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Crypto prices are continuing to trade in a broadly similar range as the correlation with U.S. equities and macro events weakens, Bernstein analysts said. Crypto-related stocks opened higher on Monday, with Silvergate leading the gains. 

Bitcoin was trading at $23,800, by 10 a.m. EST, according to TradingView data.

“The crypto market remained range bound, with bitcoin correcting early in the week and then recovering over the weekend, to end marginally lower by 3% to $23,600,” the Bernstein analysts wrote in a note, adding that “ether was also lower by 2.3%, still trading in the $1,600 range.”

BTCUSD chart by TradingView

The crypto market appears to be poised between bulls and bears, the note read, “awaiting any further catalysts.” The market’s sensitivity to traditional markets isn’t what it used to be, with every dip being bought after down days in U.S. equity markets, the analysts said.

Bitcoin’s correlation with equities has fallen steadily throughout the year. The correlation between the leading cryptocurrency by market cap and the Nasdaq Composite has fallen t0 0.58 now from 0.94 at the beginning of February, according to The Block data.

On the down side, Bernstein said regulatory headwinds present a bear case for markets, as do a lack of institutional adoption and significant use cases. Its correlation to tech equities means bitcoin’s value as an inflation hedge has failed, the note added.

Weakening correlation to the U.S. poses a bull case for crypto, according to Bernstein. “A large part of stablecoin issuance (>50%) and global crypto trading (95%) remains outside the U.S market. Thus, the crypto market is driven by more global flows vs U.S. flows.”

Crypto stocks

Coinbase was trading at $60.57, up 3.5% by 10:10 a.m. EST, according to Nasdaq data. Shares in the exchange were lifted in line with equity indexes. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 added 0.8% and 1.1%, respectively. 

Silvergate jumped 5.8% to $15.15, and MicroStrategy gained 4.7% to trade just below $265.

Jack Dorsey’s Block failed to benefit from the buoyant mood in markets and slipped 0.4%. Profit from the company’s Cash App product dropped by 25% in the fourth quarter to $35 million, its earnings revealed on Thursday.

Grayscale’s bitcoin trust slipped below $12 last week, continuing a disappointing month for the fund. GTC’s discount to net asset value showed signs of arresting its decline throughout the week. Shares in the fund were trading at a discount of 45.8% to the value of the bitcoin in the fund, according to The Block data. 

© 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.

Popular Twitch streamer Kyle Jackson — known as Mongraal — received a bid of 999 ETH ($1.6 million) for the key NFT he received upon winning Yuga Labs’s Dookey Dash game.

Only it doesn’t look like that’ll be enough.

Mongraal originally placed the NFT for sale at 2,222 ETH ($3.6 million). Until today, the only bid that had come close was a 690 ETH ($1.1 million) bid from United Planets DAO. Yet when this bid came through, Mongraal played hard ball. “Double it and I’ll accept,” he tweeted.

The latest bid of 999 ETH comes from Memeland, a project started by the team that created 9GAG — a website for sharing memes. Memeland seems to be focused on creating a range of projects, from a Web3 version of TripAdvisor to a crypto staking service. The project owns 576 NFTs including eight Bored Apes, plus has created its own NFT collection called The Captainz.

While Memeland’s bid comes closer to the amount that Mongraal implied he would accept, it’s still nearly 30% shy. So far, the Twitch streamer has not addressed the new bid on Twitter.

Mongraal was awarded the key after clocking the highest score on the Dookey Dash game at the time of the deadline. As for what the key will unlock, that’s still very much unknown.

© 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.

Asian crypto lender Vauld received a further extension to its legal protection from creditors at a Singapore High Court hearing on Monday — albeit a shorter delay than requested.

The company now has until March 24 to explore options to ease its financial troubles, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Vauld, however, had sought protection through April 28, according to its latest affidavit dated Feb. 24 obtained by The Block. The firm’s previous creditor protection expires tomorrow. 

Vauld halted client withdrawals last July and had been in discussions with rival Nexo for a potential acquisition. Those talks ended after a dramatic tussle, according to Vauld’s Feb. 24 affidavit.

“Discussions with Nexo have been discontinued,” reads the affidavit. “Nexo was unable to provide sufficient information to substantiate its claim of solvency (would not agree to an exercise of financial due diligence) or adequately serve U.S.-based customers.”

Vauld is now in favor of another restructuring plan that involves a so-called scheme of arrangement. This comprises two options: either the company’s funds being placed under management or a distribution of the company’s funds to creditors through a managed wind down, according to another Vauld affidavit dated Feb. 21 obtained by The Block.

The company will likely go for the second option of “a managed wind down coupled with the option of conducting RDAs [reverse Dutch auctions] coinciding with the realization of illiquid assets,” the affidavit states. This option would provide creditors “liquidity opportunities at various stages,” Vauld argues.

Further extension

Vauld plans to apply for leave to convene a creditor meeting and a further moratorium extension to facilitate the scheme meeting process in April, before getting it approved and implemented in June and July, per the affidavit.

However, some of Vauld’s creditors are in favor of the company winding up via a court order or going into liquidation, according to the Feb. 24 affidavit. Vauld, on the other hand, thinks that its proposal offers “greater flexibility” as “creditors are able to choose when they require liquidity and to what extent, and whether to hold out for a greater prospective recovery than if they were to obtain liquidity in the short term via the RDA.” 

Vauld owes over $325 million to its creditors and its financial hole stands at over $65 million, according to its latest financial position disclosed in the Feb. 21 affidavit.

Vauld and its financial advisor, Kroll, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

© 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.

A group of large Japanese companies — including Mitsubishi, Fujitsu and banking giant Mizuho — agreed to work together to create a “Metaverse Economic Zone” for the country, with the aim of building open metaverse infrastructure. 

The group will be guided by the aim of former Square Enix executive and JP Games CEO Hajime Tabata to “update Japan through the power of games,” according to a release. 

Companies that signed the agreement will integrate their technologies and services, including gamification and fintech, to build the technical infrastructure. It is currently called Ryugukoku.

The new social infrastructure will be used for information dissemination, marketing and workstyle reform for domestic enterprises, the release said. Users will be able to engage in an RPG-like experience as they travel through different realms. The service could also be extended beyond Japan to other jurisdictions and governments. 

Mizuho will provide infrastructure for “metaverse coins,” Mitsubishi will give capacity for “web3-type metaverse financial functions” and Sompo Japan Insurance will work on insurance and risk policy development for the web3 era. 

The project echoes established players’ attempts to create open metaverse infrastructure that allows for interoperability – or the ability to port assets and characters across multiple virtual worlds run by different companies. The Open Metaverse Alliance (OMA) will be governed by a DAO and has been in progress since 2021. The big tech-heavy Metaverse Standards Forum, backed by the Khronos Group, is also attempting to accelerate the adoption of blanket rules for the online space. Its founding members included the likes of Meta and Microsoft.

© 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.

Mysten Labs co-founder and CEO Evan Cheng confirmed on The Scoop podcast that he is exploring a web3 venture fund.

“I’ve been working with a couple of veteran investors that have an interest in doing something better,” said Cheng on the podcast.

The Block previously reported that Cheng was seeking to secure more than $100 million for a web3 fund. Sources told The Block that Cheng would continue to operate as the CEO of Mysten Labs and that he is currently in conversations with both potential general partners and limited partners for the new fund.

Doing web3 venture better

“There are a lot of web3 funds but [investors] are looking for something that’s more not restricted to a particular ecosystem and that’s very aligned with LPs, and also have the support of people who really, really fundamentally understand web3 technology and products,” said Cheng on the podcast.

Cheng is one of those web3 tech experts. Prior to joining Mysten, he spent over a decade at Apple and worked as head of research and development at Meta’s crypto wallet Novi until September last year. All five of Mysten’s founders worked on Meta’s crypto initiatives. 

Sui, Mysten Labs’ Layer 1 blockchain, uses the Move programming language, which was developed at Meta. The blockchain has garnered significant interest from venture investors and raised a total of $336 million since late 2021, according to Crunchbase data. Yet it still hasn’t launched and remains in a testnet phase.

“It’s not a Mysten-only fund”

Cheng is adamant that if his venture capital plans come to fruition, they will not take the form of an ecosystem fund focused exclusively on the Sui blockchain.

“This is going to be a fund that Mysten will be friendly with, but it’s not a Mysten-only fund so to speak,” said Cheng on the podcast.

“From Mysten’s perspective, this is also better aligned with LPs, as opposed to an ecosystem fund which tend to ‘spray and pray,’ almost like a grant program for anybody who wants to build on the platform,” he said. “So that’s just a strategy we’re pursuing.”

Sui is just one of several chains competing for market share in an already crowded landscape of established blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana and Avalanche. Many of which have ecosystem funds to support growth and activity on their blockchains.

© 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 15 of Season 5 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Mysten Labs Co-Founder and CEO Evan Cheng.

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Feedback and revision requests can be sent to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.

Evan Cheng is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mysten Labs — the development team valued at over $2 billion that is behind the soon-to-be-released Sui blockchain.

In this episode, Cheng discusses the limitations of current blockchains in supporting complex consumer applications and explains how Sui plans to overcome this challenge with the help of the Move programming language, which was initially created at Facebook.

During this episode, Chaparro and Cheng also discuss:

• Why a vibrant developer ecosystem is the key to mass adoption
• How Sui could take blockchain gaming to the next level
• What advantages Move has over Solidity

This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Circle, Railgun, Flare Network

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 to learn more.

About Railgun
Railgun is a private DeFi solution on Ethereum, BSC, Arbitrum and Polygon. Shield any ERC-20 token and any NFT into a Private Balance and let Railgun’s zero-knowledge cryptography encrypt your address, balance and transaction history. You can also bring privacy to your project with Railgun SDK and be sure to check out Railgun with partner project Railway Wallet, also available on iOS and Android. Visit Railgun.org to find out more.

About Flare
Flare is an EVM-based Layer 1 blockchain designed to allow developers to build applications that can use data from other blockchains and the internet. By providing decentralized access to a wide variety of high-integrity data from other blockchains and the internet, Flare enables new use cases and monetization models. Build better and connect everything at Flare.Network.

© 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.

It may be crypto winter, but plenty of people are hodling. 

More than 50 million Americans own crypto, or 20% of the adult population, a recent survey commissioned by Coinbase found. That number has held steady for more than a year despite the tumult in digital assets.

Americans generally find the overall global financial system to be unfair, with 67% of respondents agreeing that it needs “major changes or a complete overhaul,” according to the survey, which was conducted by Morning Consult in February and polled 2,200 adults. 

Coinbase, which facilitates trading in a wide range of crypto assets, touts a user-base topping 100 million. Last year, the company reported an average of 8.8 million transacting users per month compared to the 8.4 million average in 2021.

The survey indicates that crypto ownership spans demographic and political groups, with 18% and 22% of Republican and Democratic respondents saying they own digital assets. Coinbase said it conducted the survey to illustrate the bipartisan makeup of crypto investors.

The results also showed that younger Americans are more interested in crypto than older generations, with Gen Z and Millennials leading the way in both current ownership of crypto and plans to purchase digital assets in the near future. 

“Americans recognize that financial infrastructure has fallen behind the rest of the economy, and they continue to have a strong interest in crypto,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in a statement. The interest comes despite the dramatic fall in cryptocurrency prices since 2021, and as U.S. regulators crack down on the industry.

The survey is part of a broader push by Coinbase to educate the masses about crypto. The firm plans to launch what it is describing as an “integrated public education campaign that aims to shed light on every day challenged faced by consumers and the role that crypto can play in a border effort to update the system.”

© 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.

Animoca Brands Chairman Yat Siu has a message for marketplaces: if you care about the health of the web3 ecosystem, you should stand behind creator royalties.  

The remarks, made in an interview at NFT Paris, follow a prolonged debate about the correct model for remunerating artists and creators in crypto. Last week, Blur, the NFT marketplace targeting pro traders, set its royalty fee — the levy paid back to creators on on-going sales of NFTs — at 0.5%. In response, OpenSea dropped its 2.5% fee to zero for a limited time. 

Animoca Brands is one of the most prolific investors in the space, having backed more than 380 web3-focused companies, according to Siu. Many of the companies the powerhouse invests in have a particular interest in making royalties work as a revenue stream. 

Siu’s feeling is that artists and NFT creators should be the ones in charge of their own destiny, with the ability to set terms without seeking permission from bigger players. 

“The reality is that creating allow lists, or block lists, is the beginning of centralisation — it’s the beginning of creating permissions,” Siu told The Block. “And there’s nothing wrong with thinking about permissions if you are the creator of it.” 

Not rewarding creators for their content but rather rewarding traders that create liquidity, as Blur does, is “kind of insulting” otherwise, he said. “It’s an infringement and it’s also rude.” 

Ultimately, Siu believes the next bull run will be “driven by culture,” and without royalties to feed back into companies and creators making the products which define the ecosystem, it will falter.  

Raising and deploying in a bear market 

Asked about ongoing efforts to raise money for Animoca’s latest fund, which will look to back later-stage companies, Siu said he thinks it will close in the first quarter, with a “number of different” parties involved.  

The investment shop — one of the biggest backers in crypto — had originally looked to raise up to $2 billion for a metaverse-focused fund, but scaled back ambitions by around half following the November collapse of FTX. In January, Siu told Bloomberg the fund would look to close at around $1 billion. 

Siu is confident that the company’s accounts, which it was granted an extension for filing at the end of last year, will be available in March. 

Meanwhile, there is already deal flow coming in with “significant investments” on the horizon, alongside the sometimes “three or four deals a week” that have been filtering through the financing powerhouse. 

“We have big conviction in the space. Valuations are lower, builders are better. If you can survive FTX you can survive anything,” he said, adding “To me this is a good time to invest. The founders who are still around are believers.” 

© 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.

Crypto hardware wallet Trezor has assumed control over silicon chip production for its flagship Model T product by facilitating the manufacture of its key component, the chip wrapper.

It said the move optimizes the production of its Model T device by eliminating its reliance on third parties throughout the complex manufacturing supply chain, according to a statement Monday. Trezor pioneered the world’s first bitcoin hardware wallet, the Model One.

The global chip shortage linked to geopolitical disruption and COVID-19 labor shortages exposed Trezor and other electronic manufacturers to unreliable component availability. Demand for its devices has also fluctuated according to market conditions and consumer interest in self-custody of crypto assets in the wake of the implosions of centralized platforms including FTX, Celsius and BlockFi — a period during which Trezor saw a 300% increase in hardware wallet sales.

By taking control of the chip production process, Trezor said it improved device security and reduced lead times to several months from two years. In turn, that helped eliminate shipping delays and protected customers from price swings connected with component supply and demand.

”The twists and turns in demand for hardware wallets and the silicon supply chain disruption that we’ve seen over the past few years was a problem that we needed to solve,” Trezor CFO Stepan Uherik said in the statement.

“By unpacking the process, identifying areas where we could take control, and collaborating with our partners in new ways, we’ve managed to make the manufacturing as agile as it can be. This means we can respond quickly as the cryptocurrency market shows signs of recovery. It also adds more design freedom for future products, helping us to sustain our leadership in the increasingly competitive hardware wallet space,” he added.

Last year, Tropic Square, a startup also backed by Satoshi Labs, the company behind Trezor, launched a secure open-source chip that provides cryptographic key generation, encryption, signing and user authentication called TROPIC01. Earlier this month, Trezor’s new CEO, Matej Zak, outlined plans to freshen its wallet lineup, including a software suite for mobile and a new flagship device.

Disclaimer: The former CEO and majority shareholder of The Block has disclosed a series of loans from former FTX and Alameda founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

© 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.

Yuzu Kano, the co-founder of Japanese crypto exchange BitFlyer, is reportedly planning to retake his old position as chief executive officer of the firm, according to a Bloomberg report.

Kano’s proposal to reassume the CEO role and pursue an initial public offering will be presented to shareholders next month in a bid to put to rest a dispute between shareholders and the company’s management, said Bloomberg.

Kano, who stepped aside from the role of CEO in 2019, owns 40% of the company, according to Bloomberg. Currently, he serves as the CEO of a BitFlyer subsidiary, BitFlyer Blockchain Inc.

An earlier bid to sell BitFlyer last year was defeated by Kano, who reportedly said that the Singapore-based fund ACA Partners “wanted to get rid of me, both as a shareholder as well as the representative of a subsidiary.”

Issues involving BitFlyer shareholders will be addressed at the forthcoming meeting according to BitFlyer’s current CEO, Hideki Hayashi, who Bloomberg said declined to address Kano’s statements.

© 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.