FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

CoinDesk’s Chief Insights Columnist David Z. Morris suggests the Terra founder’s attempts to avoid prosecution may have added to his troubles.

The company launched the service in partnership with Ripio, a regional crypto firm.

Ric Edelman, founder of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals, talks about a key reason why crypto’s future looks bleaker: an apparent effort to cut it off from U.S. banks.

Glenn Williams Jr. discusses the confounding first quarter, which delivered massive gains to crypto investors even as the industry’s prospects appeared to worsen.

Fourth-quarter revenue of $23.4 million was driven mainly by selling energy to the power grid rather than crypto mining.

Fetch.ai, a blockchain platform that uses artificial intelligence to help people automate tasks, said it has raised $40 million in new funding from DWF Labs.

Almost half of that amount has already been invested by DWF, Fetch.ai founder and CEO Humayun Sheikh told The Block in an interview. The rest will be invested in the next month, Sheikh said, adding that initial talks with DWF began in late January.

The funding is a mix of equity and Fetch.ai (FET) tokens at a combined valuation of around $250 million, Sheikh said. He declined to comment on DWF’s vesting period for the token part of the investment but said the web3 investment firm, which is also a market maker, is not and will not be a market maker for FET as part of the deal.

With fresh capital from DWF, Cambridge, UK-based Fetch.ai is looking to grow its ecosystem, especially in Asia.

“DWF is quite active in the Asian community, building developer communities around the different projects it is investing in,” Sheikh said. “We need to bring in more developers and launch applications, so DWF’s proposition fits our plan. DWF will support us with that over the next 12 to 24 months.”

Given the rise of AI tools, such as OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT, Sheikh expects a brighter future for the Fetch.ai ecosystem. Current AI tools don’t help perform routine tasks, Sheikh said, adding that Fetch.ai will be a “game changer.”

Decentralized AI

Fetch.ai was founded in 2017. One of its main products under development is a decentralized machine learning AI model called Colearn, where multiple parties can build and train AI models to perform tasks on the Fetch network. The other is called Autonomous Economic Agents, which can be integrated into apps like ChatGPT to complete tasks or linked with the Fetch wallet to execute transactions.

“What we are trying to do is bring automation so people don’t have to interact with too many applications. So life is a lot simpler by performing tasks from one place,” Sheikh said. “We are opening up our infrastructure to developers to build different applications so users can enjoy the automation journey in a decentralized fashion.”

There are currently 68 people working for Fetch.ai. The startup isn’t looking to immediately grow that headcount as it’s more focused on expanding its developer community, Sheikh said.

To that end, Fetch.ai could raise another funding round soon, Sheikh said, adding that the startup is currently in talks with investors. Fetch.ai previously raised $21.6 million in funding, including an initial exchange offering, or IEO, on Binance in 2019.

The FET token is up around 12% on the day at about $0.38, according to CoinGecko. Its fully diluted valuation stands at about $418 million. 

© 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 $40 million funding marks yet another investment by market maker DWF Labs, its fifth this month.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged cryptocurrency platform Beaxy and its executives for allegedly failing to register as an exchange, broker and clearing agency —  the latest crypto-related move by the U.S. securities regulator.

The SEC also charged founder Artak Hamazaspyan, and a company he controlled, Beaxy Digital Ltd, with raising $8 million in an unregistered offering of the Beaxy token. The SEC also said he used $900,000 for personal use, including gambling. 

Executives Nicholas Murphy and Randolph Bay Abbott were also caught up in charges via a company they managed called Windy, which maintained Beaxy. Windy, through the Beaxy Platform, violated securities laws because it didn’t register as an exchange, a clearing agency or a broker, the SEC alleges. 

“To protect investors, there are separate registration requirements for exchanges, brokers, and clearing agencies, with each essentially acting as a check on the other,” said Gurbir Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement in a statement on Wednesday. “When a crypto intermediary combines all of these functions under one roof—as we allege that Beaxy did—investors are at serious risk.”

Others swept in  

In 2019, Windy entered into an agreement with Brian Peterson and his companies, together named Braverock Entities, to provide “market making services for BXY,” and later one of the companies “entered into a similar market making agreement for another crypto asset security.” That made Peterson and Bravework unregistered securities dealers, the SEC said.  

Windy, Murphy, Abbott and Peterson agreed to cease all activities as an unregistered exchange, clearing agency, broker and dealer, as well as shut down the Beaxy platform, destroying BXY in Windy’s possession.

As part of the agreement, the four individuals and the Braverock Entities did not admit or deny the agency’s allegations. 

The SEC said it is “litigating its charges against Hamazaspyan for securities fraud and against Hamazaspyan and Beaxy Digital for the unregistered offering of BXY.” 

© 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.