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BitGo, a provider of digital asset custody, security and liquidity services, has introduced a new non-fungible token (NFT) hot wallet and custody solution geared towards institutions.

Aimed at marketplaces, retail platforms and NFT portfolio holders, the service will enable BitGo’s 700 institutional clients to securely receive, hold and send NFTs, the company announced on Wednesday.

“The NFT space has seen massive growth in the past year along with an increasing set of use cases and applications. More builders are solving real world problems and more investors are participating. What’s been missing is the institutional infrastructure to protect these digital assets and their owners,” said Mike Belshe, CEO of BitGo.

High profile NFT hacks over the past few months have raised concerns about the need to encourage best practices when it comes to storage. Phishing scams, particularly on social media, have resulted in the theft of dozens of NFTs. More recently, hackers have targeted Discord severs belonging to the likes of Open Sea and the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

© 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.

dYdX, a popular crypto derivatives exchange, has unveiled a major plan to expand to its own Cosmos-based blockchain as part of the dYdX V4 update. This decision marks an expansion beyond the Ethereum ecosystem. 

Founded in 2018, dYdX is currently the largest decentralized derivatives exchange with a trading volume of over $600 million in the last 24 hours, per CoinGecko data. The exchange currently operates on StarkEx, an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling network developed by Starkware.

In a Wednesday announcement, dYdX Trading, the development team behind dYdX, announced plans to spin up its own chain using the Cosmos SDK. This is a software development kit used by projects in the Cosmos ecosystem.

“Developing a decentralized, off-chain order book and matching engine and moving from Ethereum to a dYdX-specific chain as a major DeFi protocol is very much untested, but we believe it gives the dYdX ecosystem the best shot at having a network that could offer a long term competitive product experience with centralized exchanges,” said dYdX founder Antonio Juliano. 

dYdX’s new chain will help make the project more decentralized and be controlled by a distributed set of validators, rather than the founding team alone, the announcement stated. It is expected to launch in the coming months, Juliano added.

When asked about plans for dYdX’s existing version on StarkEx, a spokesperson from dYdX told the Block that it’s hasn’t made a decision yet. “We are still considering what will happen with the existing V3 system built on Starkware,” the spokesperson 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.

Crypto wallet provider ZenGo has introduced a new feature, called ClearSign, that protects its users from the dangers of signing transactions from malicious smart contracts, the company announced on Wednesday.

According to ZenGo, ClearSign is designed to reduce the risk of users losing their non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and other crypto assets due to attack vectors like phishing scams and untrustworthy decentralized apps. NFT communities like Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) have suffered several instances of their holders losing valuable NFTs to scammers via social engineering attacks.

The feature works by telling users the details of the transactions they are signing in a way that is easy to understand. ClearSign will also act as a firewall that blocks unwanted actions from untrustworthy decentralized Dapps, according to ZenGo’s announcement. 

The firewall will alert users to suspicious smart contracts and block the signing of transactions that would expose private keys or seed phrases.

ZenGo says it has already partnered with the popular Discord bot Collab.Land to integrate ClearSign on the latter’s platform. Many projects use Collab.Land to verify that their members are owners of their digital assets, including NFTs. Some high-profile NFT hacks have involved the creation of fake Collab.Land bots to steal valuable collectibles from unsuspecting victims.

ClearSign will be available on both iOS and Android. ZenGo says it will add other Dapp integrations in the coming weeks.

© 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.

E-commerce giant eBay has acquired UK-based non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace KnownOrigin, the company announced in a statement on Wednesday.

The deal was signed on Tuesday. Further details have not been disclosed but the move is the latest in a series by the marketplace to reimagine itself as a tech-led company.

KnownOrigin co-founder David Moore said the partnership would help the NFT marketplace attract a new wave of NFT creators and collectors.

“As interest in NFTs continues to grow, we believe now is the perfect time for us to partner with a company that has the reach and experience of eBay,” he said.

eBay began allowing the buying and selling of NFTs last year. It has hinted at having further crypto capabilities in the works.

In May this year, it launched a partnership with OneOf, an NFT platform specializing in selling music, sports and lifestyle digital assets. At the time, the company said it intends to release more NFT collections of high-profile athletes throughout 2022. 

The deal comes amid other consolidation in the market. Yesterday, Uniswap Labs, the main developer of the Uniswap decentralized exchange protocol, said that it has acquired non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace aggregator Genie.

© 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.

Voyager Digital, a crypto app offering up to 12% returns, said it has secured a loan Alameda Ventures to help meet “customer liquidity needs.”

Alameda will provide a $200 million cash and USD Coin (USDC) revolver and a 15,000 BTC ($300 million) revolver, according to a statement on Wednesday. 

“The proceeds of the credit facility are intended to be used to safeguard customer assets in light of current market volatility and only if such use is needed,” according to the statement. 

This is a breaking story and will be updated. 

© 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.

Binance.US, the American affiliate of global crypto exchange Binance, has cut bitcoin trading fees to zero for select pairs, becoming the first exchange in the US to do so.

Effective immediately, all new and existing users of Binance.US will pay no fees for trading bitcoin in these four pairs — BTC/USD, BTC/USDT, BTC/USDC, and BTC/BUSD — the exchange announced today.

“Binance.US is offering zero fees on BTC across four pair trades indefinitely as we endeavor to revolutionize the way fees are approached in our industry and increase accessibility to crypto,” a Binance.US spokesperson told The Block.

The news comes at a time when crypto exchange trading volumes are sliding amid a market downturn. When asked why it’s trimming trading fees now when prices are falling, the spokesperson said that “there is no better time to introduce zero fees than now. We are taking a bold move and providing more value to our customers at a time when the community needs it most.”

Binance currently charges trading fees in the form of the maker (traders that create orders) and taker (traders that fulfill someone else’s order) fees. The fees vary depending upon the volume traded.

With the new fee structure, “customers in the free tier will experience zero trading fees on the four bitcoin pairs, irrespective of trading volume,” said the spokesperson.

Zero fees mean a loss in revenue for Binance.US. But the exchange’s spokesperson said bitcoin is just one of more than 100 tokens listed on Binance.US and that spot trading is just one service it offers to customers.

“We continue to roll out new products and services, such as staking earlier this month,” said the spokesperson.

They went on to say that, unlike Binance.US’s competitors, who have spent “hundreds of millions of dollars on advertisements, naming rights, and the like,” the exchange has taken “a prudent approach to marketing spend and instead invested that money back into the business.”

When asked if the zero-fee structure will also be extended for other cryptocurrencies, the spokesperson said bitcoin will serve “as a test for the model, which could potentially be rolled out across other tokens and pairs down the line.”

The news comes two months after Binance.US raised $200 million in its first funding round at a $4.5 billion pre-money valuation. The exchange is reportedly looking to raise another $50 million.

Rival exchange Coinbase is testing a new subscription-based service that would give users access to enhanced features, including zero-fee trading, as The Block reported late last year. Commission-free trading is more common in the traditional finance space.

© 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 Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) gave in-principle approval to Crypto.com, Genesis and Sparrow to offer crypto payment services in the country. 

Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, Heng Swee Keat, said on Wednesday that three additional digital payment token service license applicants had received in-principle approval — bringing the total to 14. 

“There are many other good use cases within the broader digital asset ecosystem. We should therefore take the same approach as earlier tech waves,” he said. Before going on to say “Singapore remains keen to work with blockchain and digital asset players.”

The Major Payment Institution License enables companies to offer a range of payment services, including offering customers in Singapore cryptocurrency services or digital payment token (DPT) services.

Kris Marszalek, CEO and co-founder of Crypto.com, noted the high standards set by MAS and said they help to foster innovation. “We look forward to continuing to collaborate with the MAS and deepening our roots in Singapore – a flourishing market for fintech innovation, renowned for its well-regulated  business environment,” he concluded. 

Today’s announcement comes just three weeks after MAS announced plans to research use cases for decentralized finance (DeFi) on public blockchains. The plans are known as Project Guardian and include partners such as JPMorgan, Marketnote and DBS. 

Sparrow and Genesis did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Block.

© 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.

Roxe, a blockchain payments infrastructure company, has announced its intention to list on the Nasdaq via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) called Goldenstone Acquisition. 

The company, which aims to connect banks, payment firms and consumers with a private blockchain to facilitate cross-border transactions, will be valued at $3.6 billion after the merger, according to a statement on Tuesday. Stockholders in the company will roll 100% of their equity into Goldstone with no minimum cash requirement. 

“This is an important milestone for Roxe. Our merger with Goldenstone will augment our ability to accelerate our growth and empower users to streamline payments, financial transactions and value exchange across the globe,” said Roxe CEO Josh Li in the announcement.

Whether the deal will clear or not, however, remains subject to approval by Goldenstone stockholders and compliance with Securities and Exchange Commission requirements. 

This move stands in direct contrast to the current volatility plaguing the crypto market. Over the weekend, bitcoin dropped below $20,000 amid a border market downturn with companies such as Babel Finance and BlockFi taking steps to shore up their finances.

Public companies in the crypto sector are similarly also facing drops in valuation. Last week, shares of brokerage Robinhood slumped to a new low, taking its market value below the value of the cash on its balance sheet. Similarly, crypto exchange Coinbase also suffered a 5% drop in its share price after it announced that 18% of staff would lose their jobs. 

© 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.

FalconX has closed a $150 million Series D led by Singaporean sovereign wealth group GIC and Swiss investment firm B Capital.

Through this round, announced today in a release, the company has more than doubled its valuation from $3.75 billion to $8 billion at a time when many crypto firms are struggling to raise fresh funding. A spokesperson for FalconX didn’t respond to requests for details on when exactly the funding round closed.  

The financing, which featured participation from Thoma Bravo, Wellington Management, Adams Street and Tiger Global Management, will be used to press forward with hiring — even as crypto firms such as Coinbase and BlockFi announce layoffs.

FalconX claims its hiring plans remain unchanged despite recent market turbulence that has seen bitcoin drop below $20,000. It recently hired former Pinterest chief revenue officer Jon Kaplan and Suzy Walther, who previously held senior positions at Bloomberg and Carta.

The company says its privileged position in the crypto market is due to it having the strongest client onboarding in its history in the first quarter of the year. It says there’s still strong demand for its services from a range of diverse institutional clients despite the current market volatility.

© 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.

US banking giant Citigroup has partnered with Switzerland-based crypto infrastructure firm Metaco to pilot and develop a digital asset custody platform.

The news comes from Citigroup’s securities services team, a spokesperson of the bank told The Block today. The bank will explore custody capabilities for tokenized securities such as blockchain-based stocks and bonds.

Citigroup, which has more than $27 trillion of assets under custody, has chosen Metaco to develop its digital asset custody platform rather than building on its own. The Citigroup spokesperson didn’t respond to The Block’s request for comment on the thinking behind this decision.

Citigroup is not the only traditional finance firm working with Metaco to offer digital asset services. Standard Chartered, BBVA, DBS Bank and the Union Bank of the Philippines have all partnered with Metaco in recent years.

Founded in 2015, Metaco is backed by high-profile investors, including Standard Chartered Bank’s SC Ventures, Swiss bank Zurcher Kantonalbank, Swisscom and Swiss Post. The firm has raised $21 million in total funding to date.

Citi plans to integrate Metaco’s infrastructure platform — called Harmonize — into its existing infrastructure to develop and pilot digital asset custody capabilities. Harmonize connects financial and non-financial institutions to the world of decentralized finance and offers tools for crypto custody, trading, staking and tokenization, according to Metaco’s website.

“We are witnessing the increasing digitization of traditional investment assets along with new native digital assets,” Okan Pekin, global head of securities services at Citi, said in a statement. “We are innovating and developing new capabilities to support digital asset classes that are becoming increasingly relevant to our clients.”

Citigroup has shored up its presence in the crypto sector recently. The bank offers trading in bitcoin futures like its rival Goldman Sachs and recently also announced its plans to hire 100 people for its digital assets division for institutional clients.

Last month, Citigroup also participated in a $105 million Series B funding round for Talos, a crypto trading infrastructure firm that provides tooling for institutional investors across the various stages of trade execution.

© 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.