FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Quick Take

• The Block Research analyzed a total of 873 blockchain-related investment deals that have occurred this year to identify which crypto funds have been the most active in 2020
• The most active funds this year include Alameda Research, Coinbase Ventures, CoinFund, ConsenSys Labs, Digital Currency Group, Dragonfly Capital, Hashkey Capital, NGC Ventures, Pantera Capital, and Polychain Capital
• The DeFi category was the popular category amongst the top investors, accounting for roughly 31% of their investments

This research piece is available to
members of The Block Genesis.
You can continue reading
this Genesis research on The Block.

Hugh Karp, the founder of DeFi insurance protocol Nexus Mutual, has just experienced an attack that resulted in a loss of more than $8 million.

Nexus Mutual announced the news via a Twitter post on Monday, saying that Karp’s personal address was attacked and drained by a member of the protocol.

The address contained 370,000 XNM tokens, currently worth about $8.25 million.

Karp told The Block that the attacker tricked him into approving one transaction, somehow gained access to his computer, and altered his MetaMask extension.

“Then when I was performing an unrelated transaction, MetaMask popped up with a spoof transaction, and I subsequently approved it, thinking it was the transaction I was intending to conduct. Instead it was transferring NXM to their wallet,” said Karp.

“Nexus Mutual is fine, and nobody else is impacted. My private keys are still secure. They didn’t’ get access to them. They tricked me into signing a spoof transaction,” Karp added.

This is a developing story and will be updated

© 2020 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.

Crypto bank Sygnum has tokenized its own shares using blockchain technology.

Calling the development “a world’s first for a bank,” Switzerland-based Sygnum said the tokenization will allow it to manage primary and secondary market transactions in a fully digital manner.

Shareholders won’t have to inform the bank to manually update its registry, thus eliminating the administrative burden of written form requirements for share transfers. Tokenization also helps improve liquidity and lower the associated costs for parties involved in a transaction.

“This is an important milestone towards fulfilling our mission of creating more direct and efficient access to ownership and value,” said Mathias Imbach, co-founder of Sygnum. “This includes new engagement models with our clients and partners, and ultimately providing liquidity for our trusted shareholders.”

Sygnum used its in-house tokenization platform, Desygnate, to tokenize its shares. Desygnate was launched last month to help issuers raise capital, build liquidity, and more efficiently transfer ownership. It is not clear whether Desygnate utilizes its own blockchain technology or is built on a public blockchain such as Ethereum. The Block has reached out to Sygnum and will update this story should we hear back.

Sygnum has tokenized its shares within two years of its operations. The bank went live in September 2019 and now plans to go public eventually.

Sygnum looks to list its tokenized shares in both its home markets — Switzerland and Singapore. That includes a potential listing on SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) in Zurich and a Singapore-based digital exchange, which is being developed by SDX and SBI Digital Asset Holdings and is expected to go live in 2022.

Sygnum’s tokenized shares can be viewed online in a bank account, alongside other assets such as cash deposits, cryptocurrencies, and Sygnum’s settlement token — the Digital CHF (Swiss franc). Velina Peneva, a Sygnum shareholder, said the bank’s tokenized shares will now allow her to receive dividends in digital swiss francs.

© 2020 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.

Fidelity Investments chairman and CEO Abigail Johnson has said that the firm’s bitcoin custody business has been “incredibly successful” and has a “tremendous pipeline.”

While Johnson did not provide specific details, she said Fidelity is putting a lot of effort into connecting the legacy world with the future of digital currencies. “Building those on and off ramps around facilitating the trading between fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies is something that’s happening now, and I’m glad it’s moving along,” Johnson said in an interview with Barron’s last week.

As for Fidelity’s bitcoin custody business, Johnson said it was needed, given the consumer demand. “If you had asked me in the beginning if we or anybody was going to be prioritizing custody of bitcoin, I would have said ‘no way, I mean that’s kind of the opposite of what it’s all about’ but the reality is that you do need it because if you’re an individual who engages an advisor and you want to make an estate plan, you actually need somebody to custody your bitcoin,” she said.

Fidelity began offering bitcoin custody services in March 2019 through a separate subsidiary called Fidelity Digital Assets, which was set up in October 2018.  The entity was also looking to add support for ether (ETH), but no announcement has been made yet on that front. Besides bitcoin custody, Fidelity Digital Assets also provides crypto trading and execution services for institutional clients. 

Johnson personally finds the crypto industry “fascinating” and “super exciting,” she said in Barron’s interview. Noting rapid developments in the sector, she said distributed finance capabilities, such as Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, are “starting to become a reality.”

Overall, Johnson suggested that Fidelity’s crypto business is going on the right path. “We’ve got a lot of good momentum as a business, which is really exciting, and that’s really what I sought to achieve when we moved into [crypto], so I’m really happy about that,” she said.

Fidelity moved into the crypto space in 2014. At the time, it began research and development efforts. A year later, the firm started mining bitcoin, and then it tested its first wallet and storage solution with employees in 2016.

Over the years, Fidelity has expanded its crypto services. Last week, the firm partnered with crypto lender BlockFi to custody bitcoin pledged as collateral. The new offering allows Fidelity’s crypto custody clients to pledge their bitcoin as collateral against USD loans financed by BlockFi.

© 2020 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.