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Crypto’s largest speculators have a new option to trade decentralized bitcoin derivatives. 

On Tuesday, Solana-based DeFi protocol Hxro announced the launch of its decentralized platform to trade several different types of bitcoin perpetual futures using USDC as collateral. As part of the beta launch, certain white-listed trading firms and individuals will be able to trade bitcoin against USDC in futures contracts that expire on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. The project plans to launch derivatives tied to ether and SOL in the coming weeks. 

Backed by the likes of Jump Crypto and Alameda Research, Hxro is looking to onboard similar trading firms deploying complex derivatives strategies as early adopters of the new decentralized derivatives. According to Hxro founder Dan Gunsberg, trading such a contract on a decentralized venue provides real-time levels of transparency and risk-mitigation that don’t exist in a centralized market. 

“Even in some of the more progressive systems in the centralized world you still have a centralized point of failure,” said Gunsberg, a veteran of the derivatives market who cut his teeth trading interest rate futures on the Chicago Board of Trade. “Having a primitive layer for derivatives helps to mitigate any risk — not all risks — of a systemic event.”

Hxro announced in November the close of a $34 million funding round led by SIG FT Investments, an investing subsidiary of Susquehanna International Group. Other investors include trading firm Genesis and investment firms CoinFund and Blockchain Capital. 

In addition to operating its own marketplace, Hxro has built an underpinning derivatives protocol that can serve as foundation exchange and settlement infrastructure for a wide range of applications, ranging from sports books to metaverse games to decentralized exchanges. 

“Effectively anybody will be able to come and create any type of derivative product on Hxro Network’s protocol,” Gunsberg told The Block in a recent podcast recording. “The core protocol is something called ‘Dexterity,’ and the idea of it is that it’s really just the generalized architecture for the payoff function and the accounting mechanisms of a derivative.”

Decentralized derivatives make up a tiny fraction of overall crypto trading, with the decentralized exchange (DEX) to centralized exchange (CEX) trade volume ratio sitting at 1.4% in August. 

© 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.

MicroStrategy added an additional 301 bitcoin worth around $6 million to its balance sheet, it was revealed on Tuesday.

Founder and former CEO Michael Saylor shared the news on Twitter, with the filing revealing the purchases were made between Aug. 2 and Sept. 19.

This is the firm’s first purchase since June when it bought 480 bitcoin, worth around $10 million at the time. MicroStrategy, and its subsidiaries, now hold approximately 130,000 bitcoins — with an aggregate purchase price of approximately $3.98 billion, according to an 8-K filing with the SEC.

Michael Saylor stepped down as CEO of the firm in August and assumed a new role as executive chairman to focus his efforts more on bitcoin. 

During this most recent purchase period, on Sept. 9, the firm revealed plans to sell up to $500 million in class A common stock and could buy more bitcoin.

“We intend to use the net proceeds from this offering for general corporate purposes, including the acquisition of bitcoin, unless otherwise indicated in the applicable prospectus supplement,” the filing said.

Bitcoin was trading at $19,072 on Coinbase, up about 2.08% over the past 24 hours, at the time of writing according to data from the exchange.

© 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.

CoinShares launched an algorithmic trading strategies platform for retail investors on Tuesday. 

Named HAL, the platform will offer users access to trading algorithms designed by the CoinShares quantitative team. The platform will initially launch in Europe, where the firm is based, where it will integrate with major exchanges, adding more integrations progressively.

The firm is looking to help people delegate their trading needs in a market that trades fast seven days a week, CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti told The Block ahead of the launch.

Consumers trading crypto don’t have time to look at their phone every five seconds, Mognetti noted, “you have to delegate some of the decision making process to help you make the right choice.”

The product name has sci-fi connotations, with a nod to Stanley Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, where HAL 9000 is a computer with a human personality. It is also a hat tip to the late Hal Finney, who received the first bitcoin transaction from Satoshi Nakamoto. Mognetti added that his firm often uses sci-fi related names when it comes to new product lines and even servers. 

HAL costs €19.90 ($19.88) per month and can be cancelled any time. Currently there is no limit on the number of strategies users can select. 

© 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.

Tres, a financial accounting software startup for web3 companies, has raised a $7.6 million round led by Boldstart Ventures. 

F2, Alchemy, New Form, Kenetic Capital, Blockdaemon Ventures and Mantis also participated in the round, according to an announcement on Tuesday. Fireblocks CEO Michael Shaulov and Chainalysis CEO Michael Gronager also contributed as angel investors. 

Tres aims to improve the accounting process for web3 firms by collecting and aggregating digital asset data from separate wallets and accounts into its data platform. This allows web3 firms to monitor, manage and automate their financial ingoings and outgoings more easily. Currently, much of this is done manually via spreadsheets, which is prone to human error, said the startup. 

“Web3 businesses are struggling to manage the exponential growth and complexity of financial data across digital assets,” said CEO and founder Tal Zackon in a statement. “Tres’ financial platform provides an unparalleled level of visibility, monitoring, alerting and automation to web3 finance teams and seamlessly translates high volumes of raw blockchain data into actionable information.” 

Based in Israel, the company says it counts Blockdaemon, crypto investment firm Hivemind and staking startup Stakely as customers and has monitored crypto assets worth more than $40 billion. 

The news follows similar raises in the crypto and web3 accounting space. In March, Coinbooks raised $3.2 million to build accounting software for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). In June, Request Finance, which automates payroll for crypto companies, won the backing of venture capital firm Balderton Capital and gaming firm Animoca Brands in a $5.5 million seed round. 

© 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.

European venture firm Digital Transformation Capital Partners (DTCP) announced the first close of its third fund, having raised $300 million.

The fund will invest in web3, fintech and several other areas, according to a company release on Tuesday. It plans to continue raising capital and close fundraising in 2023. Investing juggernaut SoftBank and German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom are investors in the fund, per the release. 

DTCP started out as a venture arm for Deutsche Telekom. It’s since been spun out as independent company and invested in the likes of Auth0, Fastly and Guardicore. 

The venture firm currently has $2.3 billion assets under management and made over 70 investments, according to its website.  

DTCP is continuing to raise for the third fund and is expected to close in March 2023 with a target raise of $500 million and a hard cap of $600 million, according to a  report from TechCrunch. TechCrunch’s report says that Deutsche Telekom and SoftBank are anchors for the fund.

The new fund seeks to have around 25 investments in the range of $20 million to $25 million for startups in growth stages, typically as part of a Series B to D, per the company release. It will double down on investments in Europe, Tel Aviv and the U.S. 

This news comes as SoftBank itself announces that it is mulling a third fund, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal. SoftBank made a name for itself with significant investments in high flying tech startups, such as Slack, WeWork and Uber — as well as the launch of mammoth venture funds. 

SoftBank first launched a $100 billion fund, known as the Vision Fund, in 2017. In 2019, SoftBank launched a second fund at $40 billion.  

SoftBank’s bets have had mixed results, it recently reported a $23.4 billion loss as it takes a hit from a downturn in tech valuations and foreign currency losses.

The tech investment firm is reportedly downsizing in Europe as well as other markets. The investment in DTCP could enable SoftBank to still gain exposure to the European market. 

© 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.

Equity exchange operator Nasdaq has been plotting a move into institutional crypto custody service, according to several people briefed by the company. 

The firm, which operates markets in U.S. and global equities, is no stranger to the cryptocurrency market, having served as a provider of market surveillance technology to cryptocurrency exchange venues since at least 2018. In February 2021, the exchange announced the debut of the Hashdex Nasdaq Crypto Index ETF, which is based on its own index.

Historically, the firm has opted to provide technology to crypto market participants versus operating a market itself to compete with the likes of Coinbase and FTX. 

The new offering is pending regulatory approval, according to a source. Nasdaq is also establishing a new crypto-focused division in tandem with its exploration into crypto custody, Nasdaq Digital Assets.

Custody is a lucrative, yet crowded, market in the crypto space, with institutional custody providers fetching multi-billion dollar valuations. Crypto wallet and custody firm Ledger clinched a $1.5 billion valuation in June 2021, while Anchorage closed a $350 million funding round at a $3 billion valuation in December 2021. 

© 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.

Metaplex Foundation, the non-profit arm of the Metaplex Protocol, announced on Tuesday it is launching its own token under the MPLX ticker. 

As of today (Sept. 20), through a multi-week claim period, the organization will distribute 14 million tokens to early community members. Those receiving the initial token tranche are early builders on the Metaplex platform. Another 40 million tokens will be distributed to early collectors, pursuant to a DAO vote, the Foundation said in a release.

The Metaplex Protocol was first launched in June 2021 as the first program library and set of tools for developers to create, sell and manage NFTs on the Solana blockchain. Creators were attracted to the business due to its low mint fees and the fact that it was more environmentally friendly than NFT projects built on chains such as Ethereum (at least, before The Merge). The Metaplex Standard is the metadata standard by which NFTs are classified on Solana.

MPLX will be a utility and governance token for the Metaplex Protocol and has been issued as a method for decentralized governance for future projects and strategic decisions.

“It’s an honor for us to wake up every day and serve our community as they stretch the edges of the technology,” said Stephen Hess, a director of the Metaplex Foundation. “The MPLX Token represents our commitment to empowering creators and flipping the Web2 model on its head by building a platform that can be owned, shaped and governed by those that use it.”

The Metaplex Foundation raised $46 million in January in a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT) sale, led by Multicoin Capital and Jump Crypto. Solana Ventures, Alameda Research, and Animoca Brands also participated.

The drop will initially be listed on FTX, KuCoin, and Huobi international exchanges. It is not available for purchase by US residents.

It follows a hot period for NFTs on the Solana blockchain in recent weeks. Dust Labs — the project behind NFT collection y00ts and popular collection DeGods — announced earlier this month a $7 million fundraise and saw $9.6 million in secondary sales in September of its “y00ts mint t00b” collection. Dust Labs counts FTX, Jump, and Solana Ventures as backers. 

© 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.

BendDAO, an NFT lending platform, has filed a proposal on the community forum to create an investment fund with a post-money valuation of $80 million.

According to the proposal, the fund, if approved, will function as a sub-treasury for the NFT lender. The sub-treasury will invest at least 50% of its funds in non-performing assets. This move is part of efforts to diversify the NFT lender’s DAO treasury.

For BendDAO, this sub-treasury is necessary given the recent struggles the project has faced amid a general downturn in the NFT market. Shrinking liquidity in the NFT space has seen a large volume of forced withdrawals from the NFT lender, leading to a sharp increase in borrowing rates. This situation recently saw the platform amass a significant volume of bad debt as borrowers defaulted on their loan positions. As previously reported by The Block, BendDAO was forced to push through a number of protocol upgrades to prevent several Bored Apes and other expensive NFTs from being sold at a discount.

To seed the sub-treasury, the BendDAO team is seeking approval from the community to sell 1 billion of its tokens. This amounts to 10% of the total BendDAO (BEND) token supply. The NFT lender plans to use ether (ETH) as the financing currency with a minimum investment of 100 ETH per share to achieve the $80 million post-money valuation for the fund.

The proposal states that the NFT lender is looking to attract investments from venture capital firms, blue-chip NFT projects, and community members. Of the 1 billion tokens, 60% will be allocated to venture capital investors. The remaining allocation will be split equally between investors from the DAO and interested blue-chip NFT projects. Each VC, NFT, or individual investor will only be allowed to own a maximum of 2% of the tokens being sold by the fund.

As part of the proposal, BendDAO is considering two options for distributing the tokens to investors. The first option has no vesting requirement but the DAO will deposit an equal amount of the ether generated from the token sale into its ETH liquidity pool to earn staking rewards. The second option has a six-month vesting schedule, followed by linear unlocks over a two-and-a-half-year period.

BendDAO plans to use at least 50% of the fund to invest in non-performing assets. The DAO will create a four-of-seven (4/7) multi-signature wallet for the sub-treasury. This multi-sig arrangement will include three community members, two VC representatives, one signatory from a blue-chip project, and one BendDAO core team member.

© 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.

GRNGrid, a renewable energy-focused Layer 1 blockchain, announced on Monday that it has secured a $50 million investment from Bahamas-based venture capital firm GEM Digital.

The money will be used to build partnerships, connect with exchanges and improve GRNGrid’s blockchain technology, according to a press release from the Swiss project on Monday. 

The Layer 1 blockchain was built to be environmentally friendly and scalable, allowing users to select only nodes running with renewable energy to verify transactions. According to the firm’s whitepaper, renewable nodes are certified for users to choose from, while the firm also enforces specific requirements on validators’ hardware. 

“The GRNGrid will also register the devices of validators on grid through a smart contract and penalize any validator for repeatedly changing their hardware,” the whitepaper reads. 

The blockchain’s native token GRN Grid, which has the ticker G, has more than doubled over the past 24 hours, reaching $0.09 as of 10 a.m. UTC on Tuesday, according to data via CoinGecko.

© 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.

NFT marketplace giant OpenSea announced on Monday that it has upgraded its process for minting NFTs with a new “immersive” drop experience. 

Creators will be able to launch their collections with dedicated drop pages and greater discoverability, it said in a blog post. Alongside this, collectors will now be able to mint directly from an OpenSea page.

Drop pages will include information about the drop, the minting schedule, a countdown clock and an NFT gallery. 

This will come with a new service called SeaDrop, an open source contract which means that those launching NFTs don’t need to create custom smart contracts.

“With our new drops experience, we are providing creators with the technical foundation to mint their projects without compromising creativity,” OpenSea wrote. “Also, collectors can come to one trusted destination for both minting and future sales and purchases.”

The move comes amid a period of change for NFT marketplaces and service providers, as companies look to offer something different from their competitors amid a prolonged bear market. OpenSea has long dominated as a host for NFT drops and sales, however challengers offering multi-chain options and ways to bypass royalties have gained traction in recent months. 

There has also been fragmentation in the market as companies move to offer bespoke NFT minting services. MoonPay’s HyperMint platform, which it launched in June, promised to do just that with a machine it created for creators and brands to mint millions of utility NFTs at a time. 

© 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.