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With institutions like BlackRock, Fidelity and Ark Investments all seeking SEC approval for Bitcoin ETFs, it’s time to thank Bitcoin miners for laying the groundwork for industry expansion.

James Wallis said the decision that Ripple’s sale of XRP did not constitute investment contracts was a major victory, not just for Ripple but also for the industry.

No crypto project since Facebook’s Libra has generated such hue and cry from within the crypto community. Is it right to be concerned by Sam Altman’s iris-scanning uber-ambitious UBI project?

Singapore-headquartered bitcoin mining firm Bitdeer Technologies founded by Jihan Wu has launched a closed-end fund dedicated to mining bitcoin in Bhutan, as the company steps up operations in the South Asian nation, crypto news outlet Wu Blockchain reported Friday.

Bitdeer has started to raise capital for the Bitdeer Green Bitcoin Fund, which aims to gain returns from bitcoin mining operations in Bhutan. With a duration of six years, the fund plans to raise $80 million for its first-phase construction project with a minimum investment threshold of $5 million from investors, according to the report.

With the fund, Bitdeer targets to build mining projects in Bhutan with total hashrate amounting to nearly 20 EH/s.

Bitdeer confirmed the report when contacted by The Block for comment.

Ambition in Bhutan

Bitdeer, a spinoff from Chinese mining rig maker Bitmain cofounded by Jihan Wu, has been expanding its presence in the Himalayan kingdom.

In May, Bitdeer announced a partnership with Bhutan’s state-owned investment company Druk Holding and Investments to raise up to $500 million for a crypto mining fund.

“We are excited to be working alongside DHI in accessing Bhutan’s zero-emissions power to sustainably enable the blockchain technologies that will eventually form an immutable bedrock for a global store of value,” Jihan Wu, chairman of Bitdeer, said at the time.

Bitdeer went public on Nasdaq in April via a special purpose acquisition company merger, with a valuation of US$1.18 billion. Its stock price climbed 1.96% in after-hours trading on Thursday.

© 2023 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.

Arkham customers are seeking to identify whomever was behind FTX and Wintermute’s huge hacks as well as an alleged meme-coin rug pull.

Mining rig makers like Bitmain and MicroBT are expanding to Russia as the U.S. market becomes saturated, source said.

In early November, signs that controversial crypto entrepreneur Andre Cronje was returning to the Fantom project after a long hiatus pushed the token’s price up 20%.

Yet he claims that he never really left.

“My distance from Fantom was only from a public perspective,” Cronje told The Block on The Scoop podcast. “I was receiving so much bad press at that time that I thought it would negatively impact Fantom.”

Cronje said that he has been working at the Fantom Foundation since 2019 as pretty much his full time occupation. “You can chat to anyone in the organization, they all know I was still there, I was still working. I was still doing my day to day.”

Controversial testing practices

For all appearances, Cronje left the Fantom Foundation in March 2022 and had supposedly quit contributing to the DeFi space and crypto in general. This caused a drop in the price of FTM at the time. 

While no reason was specifically given, Cronje has come under fire multiple times in the past due to his tendency to “test in production” — that is, to put unaudited code live while he was building it. A few times, crypto observers aped into his contracts on their own volition, before a bug or other issue caused them to lose their funds. 

“I just thought it would do more reputational damage than harm,” he said about distancing himself from the project. 

Cronje added that it was Fantom Foundation CEO Michael Kong who finally convinced him to make a public return. “And I finally caved after a few months of attrition and then just, you know, decided to admit. But that wasn’t actually a leave and back. It was just a public distancing, which at the time I thought was better for the project.”

© 2023 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.

Neha Narula, who has served as director of MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative since 2017, joined the board of payments company Block.

Narula was previously a software engineer at Google, the company said in an 8-K filing on Thursday. She also serves on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Innovation Advisory Council. 

“I’ve long admired Block’s focus on building simple, cohesive products that empower people and communities to participate in the financial system,” Narula said in a statement. “We share core values around the power of open source software and the ability for open protocols to transform the way people move money. I’m honored and excited to join Block’s board of directors and contribute to the company’s purpose of economic empowerment.”

Narula joins Block founder Jack Dorsey as well as Shawn “JAY-Z” Carter on the payments company’s board. 

‘Scaled systems to move money’

“Neha’s passion for building intuitive, scaled systems to move money across the Internet efficiently fits into our company’s purpose, and we’re excited to have her join our team,” Dorsey said.

Block enjoyed an earnings beat in May, posting a rise in first quarter revenue with its retail payments application Cash App driving growth. 

The firm’s stock has picked up 17.2% since the beginning of the year. 

© 2023 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 Web3 company has been laser-focused on building out its Otherside metaverse this past year. The latest live demo in Los Angeles hopes to revive interest among its forgotten Bored Ape community.