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Bored Ape Yacht Club’s experimental mint for Sewer Pass attracted more than $1.3 million worth of ETH in trading volume just one hour after the mint began.

The floor price for the new NFT project sits at 1.475 ETH ($2,272), and comes one day after it was delayed for a day. 

Every Bored Ape or Mutant Ape Yacht Club holder can mint a Sewer Pass between today and Feb. 8. Holding a Sewer Pass NFT lets users access an experimental mint called Dookey Dash, a skill-based game in which players can collect items worth differing points. Those with the highest score from Dookey Dash will get a key to be used later on in the Bored Ape Yacht Club roadmap, while all other Sewer Pass holders can get access to an event called “The Summoning.” 

In all, Dookey Dash is how Bored Ape creators, Yuga Labs, is attempting to gamify the NFT minting process, The Block previously reported. 

© 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 Central African Republic (CAR) has set up a task force to explore modalities for integrating its national crypto, called the Sango coin, into the country’s economy, according to a statement from the government on Tuesday.

CAR’s new crypto committee will work toward drafting a law on the usage of cryptocurrencies in the country. The task force will also submit guidelines for asset tokenization in the country.

The 15 members of the committee were selected from several government ministries including mines and geology, rural development and town planning.

CAR became the first African nation to create a national crypto when it launched Sango coin in July last year. The land-locked central African nation also legalized bitcoin in 2022, becoming the second country to do so after El Salvador.

Part of the country’s crypto adoption drive involves the tokenization of its minerals. CAR is home to vast deposits of oil and gas, diamonds, gold and copper, among other natural resources. Despite this, it ranks as one of the poorest and least-developed nations in the world. CAR President Faustin Archange Touadera has previously said tokenization of the country’s minerals could create new investment opportunities.

© 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.

Genesis Global Capital creditors are negotiating a prepackaged bankruptcy plan with the firm, two sources familiar with the talks told The Block. 

Creditors like the Winklevoss twins’ Gemini would agree to a forbearance period — in most of the payments — of between one and two years under the prepackaged bankruptcy plan, according to one of the sources. In exchange, creditors will receive cash payments and equity in Genesis parent company Digital Currency Group, the source said.

Gemini formed an ad hoc committee late last year in an effort to coordinate efforts with other creditors and advocate together for a resolution after Genesis halted withdrawals on its platform. The creditor committee has been privately negotiating for the past few weeks with Genesis in an effort to finalize a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection plan ahead of filing.

Publicly, Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss has been feuding with Barry Silbert, the head of Genesis parent Digital Currency Group. He’s accused him of comingling funds at the crypto conglomerate, negotiating in bad faith and, in his most recent open-letter, insisted he step down as DCG’s top executive. 

Genesis, DCG and Gemini didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

What it means 

The idea when filing Chapter 11 is to create a window of time and space in which the business and its creditors can come together to save the underlying economic enterprise, according to Vincent Buccola, who researches and teaches about reorganization and bankruptcy at Wharton Business School.

A prepackaged filing involves the debtor negotiating the terms of its plan and soliciting votes from creditors prior to the actual filing with the goal of speeding up the time it takes to emerge from bankruptcy protection. 

Genesis halted withdrawals and new loan originations from its lending affiliate on Nov. 16 in the wake of FTX’s collapse. Genesis Global Trading’s derivatives business had $175 million stuck in FTX after its demise. The firm had previously been impacted by the collapse of the hedge fund firm 3AC. 

Investment and financial services firm Houlihan Lokey presented a liquidity resolution plan on behalf of the creditor committee for Genesis and DCG in December. 

The firm told clients on Jan. 4 it was working toward a solution for the troubled borrowing and lending unit but that it needed more time to do so. 

© 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.

Virtual land developer LandVault, which has worked with global brands like Mastercard, L’Oreal and Heineken, announced it has signed with top talent agency Creative Artists Agency. 

CAA will advise LandVault “on talent and brand-led metaverse opportunities” and explore “opportunities for newly created” intellectual property, the metaverse land developer’s representative said by email.

LandVault has worked on more than 200 “metaverse activations” and has developed virtual land for platforms such as Roblox, Sandbox and Decentraland, the company said.

Signing with one of Hollywood’s most powerful dealmakers across sports and entertainment could help LandVault weather the bear market roiling the crypto space. Average land sale prices have plummeted since early last year.

LandVault CEO Sam Huber is nevertheless optimistic. “As we spend more and more time online, the metaverse is going to become an increasingly popular entertainment destination,” he said in a statement. “With this new relationship, we are excited for the opportunity to work with one of the world’s top agencies and their clients as they enter the metaverse.”

Under CAA Chief Metaverse Officer Joanna Popper the agency also represents web3 clients like NFT creators Micah Johnson and Mack Flavelle.

© 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.

Rarible’s customized NFT marketplaces are coming to Polygon.

The NFT marketplace rolled out new services for NFT collection creators that will allow them to make their own customized marketplaces for free.

Similar to services it already provides for ERC-721 and ERC-1155 NFTs, the move comes amid growing interest in the Ethereum sidechain for both NFT and gaming projects following the success of Reddit’s Collectible Avatars.

The social media company’s project on the chain launched in July. Over six million wallets hold one or more of their avatars, according to analytics platform Dune.

Number of wallets holding Reddit Collectible Avatars. Source: Polygon_Analytics via Dune

It also experienced a second surge in activity last month with the surprise launch of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s NFT collection.

The Polygon play

Alongside Polygon’s high-profile collaborations with large corporations such as Starbucks, Meta and Nike, these projects have been credited with driving NFT adoption among more mainstream audiences.

“We’ve seen the Polygon NFT market gain tremendous traction. When discussing which chain would be next for our marketplace builder tool, Polygon was the clear choice,” said Alexei Falin, co-founder and CEO of Rarible.

Other brands have also taken note and either extended onto the sidechain or migrated entirely. One of Solana’s top NFT projects, y00ts announced it would bridge to Polygon. Its sister project DeGods, will move to Ethereum.

In November, Magic Eden extended support for Polygon NFTs in November as part of a move that will boost its ability to work with gaming projects on the 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.

The founder of cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato was arrested and charged with processing $700 million in illicit funds, part of the Justice Department’s efforts to take down a “money laundering engine” which it says “fueled a high-tech axis of cryptocrime.”

Anatoly Legkodymov was arrested in Miami on Tuesday night for allegedly operating a money transmitting business that did not meet anti-money laundering requirements and moved illicit funds. The 40-year-old Russian national, who lives in China, will be arraigned in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Wednesday afternoon.

“Overnight, the department worked with key partners here and abroad to disrupt Bitzlato, the China-based money laundering engine that fueled a high-tech axis of cryptocrime,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said at a press conference. “Whether you break our laws from China or Europe – or abuse our financial system from a tropical island — you can expect to answer for your crimes inside a United States courtroom.”

Officials said Bitzlato worked with the Hydra Market, an anonymous online marketplace for narcotics, stolen financial information, fraudulent identification documents and money laundering services. The DOJ claims Hydra users exchanged more than $700 mllion in crypto with Bitzlato until it was shut down last year. 

The Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and French authorities are taking concurrent enforcement actions in the Bitzlato case, according to the press release. 

© 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, ether and other crypto prices recovered as the U.S. Department of Justice announced an enforcement action against a little-known exchange called Bitzlato.

Bitcoin was trading around $21,000 by 12:15 p.m. EST today, up over 3% in the past hour, according to TradingView data. 

BTCUSD chart by TradingView

The leading cryptocurrency by market cap fell by about $1,000 after the DOJ and Treasury said they would announce a joint enforcement action against an international crypto entity today. 

Ether showed similar signs of recovery, racing toward $1,600, having fallen to about $1,500 as the DOJ’s announcement spooked crypto markets. 

ETHUSD chart by TradingView

© 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 Giving Block, a crypto donations marketplace, trimmed its workforce, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter told The Block.

The Miami-based company laid off around ten people, or about 12% of its workforce, in three small rounds since November when FTX collapsed, the sources said. A spokesperson for The Giving Block confirmed the number of job cuts.

“Like many other fintech and crypto companies right now, we’re in the unfortunate position to have to make some really tough decisions regarding restructuring our team,” the spokesperson said. “We’ve reorganized internally and reworked budgets in order to limit the number of layoffs, while doing what’s best for our staff and the future success of The Giving Block.”

The Giving Block was founded in 2018 and connects crypto donors with over 1,000 nonprofit organizations. In March 2022, U.S.-listed payment company Shift4 acquired The Giving Block with an upfront payment of $54 million and a potential payment of up to $246 million in cash and stock. The Giving Block, however, still maintains autonomy and continues to operate independently, the spokesperson said.

In 2021, The Giving Block processed around $70 million in crypto donations, according to its annual report. The platform had projected to process $1 billion in crypto donations in 2022, and the spokesperson said the 2022 annual report will be released next month.

The job cuts make The Giving Block the latest crypto firm to slash headcount as the industry continues to grapple with collapses and the bear market. Other companies cutting jobs in recent weeks include Coinbase, Crypto.com, Blockchain.com, ConsenSys and Genesis.

© 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.

Blockchain software company ConsenSys has laid off about 11% percent of its staff.

The round of cuts affected a total of 96 employees, the firm said in a statement on Wednesday, confirming reports from last week.

“Our current bear market also coincides with a very challenging macroeconomic environment driven by surging inflation, lagging economic activity, and increased geopolitical unrest,” said ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin.

Going forward, ConsenSys will be streamlining the company and focusing its “business on the core value drivers,” such as a MetaMask end-user and developer platform and Infura’s developer platform.

“Some of the poorly behaved CeFi actors in our space have brought a reckoning on themselves which has cast a broad pall on our ecosystem that we will all need to work through,” Lubin also said. “Ultimately this will be a net positive for the ecosystem.”

© 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’s price fell sharply late Thursday morning after the U.S. Departments of Justice and Treasury said they would announce a joint enforcement action against an international crypto entity today. 

The price fell more than $800, reaching $20,777, according to data from TradingView. The price had earlier reached a daily high of $21,650.

Bitcoin’s price has regained some of that ground and is trading hands at about $20,900 as of press time.

BTCUSD Chart by TradingView

Still, bitcoin’s price is well above the roughly $16,600 level where it began the year.

BTCUSD Chart by TradingView

© 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.