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Gemini, the U.S.-based crypto exchange founded by twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, named a new chief executive officer for Asia-Pacific (APAC) and is set to open its first office in India as part of its “big plans” in the region.

Pravjit Tiwana, Gemini’s global chief technology officer, has taken additional responsibility as APAC CEO, the Winklevoss brothers said in a blog post shared with The Block. As APAC CEO, Tiwana will lead Gemini’s new product launches from the region and ensure financial stability.

“Gemini has big plans for international growth this year in APAC,” the Winklevi said. “This initially involves building out product and engineering teams in India. We will also be expanding our business teams in both India and Singapore to execute GTM [go-to-market] strategies focused on growing our individual and institutional customer base in this region.”

The news comes a month after reports that said Gemini is preparing to launch an overseas derivatives exchange to offer perpetual futures. The new derivatives platform will launch from APAC, a source familiar with the matter recently told The Block.

A number of U.S.-based crypto platforms are focusing on entering foreign markets as regulators in the country appear to have become hostile to the crypto industry. Earlier this week, Gemini rival Coinbase said it received a license to operate in Bermuda. Coinbase could launch a derivatives exchange in the British Overseas Territory as soon as next week, a source familiar with the matter told The Block at the time.

The collapse of the FTX exchange in November has opened the door for more companies to expand their trading platforms. Deribit, a crypto derivatives exchange, is set to launch its spot trading platform next week.

Gemini’s first India office

As part of its APAC growth plans, Gemini is opening up its India office in Gurgaon, a city just southwest of New Delhi. The office will be Gemini’s second largest engineering hub behind the U.S. and will add to its existing offices in the U.S., the U.K., Ireland and Singapore, the company said.

“Gurgaon has many advantages including a very dense talent pool (which includes all of the national capital region — Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida), proximity to policymakers, and the presence of other web3/crypto companies,” Tiwana told The Block.

India has had a tough stance on crypto since it imposed stiff taxes last year. But the country hasn’t declared crypto as legal, and thus, uncertainty remains. Earlier this year, India revealed that it is working with the International Monetary Fund on a paper that will focus on “aspects of the monetary policy and the policy approach to crypto assets.”

Tiwana declined to comment on the regulatory situation in India but said the country is rich with tech talent and Gemini expects to hire “hundreds of full-time employees” there over time across functions including engineering, human resources and finance. Tiwana initially joined Gemini over a year ago from Amazon Web Services and has previously held product and engineering leadership roles at both Microsoft and Disney.

Gemini’s lackluster trading volume

Whether Gemini’s APAC growth plans will help it gain market share remains to be seen. The exchange has had underwhelming trading volumes over the last few years compared to its competitors. It is currently behind Coinbase, Kraken, Binance.US and other exchanges in terms of trading volume, according to The Block’s Data Dashboard.

“We believe that crypto and web3 products will continue to have a strong growth trajectory in APAC,” said the Winklevoss twins. “Crypto knows no boundaries, and it is important for Gemini to be present and active globally.”

© 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.

ALSO: CoinDesk columnist Daniel Kuhn considers the European Parliament’s passage of crypto rules, which come as U.S. regulatory agencies seem to be backtracking in their efforts to find an effective regulatory approach.

Momentum is building for the first major U.S. crypto legislation to have a realistic shot at becoming law. 

Members of the House and Senate have begun working together on a bill to create new market structure rules around digital assets.

The talks come amidst a regulatory crackdown on the industry by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Both the enforcement actions and top-level recommendations for new laws to govern digital assets were part of an agenda released by the Biden administration last year. 

The markets effort is running in parallel to another major effort to advance a bipartisan framework for stablecoins. 

Details of the Republican-led crypto market effort remain under negotiation. The goal is to introduce it this spring or early summer, and that it and a stablecoins bill would reach bipartisan consensus in the closely divided chambers of Congress, as well as final sign off from President Joe Biden, and provide more rules specific to digital assets. 

Key House players

House Financial Services Committee Chair Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., and House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson, R-Pa., are the senior House players in the market structure effort. 

Thompson authored legislation around spot crypto markets last Congress, and his committee has jurisdiction over commodities laws, since a number of commodities come from the agriculture industry. The Pennsylvania Republican told The Block his committee was starting “from scratch” in this effort while “working collaboratively” with the Financial Services Committee, but that the two chairs are on the “same page.”  

Thompson and McHenry agreed to principles on what new legislation governing crypto markets should look like earlier this year, after the North Carolina Republican approached him to coordinate efforts given an unusual degree of overlapping jurisdictions between the two committees on the issue. 

“We’re working from those principles to structure Ag and Financial Services pieces for a securities and commodities regime for a holistic market structure bill,” McHenry told The Block. 

That said, the Financial Services Committee holds the lion’s share of jurisdiction on the topic, with the power to rewrite securities laws central to crypto market regulation.

McHenry, in addition to being one of the most effective negotiators and vote counters in Congress, is also considered one of the most knowledgeable members of Congress on financial technology, as co-author of a landmark equity crowdfunding law passed over ten years ago. The law was one of the last to amend securities laws to accommodate new technology, a similar dynamic to conversations around legal tweaks for digital assets. 

Senate cooperation

The legislation effort recently picked up momentum when the House Republicans began coordinating with the authors of a high-profile, wide-ranging crypto policy bill from last Congress: Sens. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. 

The two were expected to reintroduce a version of their wide-ranging crypto legislation from last Congress before an upcoming industry conference later this month, but have pushed their timetable to coordinate with the House effort, Lummis said in an interview. 

“We’re going to try to work with them and see if we can find ways to dovetail our concepts,” said Lummis. “So now it’s going to look a little different, I suspect, but because we’re trying to merge ideas, we’re hoping that once we get the merged product, that it’s going to be easier to move.” 

The coordination is mutually beneficial and can give more weight to legislation going forward. Though last Congress’ Lummis-Gillibrand bill was well-received by industry, it fell short of picking up momentum in Washington, and McHenry and Thompson enjoy the privileges of chairmanship in a chamber where Republicans can pass legislation on a party-line vote. Meanwhile Lummis and Gillibrand give House drafters sponsors in the Senate, and Lummis sits on the Senate Banking Committee, the counterpart to the committee McHenry chairs. 

“As we finalize those things we’re going to try to team up with the folks who are most knowledgeable and interested in the Senate,” said McHenry. “And certainly Senator Gillibrand and Senator Lummis have been deeply engaged on this.” 

Still an up-Hill climb

Though having Senate allies to introduce the legislation on that side of the Capitol could help the effort, Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and the Treasury Department will also play major roles in any bills becoming law.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen signed off on recommendations for new laws around stablecoins and crypto firms in October. The Treasury Department and McHenry’s staff did not always see eye-to-eye during stablecoin talks last year, but he said on Wednesday that the Biden administration was working with him and his staff, at least on stablecoins legislation. 

Brown, whose committee any legislation would go through, has yet to express much enthusiasm for legislating around digital assets. The Ohio Democrat told The Block following a hearing in February that he’s not convinced crypto has “a real role” in the financial system and he is largely deferring to Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler. 

Gensler has made clear that he sees cryptocurrencies as securities that should be following securities laws.

“We’re talking to Gensler ongoing,” Brown said when asked by The Block following a hearing before his committee in February what his thoughts on legislation were. “I’m very interested in a legislative answer here, but we need them,” meaning the SEC, “to be aggressive here.”

© 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.

Episode 38 of Season 5 of The Scoop was recorded with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Coral co-founder Armani Ferrante.

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Please send feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblock.co.

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Web3 development team Coral raised $20 million in a round co-led by FTX Ventures just weeks before the exchange’s collapse. Coral developers hunkered down and continued building.

In this episode, Coral co-founder Armani Ferrante tells the story of how the fallout from FTX forced Coral into “cockroach mode”‘ and how the startup has managed to stay afloat despite being forced to cut costs.

Backpack & xNFTs

Coral’s first product, Backpack, is a web3 wallet that lets users store and access xNFTs — a new standard developed for tokenizing code and controlling its execution. In practice, Armani says Backpack and xNFTs give users direct access to a “secure, heavily curated app store.”

Unlike popular browser extensions such as Metamask which interact with web3 platforms by connecting to each website individually, Backpack is designed so that users never have to leave the curated web3 experiences that live directly within the wallet.

During this episode, Chaparro and Ferrante also discuss:

• The Donald Trump, Starbucks, and Nike NFT collections
• Why NFT projects depend on community
• How Coral’s Backpack product supports ‘xNFTs’

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This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Circle and CleanSpark.

About Circle

Circle is a global financial technology company helping money move at internet speed. Our mission is to raise global economic prosperity through the frictionless exchange of value. Visit circle.com/Scoop to learn more.

About CleanSpark

CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK) is America’s Bitcoin Miner™. Visit cleanspark.com/theblock to learn more about the CleanSpark way.

© 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.

A16z doesn’t want to just dole out money anymore.

The venture capital firm is one of the most well-pocketed and deeply-connect venture firms on Market Street, but its crypto division now wants potential portfolio companies to focus on its ability to ship open-source code.

The firm — which has raised billions to deploy into the spine-tinglingly volatile market for protocols and cryptocurrencies — on Wednesday revealed its latest open-source project, Magi, a new rollup client for Optimism (OP). Optimism is a Layer 2 blockchain that aims to make Ethereum faster and more scalable. 

It follows other recent software initiatives released by a16z crypto’s team of engineers, which has also shipped tooling to improve security in Ethereum smart contracts and functionality in auctions. 

“Our team’s goal is genuinely to see [crypto] develop faster, more safely, and more decentralized,” the firm’s Chief Technology Officer Eddie Lazzarin said in a phone interview with The Block. “If that doesn’t happen then we don’t succeed.” 

A16z — a firm that has also raked in on the success of centralized companies like Facebook that crypto is attempting to disrupt — is of course also in the business of making money. In Lazzarin’s view, contributing to software tooling that can be utilized by builders in crypto translates into new investment opportunities that would not otherwise be possible. 

“If we are really technically capable and we can demonstrate to the space that, then projects will want to work with us,” Lazzarin said. 

The roll-out of Magi, which effectively improves upon the existing infrastructure of an Optimism node, has already opened the doors to more deal-flow, according to Lazzarin.

“Magi is written in Rust,” he said, referring to the popular coding language. Working with an Optimism node that is written in Rust makes it more flexible for developers to work with and run deeper analytics on Ethereum.

A16z is not alone

Venture firms are uniquely positioned to contribute to these kind of software developments because it’s a difficult endeavor from which to profit, and they’re already rolling in it. Rivals VCs like Paradigm and Jump make similar types of software contributions that are billed as public good initiatives. 

Some of the firm’s existing portfolio companies are already set to use Magi. Coinbase, according to Lazzarin, which will leverage Magi-powered nodes for its layer-two network, base. 

“The feedback we’re getting is blowing up; they want to contribute to Magi and use it for MEV research because of the performance characteristics,” he said. 

“Generally, we get entrepreneurs pitching us because they see these tools and they can materialize stuff with us. We just hired someone two days ago because he was using our tools in creative ways.”

© 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.

Tom Brady may no longer have laser eyes, but he told a Miami crowd on Thursday that he was still excited about crypto. And that’s despite an ongoing lawsuit he’s facing over his previous work to promote the failed FTX exchange.  

“I have a digital asset business that I love to be a part of,” he said at the eMerge Americas 2023 tech conference when asked about his future plans. “I’m actually flying out to Los Angeles tonight. We have a board meeting tomorrow.”

Brady didn’t provide any more details or talk about the broader crypto industry, but he said he was interested in “just understanding where the world is going and where innovation is taking place.”

Tom Brady speaking at the eMerge Americas 2023 conference in Miami.

“Our lives are online, and our lives are on our phones, and our lives are on our computers,” Brady said at the conference, adding that he was looking to understand how people will connect with each other and find the bridge between “these digital businesses and the humanity of people.”

Autograph, a sports and entertainment NFT platform created by Brady, announced last year that it raised $170 million in a Series B funding round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz. While former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried had been reported as being on the board at the time, the company’s website no longer lists him as a member.  

ChatGPT wants to know

Brady didn’t take questions from journalists after his Thursday appearance, but he did respond to questions from moderators that had been selected by the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT.

When asked about his favorite football movie of all time, Brady said he was a fan of the 1986 film “Wildcats” starring Goldie Hawn. And as to whether he preferred the beach or mountains, the new Miami resident didn’t hesitate in his response.

“The beach, girl,” he said to widespread applause, adding that he loved water sports and e-surfboards.

When asked if he’d come out of retirement and play for the Miami Dolphins, Brady played coy.

“Now that I’m not affiliated with any team anymore, and even though I have strong ties with a couple of teams, I do have some friends on the dolphins that I really like,” Brady said. “I wouldn’t say I root for them all the time, but I root my friends to do well and several of them play for Miami.”

© 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 dipped to the lowest level since April 9. Ether also dropped, albeit less severely.

Bitcoin miners were hardest hit on Thursday.

According to multiple dashboards compiled by researchers on analytics platform Dune, OpenSea and Blur are experiencing notable losses in daily users and sales.

The maneuver is part of MakerDAO’s earlier decision to move up to $1.6 billion of USDC stablecoins to Coinbase’s custody arm.