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Crypto market maker Alameda Research has acquihired Ren — the DeFi project behind the development of tokenized bitcoin renBTC.

The news means Ren’s core development team, around 10 to 20 people, will join Alameda, Alameda CEO Sam Bankman-Fried told The Block.

“We expect them to keep producing good projects and not really miss a beat,” said Bankman-Fried. 

Specifically, the Ren development team will add support for Solana in its RenVM protocol. RenVM is a cross-chain network that connects different blockchains with Ethereum and currently supports Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Zcash, among other blockchains.

“We anticipate that we will be able to begin bridging assets to/from Solana in Q2,” said Ren CEO Taiyang Zhang. “Doing so will have a profound impact on Serum, but also on the wider Solana ecosystem.”

Serum is FTX’s decentralized crypto exchange built on Solana, and FTX is a sister company of Alameda.

The Solana support will also help RenVM, said Zhang. “The upcoming support for Solana, and integration into Serum, will help bring even more volume and users to RenVM […] RenVM will see new and diverse assets, new users, and increased fee revenue for its node operators.”

RenVM mainnet went live in May last year and currently has more than $600 million worth of user deposits, as The Block Research reported last week.

Source: Ren, 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.

The Accelerate Bitcoin ETF would list on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker “ABTC.”

While bitcoin has potential to support a huge valuation long-term, currently there isn’t enough institutional involvement, Said Scott Minerd.

BCB Group, a London-based startup selling banking services to crypto firms, has brought former Coinbase UK chief executive Zeeshan Feroz into the fold as an advisor.

Although not a bank itself, BCB works with other banks to provide business accounts, payments and foreign exchange tools to crypto wallet and exchange operators.

A lack of access to such services has long dogged the crypto sector.

“One of the things I found at Coinbase, and that the crypto industry in general struggles with, is banking – access to reliable, robust banking infrastructure,” Feroz told The Block. “BCB is one of the few providers out there that is trying to solve for that.”

By way of example, Feroz drew attention to BCB’s BLINC network, a tool designed to help institutions trading crypto to move funds around more quickly and with lower fees than existing payments solutions allow.

“BCB recognised that a lot of fiat flows are between exchanges and OTC desks and institutional customers, and there is a need for moving large sums of money from one venue to another very, very quickly – almost instantly – and at a low cost,” said Feroz.  

The BLINC system is similar to the Silvergate Exchange Network, which is popular among crypto businesses in the US.

Feroz, who stepped down as Coinbase UK’s CEO in August 2020, has since been advising a number of crypto firms. He remained at Coinbase as a strategic consultant until leaving the company for good in December.

Feroz was hired in part to help steward several new crypto-specific products that BCB is planning to launch. He would not reveal what those products are, but he did note that that there are “a lot of emerging opportunities in DeFi”.

© 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.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy is considering building a bitcoin mining center to utilize the country’s excess nuclear power.

Officials of the ministry held a discussion last week with Yevhen Vladimirov — Ukraine’s deputy energy minister for digital development, Energoatom — the country’s state-owned nuclear energy company, and Hotmine — Ukraine’s bitcoin mining machines manufacturer to move the proposal forward.

Vladimirov said the crypto mining center would help use Ukraine’s nuclear power, increase Energoatom’s profits, and help grow the government’s tax kitty.

“The idea of ​​creating a data center based on a nuclear power plant, of course, deserves attention because the Ukrainian UES [unified energy system] has unused base capacity,” said Vladimirov. “The constant load on nuclear power units could bring additional profit to the state-owned Energoatom and enable businesses to operate, which will also pay taxes to the domestic budget.”

It is not clear what size the data center would be if the proposal is finalized, but according to a report from Data Center Dynamics, it could be between 250 and 500 megawatts, and it can also go up to 2-3 gigawatts. For context, some biggest Chinese bitcoin mining farms had about 3 gigawatts of hydropower electricity during the rainy season last year.

To move Ukraine’s proposal forward, certain issues need to be ironed out first, according to Vladimirov. These include regulatory, legal, research, and calculations of required electricity, among other factors.

Hotmine is “convinced” that Ukraine can become one of the world’s leaders in crypto mining with its affordable nuclear power generation.

For the next steps, Hotmine, Energoatom, and the Ministry of Energy will consider signing a memorandum, which will define specific measures to establish a crypto mining center.

The official discussion follows a proposal from last May when Ukraine’s acting energy minister Olha Buslavets advised Energoatom to consider using excess electricity for mining cryptocurrencies.

Ukraine has recently been active in the crypto space. Last month, the country’s Ministry of Digital Transformation partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation to develop the virtual assets ecosystem and a central bank digital currency of Ukraine. Last year, the ministry said it wouldn’t regulate the crypto mining industry because it is already self-governed by blockchain consensus rules.

© 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.

Prosecutors allege the pair used their positions in the U.S. Navy to steal and sell personal information of 9,000 people.

It would be logistically challenging for Chinese retail investors to organize a short-selling campaign, especially with the authorities watching.

Axoni said Monday that it closed a new round of funding worth $31 million, bringing its total amount raised to $90 since its inception in 2013.

Deutsche Bank, Intel Capital, and UBS participated in the equity financing round, with prior investors Citi, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Nyca Partners, and Wells Fargo also contributing. Axoni’s goal is to streamline ledger systems for global capital markets. 

“We are pleased to be participating in the fundraising for this exciting company which is well placed to help drive digitalization and increase efficiency in the global capital markets,” Henrik Johnsson, Deutsche Bank’s co-head of global capital markets, said in a press statement.

The founders of Axoni, Gregg and Jeff Schvey, also created the crypto market data company TradeBlock in 2013. Crypto news publication CoinDesk acquired TradeBlock early last 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.

Quick Take

• Dark market vendors have found a new, more decentralized way to evade law enforcement.
• Despite the tradeoffs, Chainalysis expects the trend to continue.

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