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DeepNFTValue, a crypto startup that estimates the worth of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) using machine-learning techniques, has raised $4 million in a seed funding round as it plans to expand its offerings.

DeepNFTValue currently only estimates prices of CryptoPunk NFTs, based on its attributions and transaction history. With fresh funding in place, the startup plans to cover other leading NFT collections including Bored Apes, CloneX, Azuki, and ArtBlocks, it said on Friday.

The seed funding round was led by Rockaway Blockchain Fund, with 1Confirmation and Cygni Capital participating, among other unidentified investors.

DeepNFTValue was founded earlier this year by Nikolai Yakovenko, a machine-learning expert who previously worked for Google, Twitter, Nvidia, and Point72 Asset Management. Yakovenko recently said in a blog post that machine learning is one of the best ways to accurately price NFTs, compared with human evaluation, because humans are biased, among other factors.

In short, DeepNFTValue provides a “fair value estimate” for NFTs that buyers can then use to compare against the sale price.

“Nobody wants their collection mispriced, particularly in a DeFi protocol such as a lending contract, because of insufficient attention to modeling,” Yakovenko said in a Friday statement. “People are always surprised at how much robust and efficient modeling costs, in terms of researcher time and data, and raw computing.”

DeepNFTValue also plans to use a portion of the seed round for GPU hardware, which it says is necessary for training the most sophisticated machine-learning models with deep-learning methods.

© 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.

Elon Musk has decided not to move forward with a $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter after a disagreement with the company about the number of spam and fake accounts. The details were revealed in a regulatory filing on Friday. 

Musk claims that Twitter did not provide adequate information regarding the number of spam accounts on Twitter. 

“In short, Twitter has not provided information that Mr. Musk has requested for nearly two months notwithstanding his repeated, detailed clarifications intended to simplify Twitter’s identification, collection, and disclosure of the most relevant information sought in Mr. Musk’s original requests,” reads the filing.

In a filing in May, Twitter estimated that 5% of its accounts were fake. 

“While Twitter has provided some information, that information has come with strings attached, use limitations or other artificial formatting features, which has rendered some of the information minimally useful to Mr. Musk and his advisors,” the filing reads.

This is a developing story. 

© 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.

Most mining stocks went up on Friday, as bitcoin prices remained above the $21,000 mark.

As of press time, the coin was valued at about $21,800, according to TradingView.

Marathon’s stock rose by 21.40%. Since market open on Tuesday, it has gone up by 57.59%. According to a statement the bitcoin miner released after market close on Thursday, Marathon’s bitcoin production fell by roughly 47.8% month-over-month in June, mostly due to a storm that knocked much of its mining fleet offline.

Marathon currently holds 10,055 BTC at a market value of $198.9 million, according to the statement. It hasn’t sold any bitcoin since October 2020.

Other stocks that performed well on Friday include Cipher Mining (+9.15%), BIT Mining (+7.34%) and Northern Data (+7.32%).

Here’s how crypto mining companies performed on Friday, July 8:

© 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.

Spanish cryptocurrency platform 2gether is shutting down, with the sudden closure affecting about 100,000 users according to a report from the state-owned public media company RTVE. 

The article cites information from Spanish non-profit Association of Financial Users (Asufin for its abbreviation in Spanish), which has launched a platform aimed at helping 2gether’s users take legal action against the company. 

Information about the closure seems to have come from an email sent to 2gether users entitled “Closure of 2gether Accounts,” which Twitter users started circulating on July 6. According to the screenshots, which The Block has not independently verified, the company notified users that it had to close accounts due to a lack of resources. 

“After five years serving the crypto community, we are forced to close the service of individual accounts,” the screenshot says in Spanish. “The lack of resources and the crypto winter prevent us from providing the service with the quality and guarantees that other nearby providers are [offering].” 

The exchange also apparently told account holders that it would be charging them each 20 euros worth of crypto, deducted from their crypto positions with any remaining balance charged in euros. “If you still do not have enough funds we will proceed to close your 2gether account,” the screenshot reads.

Another screenshot emerged on Twitter on July 7, showing what appears to be a “clarification” from 2gether about the account closures. According to the image, which has not been verified by The Block, the company says its app will be fully operational until July 20 for euro bank transfers and withdrawals in BTC and ETH. Remaining balances, it says, will be transferred into euros and will be available on 2gether’s cards until their expiration date.

However, Asufin says on its website that the 2gether website and app are blocked and not allowing users to carry out any functions. 

“At this time, the money invested in this platform is impossible to redeem,” Asufin says. The company’s Twitter account is also defunct. 

The 2gether website shows a page saying “Web under maintenance” followed by “You will soon receive 2gether novelties.” The only information displayed is the platform’s terms and conditions, as well as a PDF at the top of the page calling for a meeting for the company’s partners that was supposed to have happened on June 21. 

© 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.

Eight Democratic Senators have written to seven of the leading banks in the US, criticizing what they call a lack of safeguards against fraud on the digital payment platform Zelle. 

On July 7, Bob Menendez, Elizabeth Warren, Jack Reed, Sherrod Brown, Chris Van Hollen, Sheldon Whitehouse, Bernie Sanders and Tammy Duckworth sent letters to Capital One, Wells Fargo, PNC, Chase, US Bank, Bank of America and Truist. 

Zelle is a real-time payment platform that the Senators call “peer-to-peer,” though it actually runs through the same Automated Clearing House network that handles most bank transfers, albeit in a streamlined fashion.

“In 2020, nearly 18 million Americans were defrauded through scams involving Zelle and other instant payment applications,” the Senators write. “At least in the case of Zelle, the banks that participate in the network appear not to have provided sufficient recourse to their customers.”

The letter continues: “One of Zelle’s biggest selling points to consumers — the ability to immediately transfer money — makes the platform a ‘favorite of fraudsters’ because consumers have no option to cancel a transaction, even moments after authorizing it.”

Warren, Menendez and Reed initially drew attention to the issue by writing to Early Warning Services, or EWS, back in April. The seven banks in today’s letter share ownership of EWS. It is via their accounts that Zelle provides its services. 

EWS had said that it provides protections for frauds that result in transfers that customers themselves do not authorize, but it does not recompense users for money that they sent to scams. The Senators wrote that this policy “ignores how consumers actually suffer financial loss on Zelle.”

The question of responsibility for online payments has broad applications. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau launched inquiries into Venmo and PayPal over similar concerns earlier this year. Lack of recourse after sending a payment to a false address also crops up as a perennial concern when it comes to cryptocurrency payments, with lawmakers frequently targeting self-hosted wallets. 

© 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.

Quick Take

• Doodles is a Web3-centric brand aiming to achieve mass adoption by means of a multi-modal approach
• Its technical innovation in the area of wrapped NFTs allows users to seamlessly switch between its two flagship collections
• Although its bucket auction design has drastically reduced transaction fees during the Genesis Box NFT mint, it has at the same time negatively affected the resulting ownership distribution

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members of The Block Research.
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Justin Sun, the creator of the Tron blockchain ecosystem, said he’s ready to join FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and Binance’s Changpeng Zhao in offering support to ailing crypto firms — and could spend up to $5 billion on acquisitions. 

“Lots of” companies have reached out to Sun and Tron for help, Sun told The Block when contacted after a tweet earlier today that he was “ready to serve.” 

As crypto markets sag, FTX has helped companies such as Voyager Digital and BlockFi with credit facilities — winning Bankman-Fried comparisons with John Pierpont Morgan’s efforts to prop up financial firms in the early 20th century. Similarly, Binance CEO Zhao recently said dozens of crypto firms are seeking the exchange operator’s help due to its “largest cash reserve in the industry.” 

Now, it appears, Sun wants to get involved too. 

When asked how many companies have reached out to him or Tron compared to Binance’s claimed 50 to 100 figure, Sun said the number is similar for Tron as well.

“We are actively reviewing it and see what we can do here,” Sun said. “We are ready to spend [$]5 b[illion] on helping the industry builder[s] to continue [to] build.”

Investment bank

Sun said Tron is engaging an investment bank to advise on potential deals, although he declined to name it, citing non-disclosure agreements.

When asked whether the $5 billion figure would be his personal money or Tron’s, Sun said a mix of both. Sun added that both he and Tron are targeting healthy businesses as well as distressed firms and would go through a due diligence process before making any deal. Tron’s DAO is sitting on reserves of $2.3 billion, according to its website.

“Our interest is platforms with a large user base,” Sun said. “Both CeFi [centralized finance] and DeFi [decentralized finance] platforms.”

As for the current market downturn, Sun said he thinks the worst is behind us.

“I think currently the de-leverage process is passed the worst time. So we just need to clean it up and move forward. I don’t think [the] market will be super bullish, of course,” he said.

© 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.

Marathon self-mined 140 bitcoin in June — a 47.8% month-over-month reduction that was mainly a consequence of a storm that knocked 75% of the company’s active mining fleet offline.

The bitcoin miner currently holds 10,055 BTC at a market value of $198.9 million, according to a statement Thursday. It hasn’t sold any bitcoin since October 2020. “However, as production ramps in the near future, Marathon may sell a portion of its monthly bitcoin production as needed to fund monthly operating costs,” the statement read.

Last month, the company unwound an investment in NYDIG Digital Assets and transferred roughly 4,769 BTC from its investment fund to its bitcoin wallet. It also “continued to work through several operational obstacles as we progressed with installing miners in Texas in preparation of energization,” said CEO and chairman Fred Thiel.

Marathon currently has 29,640 miners, representing approximately 2.9 exahashes per second (EH/s), installed and ready for energization in Texas. This was supposed to happen in June, but the company said that that process is still underway with its host Compute North’s energy provider.

Marathon also announced that it repaid $35 million worth of outstanding revolving credit lines last month, bringing its outstanding balance to $35 million. The company currently has roughly $88.7 million in cash and $153.7 million in total liquidity.

© 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.

Quick Take

• Digital asset lender Voyager Digital (VOYG-CA) suffering from liquidity constraints and continued cascading liquidations triggered during May-22’s Luna/UST collapse
• Filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on July 5, 2022
• Financial turmoil follows a two year bull period between 2020 – 2022 where Voyager saw users balloon from 120,000 to +3.5mm
• Latest firm in the digital asset ecosystem to face fallout from declining token prices

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members of The Block Research.
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this Research content on The Block Research.

Crypto exchange Blockchain.com stands to lose $270 million it lent to the liquidated crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), according to a report from CoinDesk on Friday. 

The news was revealed in a shareholder letter written by Blockchain.com CEO Peter Smith, who wrote that “Three Arrows is rapidly becoming insolvent and the default impact is approximately $270 million worth of cryptocurrency and US dollar loans from Blockchain.com.”

3AC, which is now subject to a liquidation order in the British Virgin Islands, was once one of crypto’s largest hedge funds, boasting billions of dollars under management. The firm collapsed in recent weeks in response to a combination of poor risk management and declining crypto prices, with many crypto lenders impacted by the fallout.

In the letter, Smith pointed out that 3AC had borrowed and repaid over $700 million worth of cryptocurrency to Blockchain.com throughout the four years that the firm had been a counterparty. The letter, dated June 24, also specified that Blockchain.com “remains liquid, solvent and our customers will not be impacted.”

A report published by Bloomberg last week specified that Blockchain.com and Deribit were among the creditors that sought the liquidation of Three Arrows in the British Virgin Islands. In the report, a Blockchain.com spokesperson said 3AC had “defrauded the crypto industry,” and that the company intended “to hold them accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

Blockchain.com is one of the longest-running companies in the cryptocurrency industry and one of the earliest developers of web browser wallets.

Asked about the CoinDesk report, a representative from Blockchain.com told The Block that they had nothing to add.

© 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.