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As the Voyager auction closes its sixth day with no reported winner, the Twitter account tasked with keeping customers in the loop appears to have been suspended.

As of late afternoon on Tuesday, the profile page affiliated with the Committee of Unsecured Creditors, @VoyagerUCC, contained a notice saying the account had been suspended. Jason Raznick, founder of Voyager creditor Benzinga and a member of the Committee of Unsecured Creditors said he is aware of the suspension and the committee’s counsel, the law office of McDermott, Will & Emery, are looking into the issue.

“Even though the account may not be live, we are still hard at work, trying to move this process forward,” said Raznick.

Twitter and counsel for the Voyager UCC did not immediately respond to request for comment. 

The Voyager Unsecured Creditor Committee represents the interests of customers and creditors in the bankruptcy process. Since Voyager entered Chapter 11 proceedings in July, the group has been the main point of contact between those seeking the return of their funds and the court. The committee has held public calls with Voyager leadership, “Ask Me Anything” forums on Reddit and regularly tweeted updates on the case.

The committee plays a major role in the bankruptcy process, which will determine who gets paid out of the assets left from the broke company. 

The type of proposal Voyager wants at this point in the process remains unclear.  The company has fought with crypto exchange FTX for publicly circulating a proposal for the exchange to provide early liquidity to Voyager customers, and asserting that FTX’s offer was more generous than others. Counsel called the proposal a “low ball offer” and sought to dispel notions that FTX was a frontrunner in the bidding process. 

Since the auction began in the offices of law firm Kirkland & Ellis last week, reports have circulated that Binance is among the parties attempting to lodge a proposal and the firm has faced pushback over concerns that the U.S. government would have qualms with the transaction. 

© 2022 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.

Almost all bitcoin mining stocks fell Tuesday along with the value of the cryptocurrency, which at market close was priced at around $19,000.

 Bitcoin has mostly been trading below $20,000 for the past month, with only a few exceptions.

Cipher Mining’s stock fell 9.82%, followed by Stronghold Digital Mining (-9.30%), Core Scientific (-8.43%) and Northern Data (-8.17%).

Here’s how crypto mining companies performed on Tuesday, Sept. 20:

© 2022 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.

Spice VC’s second venture fund, which is targeted at $250 million, is expected to close mid-fourth quarter, the firm’s founder told The Block.

The target value is five times that of its first fund, which closed in 2018.

Earlier this month, Spice VC, focused on Blockchain and tokenization ecosystem, said it sold part of its holdings in two of its most successful companies — Blockdaemon and Securitize.  It did so in order to fund a payout to more than 400 of its long-term investors, known as limited partners, expected to be executed in the fourth quarter. That’s the second payout this year.

That fund already has paid back 82% of its investors’ initial investment, a rarity in the space, according to founder and managing partner Tal Elyashiv. The average time for a startup to reach an exit can be more than eight years, according to a Venturebeat report.

“This is unheard of in early stage funds in general,” Elyashiv said in an interview today. “The multiple on funds invested is close to six. That’s the value of the fund versus money invested in the fund, so this is obviously extremely helpful in raising SPiCE II.”

The strategy of the second fund, launched in May, is similar to its predecessor – focusing on companies building key components of the blockchain ecosystem. But because the industry has progressed, the verticals have expanded from being largely financial to everything from gaming and insurance to supply chain management and healthcare.

Exact investments haven’t yet been pinpointed as “the good companies raise much faster than in the past,” said Elyashiv, who previously was Capital One’s CIO. “Where in the past VCs would take several months to make a decision on investments, now opportunities are not open for that long.”

That said, VCs are being more wary with their money.

“Where herd mentality played a bigger role a year ago, VCs are more cautious now, doing much deeper due diligence and want to be more sure about what they’re investing in,” Elyashiv said. That’s because some companies this year ended up “too short in terms of runway and got hurt really badly in being able to raise next rounds. VCs are much more leery of that right now.”

A third fund will only come into shape once the firm has the capacity to focus on one.

© 2022 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.

Web3 finance platform Integral has closed an $8.5 million funding round led by Electric Capital. 

Integral, which describes itself as a “real-time finance platform for web3 enterprises,” estimates that its clients have processed $5 billion in “crypto accounting transactions” in the past five months using its tools. 

“Real-time finance is essential for web3 companies,” Integral founder Gui Laliberte said in a company statement and Twitter thread. “In web2, insights come 7-30 days after the month-end. In web3, 30 days could be the difference between owning $10 million and $5 million worth of crypto assets.”

Electric Capital has invested in an array of web3 projects including Celo, dYdX, Kraken and Magic Eden, among others.

“Real-time finance is essential for any serious project in web3 and for any web2 company that is starting to explore web3,” Electric Capital Co-founder Avichal Garg said in a statement. “All companies and protocols will need fast, scalable financial tools to stay ahead of the competition.” 

Other investors participating in the raise included former Coinbase chief technology officer Balaji Srinivasan, Anchorage Digital co-founder Diogo Mónica and Roham Gharegozlou, CEO of Dapper Labs.

Earlier today, another web3 accounting platform called Tres separately announced it had raised $7.6 million in a seed round led by Boldstart Ventures.

© 2022 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.

On Twitter, crypto influencer Ian Balina expressed enthusiasm over a public legal fight with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

“Excited to take this fight public. This frivolous SEC charge sets a bad precedent for the entire crypto industry. If investing in a private sale with a discount is a crime, the entire crypto VC space is in trouble,” tweeted Balina, who claimed that he turned down a settlement with the agency “so they have to prove themselves.”

Balina previously called the agency’s action unfounded in a series of tweets on September 19, where he stated it “is the first time a private pre-sale purchase of a digital asset token has been accused of being “compensation” in exchange for publicity.” Balina published a full statement on his website.

The SEC on Monday filed charges against Balina over involvement in an initial coin offering for the “no-code” development startup, Sparkster. The U.S. securities regulator is seeking fines and disgorgement of financial gains. 

© 2022 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 ink is dry on a five-year agreement that will see T-Mobile fill in service gaps on the blockchain-based Nova Labs’ Helium network to offer U.S. nationwide 5g powered by Nova Labs, reports CoinDesk.

Though terms have not been disclosed, the agreement will allow Nova Labs to offer Helium subscribers mobile products services that use both networks, a press release said. The companies said the announcement coincides with the release of Helium Mobile from Nova Labs, “which will enable subscribers to earn crypto rewards for using the network.”

Helium network provides access to a decentralized grid powered by user-maintained IoT-driven wireless hotspots. A current map of available 5g coverage on the Helium network shows dense coverage in some areas and wide gaps elsewhere.

The current gaps in Helium’s hotspot-based coverage will be filled with T-Mobile’s network, Boris Renski, general manager of wireless at Nova Labs told Coindesk in an interview. He acknowledged that coverage is “not perfect” with “lots of dead spots.”

“But with the model that we are pursuing, it’s important to understand we are not looking to replace large mobile operators with our network. We are building a network that could be a complement to the existing macro network of the operators,” Renski said.

Subscribers might see a beta launch of the service as soon as the first quarter of 2023, according to Nova Labs.

In July Helium on its website had claimed that it is used by companies Lime and Salesforce website, but no such partnerships exist, according to reports from Mashable, and The Verge.

T-Mobile did not reply to The Block’s requests for comment.

© 2022 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.

Liquid staking startup Alluvial has added the cryptocurrency exchange platform Kraken to its independent industry consortium, announcing it will be known as Liquid Collective.

Kraken joins a growing list of industry participants — such as Kiln, BENQI and Acala Foundation — helping to build, secure and support the enterprise-grade, multi-chain liquid staking protocol. The aim is to establish an industry standard, enabling trading venues and custodians to offer liquid staking to institutional customers with robust KYC/AML, monitoring and reporting.

“Liquid staking grew from 1% to around 30% of the Ethereum staking market segment just this year alone. Demand is growing rapidly and institutional interest is emerging,” said Tim Ogilvie, product director at Kraken. “There is a need for standardization and, as a result, an opportunity for Kraken to help build the most secure enterprise-grade liquid staking standard.”

“Proof-of-stake blockchains make up more than half of the entire crypto market cap, yet, there hasn’t been a viable option for token holders to participate in liquid staking,” said Matt Leisinger, CEO and co-founder of Alluvial. “With the upcoming launch of Liquid Collective, token holders will gain seamless access to enterprise-grade liquid staking. This effort can only be accomplished through true collaboration across the ecosystem. We’re proud to be working with some of the best teams in web3 to launch Liquid Collective.”

Liquid staking has become a popular alternative to traditional staking, where users lock up their tokens on proof-of-stake blockchains to contribute to their security and earn rewards. Liquid staking also provides users with a derivative crypto token, representing the equivalent amount of an underlying staked asset, such as stETH, Lido’s liquid variant of staked ETH. 

Rather than staking tokens that can have lengthy unlocking periods, liquid staking offers stakers greater liquidity, enabling them to transfer and use the derivative crypto tokens to generate additional yield in other DeFi protocols. These tokens will be known as LsETH on the Liquid Collective protocol.

The news represents Kraken’s latest move into liquid staking services, after having acquired the non-custodial staking platform Staked in December 2021. Staked will also join as a validator on Liquid Collective, alongside Coinbase Cloud and Figment.

© 2022 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.

Correlation between ether (ETH) and the Nasdaq composite is closing in on highs reached in May of this year, affecting crypto-native traders.

The high correlation between ether and the Nasdaq has made it harder for crypto-native participants to utilize their edge — a deep understanding of on-chain dynamics — according to Cumberland’s Jonah Van Bourg.

Van Bourg went on to note in a Twitter thread on Tuesday that many of these crypto-specific traders have a tendency to trade in U.S. dollars rather than using crypto-to-crypto pairs.

“A vestige, perhaps, of the days when digital assets were wholly decorrelated from the broader world of low-vol post-GFC finance,” Van Bourg said, alluding to the period following the global financial crash in 2008.

Disconnecting from this could be crucial to surviving the crypto winter, he said. Specifically, Van Bourg was pointing to ETH/BTC, which is trading at local lows at present but could be set to grind higher, similar to what happened following two of the last three bitcoin block reward reductions. 

Van Bourg noted the hot inflation data last week in his thread and macro factors are set to drive prices again this week as the U.S. Federal Reserve is set to announce its plan for the Fed funds rates tomorrow — with most market participants predicting a 75 basis point increase, while some suggest 100 basis points isn’t off the table. 

Goldman Sachs noted in a research report this week that the bond market is pricing in a 25% chance of a 100bps hike for Wednesday’s meeting, with analysts expecting “50bp hikes in November and December, taking the funds rate to 4-4.25% at year end.”

© 2022 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.

OpenSea will begin supporting the Layer 2 scaling network Arbitrum on Wednesday, according to a tweet thread from the NFT marketplace.

“This is a first step in building our goal of a web3 future where people have access to the NFTs they want on the chains they prefer,” OpenSea said. 

Arbitrum is among the Ethereum scaling networks known as a “rollup.” As previously reported, Arbitrum recently upgraded its network to a new chain, known as Nitro. 

OpenSea has previously moved to integrate with Layer 2 protocols, having connected with Immutable X last year. 

© 2022 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.

Volmex Labs, a crypto volatility protocol backed by investments from Alameda Research and CMS Holdings, launched two volatility indexes for bitcoin and ether on Tuesday. 

The firm’s product hopes to emulate the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX), by generating a 30-day forward projection of volatility.

The Volmex Implied Volatility index, or the VIV, measures a constant 30-day forward projected of volatility of bitcoin and ether options markets, using real-time crypto call and put options.

The firm uses multiple data sources including Deribit and OKX in its projections, combined these two exchanges account for over 90% of the current bitcoin open interest in options and almost 100% of the ether options open interest – although the CME is set to launch ether options. 

LedgerPrime Chief Investment Officer Shiliang Tang said his firm is excited by the product and the “gap it will fill in the market by being a pure play volatility tracker.” Tang’s firm is an investor in Volmex, along with Robert Leshner’s Robot Ventures, CMS Holdings, and Orthogonal Trading.

At the time of writing, Volmex had just over $950 million in total value locked on the protocol. 

© 2022 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.