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Crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital has filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in a New York court, according to Bloomberg.

The Friday development amid escalating financial problems for the crypto hedge fund. In recent days, a court in the British Virgin Islands appointed advisory firm Teneo to handle liquidation. Financial regulators issued a stern rebuke of the firm on Thursday.

Chapter 15 bankruptcy is meant for insolvency proceedings that involve more than one country. Court documents were not immediately available as of press time.

This story is developing and will be updated as new information becomes available.

© 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.

Multiple bitcoin miners posted recoveries on the stock market after a week mostly of losses.

As of press time, bitcoin’s price was roughly $19,450, per Coinbase data.

Iris Energy’s stock rose by 7.46%, followed by Argo (+6.65% on Nasdaq), BIT Mining (+5.74%) and Mawson Infrastructure Group (+5.50%).

Bitfarms was down 4% on the Toronto Stock Exchange and 1.79% on Nasdaq after announcing results from June’s mining operations. Mining revenues were down by around 40% month-over-month.

Here’s how crypto mining companies performed on Friday, July 1:

© 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.

Bitfarms saw its bitcoin mining revenue fall by nearly 40% in June compared to the previous month, while Bitcoin lost about a third of its value.

Mining revenues are based on current Bitcoin prices, which plummeted from around the $30,000 mark at the beginning of June to around $20,000 now.

The company mined a total of 420 BTC in June, just a slight 2.6% decrease from May, according to a statement on Friday. It increased its hash rate by 0.2 exahash per second (EH/s) over the same period of time.

Considering upcoming miner installations, it expects to hit the Q2 2022 target of 4.0 SH/s within the next two weeks.

“This growth, coupled with recent declines in the overall network hashrate, from a 30-day rolling average of about 222 EH/s to 212 EH/s, signals we are well positioned to gain market share and increase our daily mined Bitcoins in July,” said Ben Gagnon, chief mining officer of Bitfarms.

The company also ended the month with about half of the bitcoin holding it held before, having sold about 3,000 BTC to pay down part of a $100 million loan from Galaxy Digital.

At the same time, it secured an additional $37 million facility collateralized by mining machines.

As of June 30, Bitfarms had a total of 3,144 BTC, with a value of around $63 million based on a bitcoin price of S$20,000. Comparing that to $188 million based on a bitcoin price of $31,000 at the end of May, the dollar value of Bitfarms’s bitcoin holdings fell by roughly 66.5%.

© 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.

Trading volume on non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces have fallen from $16.6 billion in January to over $1 billion in June of this year.

As The Block’s data shows, this is a decrease of 94%, demonstrating just how striking the crypto bear market affects NFT sales. 

It should be noted that much of NFT trading volume at the beginning of the year was likely due to wash trading on the NFT marketplace LooksRare. Wash trading is when users trade tokens among themselves to fraudulently drive up prices. 

NFTs were thought to be insulated from crypto market conditions six months ago. Some tokens, such as the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club, afford users access to exclusive communities and events that maintain value even when the market is down. 

But as The Block previously reported, NFT floor prices have declined in recent months — with top projects such as BAYC, Doodles and Cool Cats have fallen around 30%.

© 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.

Crypto company Voyager Digital said it was “temporarily suspending trading, deposits, withdrawals and loyalty rewards” as of 2 p.m. ET on Friday.

The move comes days after Voyager issued a notice of default to hedge fund Three Arrows Capital over failed repayment of a $650 million loan, denominated in BTC and USDC. Voyager is one of a number of crypto industry firms significantly impacted by Three Arrows. 

Included in Voyager’s press release was a balance sheet update. Voyager reported $685.37 million in crypto assets and $1.124 billion in crypto assets loaned, which includes the funds loaned to Three Arrows.

Voyager’s update also highlighted $355.72 million in cash held for customers and $168 million in crypto collateral received/held. 

Of the withdrawals, trading and deposits suspension, CEO Stephen Ehrlich said in a statement: “This decision gives us additional time to continue exploring strategic alternatives with various interested parties while preserving the value of the Voyager platform we have built together. We will provide additional information at the appropriate time.”

The firm also said that “[t]o support its exploration of strategic alternatives, the Company has engaged Moelis & Company and The Consello Group as financial advisors, and Kirkland & Ellis LLP as legal advisors.”

© 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.

BlockFi, the crypto lending firm, announced on Friday a deal with exchange operator FTX US that would provide the firm with a $400 million revolving credit line and outlines the path to an acquisition by the US-based firm. 

The definitive agreement, signed Thursday, is subject to shareholder approvals and would provide FTX an option to acquire the firm at a price up to $240 million.

“This, together with other potential consideration, represents a total value of up to $680M,” the firm said in an emailed statement. 

BlockFi, similarly to other market participants in the crypto space, has been hit hard by the fall out of the liquidation of Three Arrows Capital and the liquidity struggles of rival lending firm Celsius, which paused withdrawals on customers earlier this month. Three Arrows Capital’s liquidation event resulted in an $80 million loss for BlockFi, which the company described as a small fraction of losses reported by other lending firms.

BlockFi said that the firm has “no further exposure and the limited losses we did experience will be absorbed by BlockFi.”

To weather the storm, BlockFi inked a $250 million credit deal with FTX to manage through the crisis on June 22. The firm has also been fielding interest for acquisition from FTX and other market participants. 

BlockFi said that the current deal with FTX will allow it to protect customer assets on the platform. 

BlockFi’s Zac Prince said in a statement.

“We were presented with various unattractive options where client funds would take a haircut or be behind a lender in the capital stack. These alternatives were completely unacceptable to me, @FounderFlori and our Board and conflict with our core value of “Clients not Customers” as well as the interests of BlockFi and our shareholders.”

“Ultimately, we found a great partner in @FTX_US, who shares our commitment to clients. This represents the best path forward for all @BlockFi stakeholders and the crypto ecosystem as a whole,” Prince went on to write.

© 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.

Cryptocurrency lender Babel Finance is looking to work with Houlihan Lokey, an investment bank that works on restructuring and distressed mergers and acquisitions, according to two sources who spoke to CoinDesk.

Babel finance, which hit a $2 billion valuation after raising a series B round in May, has recently seen a wave of employee exits following a liquidity crunch, The Block reported earlier this week. The firm recently lost Yulong Liu, head of global partnerships, who planned to leave by the end of June or early July. Several others from the partnerships and public relations team also departed, according to LinkedIn profiles reviewed by The Block.

Last month, the crypto firm suspended withdrawals after experiencing “unusual” liquidity pressures.

© 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.

Ignite CEO Peng Zhong has left the company, following Jae Kwon’s return to the fray.

“Today is my last day at Ignite. Thank you for the camaraderie we shared as we built out this ecosystem. It’s been an honor to be a part of this team and this community. I will miss you,” said Zhong on Twitter.

Ignite, one of the foremost companies in the Cosmos ecosystem, was previously called Tendermint. It was founded by Kwon in 2014, but he stepped down as CEO in 2020 to focus on another project called Virgo. When he left, Zhong stepped in to fill the vacancy.

Earlier this year, Kwon decided to return to Tendermint and use the entity and its name for a new project. As a result, Tendermint changed its name to Ignite and the whole company went through a rebranding.

At the time, Zhong said Ignite would be focused on encouraging an “explosion of new products on Cosmos technology.”

Yet Zhong’s sudden departure raises questions about the future of the Ignite. Its website has been updated to focus mostly on its blockchain development tool, Ignite CLI, while pages about its venture arm and its accelerator have disappeared.

Beyond this, its flagship product Emeris — a cross-chain DeFi protocol — has been put on hold. Its website says that it will be “will be shutting down for a period of 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.

The United Kingdom and the United States huddled in London this week to discuss crypto and digital asset regulation, ahead of a financial working group meeting between the two nations later this month.

The US-UK Financial Innovation Partnership held its third meeting on Wednesday, where participants discussed “crypto-asset regulation and market developments,” according to a release. 

The partnership meeting also addressed stablecoins and central bank digital currencies. The group was created in 2019 to foster engagement between the U.S. and the U.K. on “financial innovation issues.” 

The US-UK Financial Regulatory Working Group is set to meet later in July.

Participants in Wednesday’s meeting included staff from the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority.

On the US side, participants included staff from major agencies like the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, among others. 

© 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.

DeFi protocol Wonderland has passed a governance vote to invest $25 million in the token Sifu Vision, a crypto project founded by Wonderland’s former treasury manager, known as Sifu. 

The vote passed today, with 89% of the votes supporting the governance decision. This means that it’s very likely that Wonderland community will proceed to an over-the-counter (OTC) deal to acquire $25 million worth of Sifu Vision tokens, more than half of Sifu Vision’s entire market capitalization of $42 million. These tokens will be linearly vested for 12 months.

Per the details provided in the governance proposal, Sifu will make independent investments in the crypto space with these funds, hoping to make a return for Wonderland’s treasury.

“Similar to the Wonderland TM [treasury manager], its my job to source the best possible deals and invest for maximum potential yield,” Sifu commented on the deal in earlier post on Wonderland’s governance forum. “The idea is that we trade and invest together, and share in the profits.”

Who is Sifu?

In January of this year, Sifu was asked to leave from Wonderland after his real identity was revealed as Michael Patryn, an ex-convict who was reportedly charged with identity theft in 2005.

Patryn is also known for co-founding the now-defunct Canadian crypto exchange called QuadrigaCX. In 2018, Gerry Cotten, Sifu’s business partner and the second co-founder of QuadrigaCX, died on holiday in India. After his death, it was found the exchange had a shortfall of almost $200 million. Shortly after his exit from Wonderland, Sifu founded Sifu Vision, a decentralized investment fund and a crypto token he named after himself. 

Months after getting fired by Wonderland, Sifu made a return to Wonderland. In June, he put up a governance proposal to the project’s decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to invest in Sifu Vision’s native tokens. The proposal was put to a vote last week.

© 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.