FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Coinshares saw its biggest inflows last week since July as total assets under management rose 43% from a November low.

Digital asset investment products saw $117 million in inflows last week, of which $116 million was bitcoin. Total assets under management climbed to $28 billion, up 43% from November.

Multi-asset investment products saw outflows for the ninth consecutive week totaling $6.4 million, suggesting investors prefer select investments, the firm said.

© 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.

Bitcoin miner Gryphon mined 71 bitcoin-equivalent coins in December, it said in an operational update after announcing plans to go public last week.

The miner had an average hashrate of 0.625 EH/s, a 13% month-over-month decrease, in part due to the winter storm that led to seven days of full or partial curtailment.

“Despite this, Gryphon’s bitcoin efficiency for December increased by 7% from November and remained tied as the top performing operation for the month,” it said in a statement.

The company has a 22.5% net operating profit interest royalty with a third party, whose reported hashing power is around 0.37 EH/s, it said.

Gryphon will go public via a deal to buy Akerna Corp. in an all-stock transaction.

© 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 prices slid alongside the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, while the Dow traded in the green.

Bitcoin fell 2.1% to $23,220 around 10:15 a.m. EST after reaching its highest level since August, according to TradingView data.

BTCUSD chart by TradingView

Ether declined 1.4% to around $1,592. BNB fell 2.8%, while Cardano’s ADA was also down 1.2%. Polygon’s MATIC declined by over 6% in the past 24 hours after rising last week.

Dog-themed memecoins also declined, with dogecoin and shiba inu down 3.2% and 2.5%, respectively. 

Bitcoin is “on track for its best January performance in a decade, indicative of a sharp reversal in bearish sentiment that negatively impacted prices for much of 2022,” according to crypto economist Ryan Shea of Trakx.

Key to sustaining this bullish trend, he said, will be the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting this Wednesday, with the Fed expected to raise rates by 25 basis points, “the smallest hike this tightening cycle.” 

If confirmed, Shea said “this would further support the ‘soft-landing’ narrative which has been gaining traction in both tradfi and crypto markets over recent weeks.”

However, if Fed chair Jerome Powell’s comments indicate that there are more than two 25-basis point hikes upcoming, this could mean that a “more sustained reversal in crypto prices is on the cards,” he said.

Crypto stocks

Silvergate shares soared 12% to around $15 by 10:00 a.m., according to Nasdaq data, while most other crypto stocks fell slightly.

Jack Dorsey’s Block shed 0.9% to trade around $83, while MicroStrategy dropped 0.5% and Coinbase dropped 1.5%.

Michael Saylor’s MSTR fell 0.1%.

© 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 exchange Binance and payments provider Mastercard are teaming up once again, this time to launch a prepaid Binance card in Brazil.

The card will enable Binance users with valid national identification to make purchases and pay bills with cryptocurrencies, according to a company release.

“The prepaid card is part of the ongoing efforts toward evolving the bridge between existing financial services and the growing crypto ecosystem,” Binance said.

The card is issued by Dock and is in beta testing with plans for it to be widely released in the coming weeks.

Last year, Binance rolled out a prepaid card with Mastercard in Argentina.

“Brazil is an extremely relevant market for Binance, and we will continue to invest in new services for local users, as well as contributing to the development of the blockchain and crypto ecosystem in the country,” said Guilherme Nazar, general manager at Binance for Brazil.

Latin America was the seventh largest cryptocurrency market in the Chainalysis index last year, with citizens of Latin American countries receiving $562 billion in crypto in the year through June 2022, a 40% jump. Interest in cryptocurrencies has flourished in places like Argentina where inflation nearly topped 100% in 2022. Cryptocurrencies are frequently also used for remittances between countries in an effort to avoid capital controls and costly transfer fees.

Binance plans to continue to expand the card into new markets. Several crypto exchanges have rolled out card partnerships including Blockchain.com and Crypto.com. Collapsed crypto exchange FTX planned to roll out a Visa debit card out to more than 40 countries not long before its bankruptcy filing. Visa terminated the partnership as the exchange filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and said the U.S. debit card program would be wound down by the issuer. 

© 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 English Premier League announced a four-year licensing partnership with Sorare, a French startup for fantasy sports gaming company.

The deal allows aficionados of the English Premier League to build teams with licensed digital card players to compete in Sorare’s digital game. The cooperation will let fans buy and sell digital collectibles for one of the most-watched sports leagues.

“Sorare’s digital cards and innovative online game represent a new way for [fans] to feel closer to the Premier League whether they are watching in the stadium or from around the world,” Richard Masters, chief executive of the Premier League, said in a statement. The Premier League was already considering the deal in October, SkyNews first reported, at the time valued at £30 million ($37 million) per year.

For Paris-based Sorare, the move marks the third major sports partnership, with the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball already signed up. The Ethereum-based NFT platform secured $680 million in funding to reach a $4.3 billion valuation in 2021.

© 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 companies such as Alchemy, Blockdaemon and Nexo backed crypto security firm Hypernative in a $9 million seed round. 

The round, led by Boldstart Ventures and IBI Tech Fund, also saw participation from CMT Digital and Borderless, per a press release. The startup began raising funding after it was founded in March and closed the round around May, according to founder and CEO Gal Sagie in an interview.

Hypernative’s platform monitors on and off-chain data after a protocol is deployed to a blockchain to predict any potential threat of an exploit in real-time. Through this, Sagie claims that the platform can detect symptoms of a potential hack to warn clients before it occurs.

“I think the major thing we have unlocked is that there is no post-deployment monitoring and real-time prevention of hacks and exploits,” said Sagie. 

He explained that most security measurements currently in crypto are based around a manual audit process that doesn’t cover changes in risk that could occur post-deployment.  

Exploit monitoring

After retrospectively analyzing the recent hack of web3 music streaming service Audius, Sagi says that its system would have given a warning 17 minutes before the attack. The frequency of crypto hacks accelerated rapidly last year, topping $3 billion in total funds lost, according to a Chainalysis report.

Sagie said that Hypernative is currently targeting crypto hedge funds along with blockchain networks and protocols themselves. It’s already scooped up a few funds managing “hundreds of millions of dollars” as clients, he claimed. 

© 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.

VitaDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization that funds research projects in the field of longevity science, closed a $4.1 million raise. 

The venture arm of Pfizer invested in the token round alongside Shine Capital, L1 Digital and Balaji Srinivasan among others, according to a press release. The round closed this month, said Ion. 

© 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 4 of Season 5 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn.

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

Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., newly elected House GOP whip and a member of the House Financial Services Committee, has long been at the forefront of shaping the conversation regarding the regulation of cryptocurrencies and digital assets in the United States.

In this episode of The Scoop, Rep. Emmer provides an overview of how Congressional attitudes towards crypto are shifting in light of the tumultuous events of 2022, and how the new asset class is gaining support across the political spectrum.

According to Emmer, the Congressional Blockchain Caucus has been spreading the message that the collapse of FTX is not representative of the broader crypto industry:

“We have been pushing back on this nonsense that FTX is indicative of crypto. It’s not. It is as old as finance, it is centralized finance, and the abuses that happen when you have an opaque operation with a very small group of people that are running it on the inside.”

Congressional inquiries regarding regulators’ lack of oversight in the case of FTX have come from both sides of the aisle, with Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres (NY-15) officially calling on the US Government Accountability Office to investigate the SEC. 

Despite representing opposing political parties, Rep. Emmer explains that crypto is one issue where he and Rep. Torres see eye-to-eye:

“Ritchie Torres and Tom Emmer could not be more different — where we come from, our lives, from what I know — and yet, we could not be more alike when it comes to this issue of crypto.”

During this episode, Chaparro and Rep. Emmer also discuss:

• Why digital assets empower the individual
• How the SEC could have prevented FTX
• What crypto regulation to expect in 2023

Disclaimer: Beginning in 2021, Michael McCaffrey, the former CEO and majority owner of The Block, took a series of loans from founder and former FTX and Alameda CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. McCaffrey resigned from the company in December 2022 after failing to disclose those transactions.

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

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 monetisation models. Build better and connect everything at Flare.Network

About NordVPN
NordVPN is essential for keeping crypto transactions secure, hiding your IP address and protecting your devices from hackers and data theft. Get premium cyber-security on up to 6 devices for the price of a cup of coffee a month. Get your exclusive NordVPN Deal and try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee: Visit https://nordvpn.com/thescoop

© 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.

Uniswap won the web3 dev gaming competition, 0xMonaco: Battle of Titans.

The event, run by Starkware-based on-chain gaming ecosystem MatchboxDAO and streamed on Twitch, featured teams from web3 companies including Ledger, Polygon, Uniswap, NEAR, Yield Guild Games, Chainlink, OKX and Bybit.

Uniswap, Polygon and security auditors OtterSec made it to the finals. The three competed in a hotly contested final with Uniswap emerging as the eventual winner.

Developers competed in a Mario Kart-style racing game rewarding technical abilities where each team’s cars are a smart contract. MatchboxDAO described it as a web3 version of “chess and poker.”

“I’ve been in the Ethereum ecosystem since 2016. This is actually my first experience with a web3 game like this,” said Daniel Gretzke, technical lead of smart contracts at Polygon Labs.

Dev games

While there is a trend towards web3 games only having assets on-chain rather than the gameplay itself, 0xMonaco is a fully on-chain game.

Teams need to create a strategy for each car before the race that involves properly managing resources for accelerating, firing shells, super shells or buying a shield, each of which costs coins. Players are allocated 17,500 coins at the beginning of the game.

In addition to coding skills, competitors also need to anticipate what other players are planning.

“I enjoy this type of competition because it allows you to show your skills,” said Jonathan Giamporcaro, a blockchain research and development engineer at Ledger.

It’s not the only web3 game that allows devs to flex their coding muscles though. Giamporcaro told The Block he’s also a fan of Node Guardians, a platform for web3 builders which offers a range of coding challenges.

Uniswap’s team said it would open-source its winning code for 0xMonaco.

© 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 could be a bad week for former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried if he loses access to his encrypted messaging apps, while it could be a good week for Bored Ape holders enjoying the new Yuga Labs video game.

Alongside those, a rift is opening in the Secret Network community that may lead to big changes in the way its Secret Foundation works.

Shutting off SBF’s comms

One of the ongoing developments in the collapse of FTX is now focused on former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s ability to speak to potential witnesses — which U.S. prosecutors want to shut down.

Prosecutors claimed that Bankman-Fried spoke with a current witness, suggesting they could “vet things with each other.” He also messaged Ryne Miller, the current general counsel of FTX US, who officials contend may be a trial witness.

Bankman-Fried’s current bond imposes no limitations in terms of contacting prospective witnesses. As such, the former CEO spoke with other current and former FTX employees through email and via Signal, according to court documents.

Prosecutors are angling for a ruling to stop him from speaking to current and prospective witnesses via encrypted messaging apps.

Secret drama out in the open

A bit of a community rift has opened in the Secret community, with Secret Labs making accusations against the Secret Foundation and its founder Tor Bair. Both companies are focused on supporting the privacy-focused Secret Network.

The main one is that Bair cashed out some secret tokens to the tune of a couple of million dollars in late 2021, a claim that Bair readily acknowledged as accurate. He said that this information had been previously disclosed to Secret Labs. He noted that the tokens had finished vesting and that employee compensation was not publicly disclosed.

Another claim was that the Secret Foundation had lost $250,000 in a mishandled OTC trade. On this part, Bair had previously disclosed this issue in December on the same governance forum, although he said the amount was around $200,000. This disclosure did come more than a year after incident.

Both entities have acknowledged there need to be changes in the way the foundation works, we may see changes along those lines in the weeks to come.

The race for high scores

Bored Ape holders are filled with excitement this week as Yuga Labs’ newly launched game has taken off.

Called Dookey Dash, gamers fly down sewage pipes avoiding obstacles. To play the game you need a Sewer Pass, which is an NFT that can be bought on secondary marketplaces including OpenSea. They are available to claim for Bored Ape and Mutant Ape holders.

So far, the game has been played more than 4 million times and trading of the NFTs has reached $40 million in volume.

The key thing gamers are competing for is a high score. On Feb. 8, each high score will become permanently bound to each Sewer Pass NFT. Some traders are speculating that there will be prizes handed out to the highest-ranked passes. With this in mind, gamers are doing everything they can to get an edge as next week we will see this competition build toward a conclusion.

© 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.