that the firm could significantly expand the amount of bitcoin it holds under management before the end of 2021.

His comments came during an appearance at the MicroStrategy World 2021 Conference, stating that while the NYDIG currently has $6 billion in bitcoin assets under management (AMU), this figure could hit $25 billion by the end of the year. 

“I believe that the most important decision that CEOs will make in the next ten years will be deciding to allocate to bitcoin,” Stevens said in a conversation with MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor that kicked off this year’s conference. 

Stevens claimed NYDIG has seen zero clients walk back their initial investment to date. 

“My partners bought more bitcoin in 2020 than in 2013-2019 combined. As our fiat businesses continue to inflate and accelerate, I expect we will buy more bitcoin in the next two years,” he said. “We are capital allocators. If we didn’t believe we would make money off this, we wouldn’t invest a penny.”

During a recent appearance on The Scoop podcast, NYDIG CEO Robert Gutmann commented that public companies could follow in the footsteps of firms like Square and MicroStrategy by allocating some of their balance sheets to bitcoin.

In Gutmann’s view, these companies have a “fiduciary duty to consider whether holding 100% of your assets in dollars is in the best interest of your shareholders.”

Listen to Gutmann’s podcast appearance 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.

Monthly trading volumes for Bitcoin futures more than doubled from December to January, according to data compiled by The Block Research. 

December’s future trading volume was $993.8 billion, whereas January’s was $2.09 trillion — an all-time high. Binance led the way in January’s volume at 30% of the volume, followed by Huobi at 23.8% and OKEx at 16.9%. 

Monthly Bitcoin options volume also reached its highest point in January, coming in at $27.93 billion. Deribit facilitated the trade of $25.8 billion — or 92.4% — of the monthly volume, while OKEx held 5.1% and CME had 1.9%. 

For more insights from January 2021, check out The Block Research.

© 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.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has set a meeting with key regulators that could take place as soon as Thursday to discuss last week’s market frenzy centered on brokerage app Robinhood and the stock of gaming retailer GameStop, according to a new report from Politico.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Reserve, the New York Fed and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are reportedly slated to attend. The discussion will focus on recent volatility and investor protection, according to a statement from the Treasury obtained by Politico.

GameStop (GME), AMC and other stocks saw a significant bump last week fueled by activity from users of the subreddit r/WallStreetBets. Many users bought with the intention of squeezing hedge funds out of short positions after one trader noticed significant open positions on GameStop. Others were more interested in riding the wave from about $17 to nearly $350 a share. On Wednesday, those shares are now trading around $94 apiece as of press time.

The market event drew significant attention to Robinhood, which later moved to temporarily restrict the retail purchase of some stocks, including GME. CEO Vlad Tenev said this was done to protect retail investors, with some accusing Robinhood of market manipulation to favor hedge funds.

The firm raised more than $3 billion this week from existing investors, which led some to speculate last week’s retail trading pause could have been related to liquidity issues. Tenev has denied Robinhood has any liquidity problem.

Just after Robinhood’s decision to pause trading, the White House confirmed that Yellen was already “monitoring the situation” around Robinhood. The SEC later put out a statement saying it would “closely review actions” around the market craze. Thursday’s meeting will see the SEC present its findings to other regulators.  

Multiple members of Congress have said they are working across the aisle to set up a hearing for the firm. Tenev is expected to testify before the House Financial Services Committee on Feb. 18.

© 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.

Opyn, a decentralized finance platform for options, has raised $6.7 million in a new Series A funding round.

Industry venture capital firm Paradigm led the round, according to Opyn, with participation from existing investor Dragonfly as well as Synthetix co-founder Kain Warwick and Stani Kulechov, who founded Aave. 

“The funds will be used to further development and security of the Gamma protocol and to grow the Opyn team, focusing on key research and engineering hires,” Wade Prospere, Opyn’s head of marketing and community, told The Block in an email. 

Opyn’s second-version iteration of its platform launched live on mainnet in late December, as the startup said at the time. Opyn’s aforementioned Gamma protocol formed the core of that launch for on-chain DeFi options. Opyn first went live in alpha in the summer of 2019.

“Options are a key primitive in financial markets, and we are particularly excited to help the team research cutting-edge topics such as capital efficiency, AMM-design, and scaling,’ Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang said in a statement.

The new round of funding comes months after Opyn raised $2.16 million in a seed round led by Dragonfly Capital, as previously reported. Other Opyn investors include Compound’s Robert Leshner and former Coinbase executive Balaji Srinivasan.

© 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.