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Singapore’s state-owned investment fund Temasek issued a statement denying it had invested in a crypto startup named Array.

Reports published yesterday suggested Temasek had invested $10 million in Array, an algorithmic currency system that on also claims to use AI. The investment supposedly brought the project’s valuation to more than $100 million. But Temasek took to Twitter today to deny those reports.

“We have seen news articles and a tweet from Array about Temasek’s investment in it. This news is incorrect. Temasek has not invested in Array and we have no relationship with them,” it said in a statement.

Array, which had shared coverage of the supposed Temasek investment yesterday via its Twitter account, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The project lists a bevy of top-tier investors on its website alongside Temasek, including Binance Labs, the venture arm of the biggest crypto exchange. Binance Labs has also not invested, a spokesperson told The Block. 

Temasek’s FTX losses 

Temasek was forced to write down its $275 million bet on Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX to zero in November last year, after the crypto exchange and its subsidiaries collapsed in spectacular fashion. The investment firm said at the time that the episode had “demonstrated what we have identified previously — the nascency of the blockchain and crypto industry and the innumerable opportunities as well as significant risks involved.”

The denials from Temasek and Binance Labs come less than two weeks after a similar episode involving OPNX, the crypto exchange founded by Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, the people behind the collapsed hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. After OPNX unveiled a list of supposed investors in the new endeavor on April 21, several names on the list — including RW and Nascent — were quick to distance themselves from the project entirely. 

© 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.

Ark Invest added more Coinbase shares to its stockpile yesterday.

The U.S. investment management firm added 129,604 Coinbase shares, worth over $6.4 million, to its Ark Innovation exchange-traded fund. It also added 23,456 shares to its Ark Next Generation Internet ETF and 15,809 shares to its Fintech Innovation ETF — worth over $1.1 million and $790,000, respectively. Details of the purchases came via an emailed trade announcement today.

Coinbase shares are currently trading at just over $50 per share, after gaining nearly 50% this year. 

Ark Invest remains bullish on Coinbase stock

Ark Invest has long been known as an acquirer of Coinbase stock.

The Cathie Wood-led firm purchased roughly $8.6 million in the publicly traded centralized crypto exchange’s stock late last month — on the same day Coinbase announced it was suing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. On April 25, the Ark Innovation ETF purchased 122,083 shares in the company, the Ark Next Generation Internet ETF added 20,327 shares and the Ark Fintech Innovation ETF bought 14,633 shares.

On the same day, The Block also reported that Ark Invest teamed up with 21Shares in another attempt to get a spot bitcoin ETF approved — something the crypto industry has been clamoring for over for years. Ark Invest and 21Shares have failed to get SEC approval on their previous two applications.

© 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 BRC-20 standard sounds like the popular ERC-20, but the two are different, with the former lacking the ability to interact with smart contracts.

Resolving the company’s murky corporate design could prove key to recoveries for customers and Series B investors.

A legal suit alleges crypto exchange Coinbase violated Illinois’ biometric privacy laws through its Know Your Customer checks and related data storage.

The complaint was filed in a California District Court on May 1. It claims that Coinbase violated Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which would have required the publicly traded U.S. exchange to gain users’ permission when collecting their biometric data.

Coinbase, like other centralized exchanges, requires users to upload scans of a valid identity card and a selfie. It then uses this information to create a biometric template of a user’s face, which it uses to confirm a facial match.

Claiming Coinbase’s KYC compliance procedure is “unlawful,” the complaint says that users would have no protection against identity theft if the centralized company’s biometric data database was hacked. It also insists that the exchange should have permanently destroyed users’ biometric data immediately following successful KYC checks.

Coinbase did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Coinbase’s data misuse allegations

The complaint also claims Coinbase had to provide information as to the purpose of the collection, the length that it would be stored, how long it would be used and retained, and how it would be permanently destroyed. The filing argues that the exchange “had no written policy, made available to the public, establishing a retention schedule and guidelines for permanently destroying biometric information.”

The plaintiff — a Coinbase user named Michael Massel — seeks $5,000 in damages per intentional BIPA violation or $1,000 per unintentional violation.

The exchange’s shares are trading at just over $50 per share, having climbed nearly 50% this 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.

PLUS: Western crypto innovators with great ideas are eying the East for tech-embracing governments and fresh opportunities. A West-East partnership may be crypto’s model for the future, the co-founder of Taipei-based Woo Network, Jack Tan, writes.

With the price of bitcoin bouncing around a bit before the U.S. Federal Reserve’s latest interest rate decision on Wednesday, Grayscale said Monday that crypto prices may still be in a position to benefit if rates go up — as long as whatever happens align with market expectations. 

The price of bitcoin declined 4.3% on Monday and is currently trading around $27,990, according to TradingView data. Bitcoin recovered from lows of the day after MicroStrategy reported results and said the conviction on its bitcoin strategy remained strong. 

The price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has fallen about 1.8% over the past month but is still up 69% year-to-date. The U.S. central bank is expected to increase rates by 25 basis points, according to CME’s FedWatch tool. 

Grayscale looks at bitcoin volatility

Pointing to volatility that occurred in the second half of April, Grayscale said that there were several noteworthy takeaways to keep in mind.

“Bitcoin may still be susceptible to a number of sentiment-driven factors that can be influenced by incorrect or incomplete information,” it said, referencing a misleading Arkham alert. “The perception of actions by large holders can also have a consequential impact on Bitcoin’s value.”

That said, Grayscale still said that factors including an additional rate hike and declining inflation “align well with a bullish case for Bitcoin in the future.” The failures of several regional banks, meanwhile, demonstrate that “investors continue to display an appetite for crypto during times of economic uncertainty.”

© 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.

BTC’s price had dropped from well above $29,000 since Sunday evening. Investors await Wednesday’s FOMC decision.

MicroStrategy, the software firm best known for its bet on the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, said Monday that it added 7,500 bitcoin to its balance sheet in the first quarter of the year, bringing its total to 140,000 currently worth almost $4 billion. 

“The conviction in our bitcoin strategy remains strong as the digital asset environment continues to mature,” MicroStrategy CEO Phong Le said in a statement. 

The company reported a net income of $461.2 million for the first quarter of the year, compared to a net loss of $130.8 million in the same quarter a year earlier and a net loss of $249.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2022. MicroStrategy attributed the gains to benefits from income taxes and a gain on debt extinguishment.

Loss from operations also improved in the quarter, coming in at $20.3 million compared to $170 million in the first quarter of 2022. Total revenues for the period increased 2.2% from the same period last year to $121.9 million.

MicroStrategy co-founder Michael Saylor posted a graph on Twitter that showed how the company had outperformed other companies and indexes since it admitted its bitcoin strategy. The company’s shares were up 1.2% in post-market trading, according to TradingView. 

“In #Bitcoin We Trust,” Saylor wrote earlier in the day. 

MicroStrategy bitcoin holdings

As of March 31, the carrying value of MicroStrategy’s 140,000 bitcoin was $2 billion, reflecting cumulative impairment losses of $2.2 billion. The company reported an average cost per bitcoin of $29,803, just slightly above the current market price of $27,898.

MicroStrategy said a wholly-owned subsidiary on March 24 voluntarily prepaid Silvergate Bank $161.0 million to fully repay a bitcoin-backed loan. Silvergate, which is being liquidated, released its security interest in the  34,619 bitcoin that had been used to collateralize the loan. 

In the first quarter of 2023, MicroStrategy said it had purchased bitcoin using $179.3 million in proceeds from the sale of class A common stock offered under a 2022 sales agreement.

Bitcoin rose about 72% over the 3-month period, according to CoinGecko. 

© 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.

Amid BTC’s big rally, the company’s impairment loss narrowed to $18.9 million in the first quarter from $197.6 million in the fourth quarter.