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Tether is set to launch a new stablecoin pegged to the British pound early next month.

Dubbed GBPT, the stablecoin will initially be available on the Ethereum blockchain, Tether said today in a statement.

This is Tether’s fifth fiat-pegged stablecoin, after US dollar-pegged USDT, euro-pegged EURT, offshore Chinese yuan-pegged CNHT and the recently launched Mexican peso-pegged MXNT.

“We believe that the United Kingdom is the next frontier for blockchain innovation and the wider implementation of cryptocurrency for financial markets,” Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino said in the statement. “We hope to help lead this innovation by providing cryptocurrency users worldwide with access to a GBP-denominated stablecoin issued by the largest stablecoin issuer.”

While Tether has several fiat-pegged stablecoins, its USD-pegged stablecoin USDT remains the most popular, although it has recently seen significant redemptions amid panic over the collapse of algorithmic stablecoin terraUSD (UST) and general market downturn.

USDT remains the biggest stablecoin in the world, with its current total supply standing at over 66 billion, according to The Block’s Data Dashboard.

© 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.

A former senior manager at Huobi, the crypto exchange, reportedly faces accusations that he secretly made $5 million by trading against an account that he controlled.

According to a Financial Times report published this morning, Huobi has filed a civil lawsuit against Chen Boliang, a former senior manager looking after institutional clients at the company in Hong Kong.

He is accused of setting up a retail trading account in his father’s name and extending a $20 million credit line from the exchange, before trading against it with another corporate account that he controlled, netting some $5 million in profits denominated in USDC.

The trades allegedly took place in February and March 2020. Boliang was reportedly arrested in May 2020 and charged with “accessing Huobi’s computer systems with criminal or dishonest intent and dealing with the proceeds of a crime,” per the report. He is currently out on a $25,000 bail.

In a statement provided to the FT, a Huobi spokesperson said: “Mr Boliang Chen’s employment with Huobi Global was terminated in May 2020. We have no further comments pertaining to the charges against Mr Boliang Chen and believe in the administration of justice by the HK Special Administrative Region.” An attorney for Boliang did not respond to the FT’s request 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.

Spike Lee, the director behind films including She’s Gotta Have It and Do the Right Thing, took the stage at an NFT conference in New York City today to explain why he thinks non-fungible tokens (NFTs) will open film funding to a greater range of investors.

During a talk at the NFT NYC conference at the Radio City Music Hall, Lee said his view on the potential utility of NFTs comes from his own experience. He described how individuals who funded his films in the 1980s still benefit from that investment.“The individuals who invested in the film are still receiving checks more than 30 years later,” Lee said. “The rest is history.”

Using NFTs to fund films is “bringing more democracy to filmmaking,” said Lee. However, Lee also acknowledged the riskiness of NFT investments. “No matter what you do, you have to do your research,” Lee adds, mentioning crypto company layoffs and the bear market. “Don’t bet the house.” 

Lee also hinted at a new NFT project that he said will drop “soon.” Still, when asked by an audience member whether he’d fund his own project with NFT sales, Lee didn’t seem so enthusiastic. “Maybe down the line, but not right now.”

© 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

• Last month, the steep drop in value of the TerraUSD stablecoin and a related Terra-based asset called luna led many people to sustain considerable losses. 
• Does the US tax code offer any recourse?

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A majority of bitcoin miners enjoyed a positive day in the stock markets on Tuesday.

Argo saw its stock rise 18.09% on Nasdaq and 13.91%  on the London Stock Exchange. Other stocks that went up included BIT Mining (+11.11%), Riot (+9.46%) and Marathon (+9.23%).

After announcing that it had paid down part of a $100 million dollar loan with the sale of 3,000 BTC, Bifarm’s stock was up by 4.51% on Nasdaq and 3.45% on the Toronto Stock Exchange by the end of the trading session.

Bitcoin mostly fluctuated between $20,000 and $21,000, reaching a high of around $21,600. The price was up since the weekend, when it dipped below $18,000, according to TradingView. 

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

Binance.US, the stateside arm of crypto exchange Binance, is looking to raise up to $50 million at a $4.5 billion valuation, CoinDesk reported on Tuesday. 

The upcoming round won’t necessarily represent a Series A but would amount to a continuation of its seed round, people familiar with the matter told CoinDesk. The firm plans to target strategic partners.

Binance.US closed its first funding round at a pre-money valuation of $4.5 billion in April of this year. The $200 million seed round saw participation from the likes of RRE Ventures, Foundation Capital, Original Capital, VanEck, Circle Ventures, Gaingels and Gold House, though there was no lead investor. 

At the time of the seed round, a spokesperson told The Block that Binance.US planned to raise more funds in the coming months and hopes to go public in the next two to three years.

CEO Brian Shroder teased the new funding last week in an interview with Protocol, saying it would announce another fundraising close in the next month or so. At the time, he told Protocol that he wants to make clear that the exchange is doing fine amid the wider crypto drawback and is entering a potential crypto winter “from a position of strength.”

Binance.US was not immediately available 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.

Crypto ETNs and ETPs carried momentum from Monday into Tuesday as all but one tracked by The Block gained during trading.

Cryptocurrencies continued to gain on Tuesday following a turbulent previous week — and so did European crypto investment vehicles.

VanEck’s Tron ETN gained the most on The Block’s tracking list, adding 4.44% during trading. 

Ethereum ETPs traded up on Tuesday as ether (ETH) gained 3.80% over the past 24 hours, according to Coinbase data via TradingView. The CoinShares Physical Ethereum ETP added 2.27% while 21Shares Ethereum ETP added 2.17% and VanEck’s Ethereum ETP notched up 2.25%.

Elsewhere, 21Shares Tezos Staking ETP lost 0.64% on Tuesday. 

Here’s how some of the major European crypto investment vehicles performed on Tuesday, 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.

Uniswap Labs, the main developer of the Uniswap decentralized exchange protocol, said on Tuesday that it has acquired non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace aggregator Genie.

The move marks part of its expansion effort to include NFTs and ERC-20 tokens among its products, according to a statement from the company on Tuesday. 

The integration will include the Uniswap web app, which allows users to trade NFTs across all major marketplaces. The move will happen as soon as this fall, the company tweeted. 

Uniswap will also integrate NFTs into its developer APIs and widgets to make the platform “comprehensive … for users and builders in web3.”

“We see NFTs as another format for value in the growing digital economy — not a separate ecosystem from ERC20 — and they’re already an important gateway to web3,” Uniswap said in the statement.

The acquisition will not have an impact on Uniswap’s other products, such as the Uniswap Protocol, Uniswap Governance or the UNI token. Genie users can also still access the marketplace website until the new Uniswap NFT experience is available.

As part of the acquisition, Uniswap will airdrop USDC to Genie users who used the marketplace more than once before April 15 or to those that hold a GENIE:GEM NFT.

Uniswap has previously ventured into the world of NFT. In 2019, the developer launched Unisocks, an NFT liquidity pool that issued tokens representing a pair of limited edition socks, and several NFTs backed by real world assets. 

Uniswap has the largest share of the market in terms of trade volume since last year. The developer saw over $1 trillion in crypto traded on the decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol last month.

© 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.

Bitcoin miner Bitfarms paid down a $100 million bitcoin-backed loan with the sale of 3,000 BTC in the last week while securing an additional $37 million facility collateralized by mining machines.

The company initially said that it lowered the loan by $34 million to $66 million via the sale of 1,500 of its bitcoin holdings. Then it added an additional 1,500 — bringing the total owed down to $38 million, according to a statement on Tuesday.

It’s unclear exactly how this deal was structured. Bitfarms declined The Block’s request for comment.

Bitfarms’ move to sell some of its daily production, even though bitcoin prices have fallen in recent days, is a decisive pivot away from its previous strategy of holding onto its mined bitcoins. In 2021, the company mined a total of 3,453 BTC. At the time of publication, Bitcoin’s price was around $21,500. 

“In consideration of extreme volatility in the markets, we have continued to take action to enhance liquidity and to de-leverage and strengthen our balance sheet, said chief financial officer Jeff Lucas. “While we remain bullish on long-term BTC price appreciation, this strategic change enables us to focus on our top priorities of maintaining our world-class mining operations and continuing to grow our business in anticipation of improved mining economics.”

According to Lucas, the company believes that this strategy is the best and least expensive method in the current market environment.

“In addition to lowering our interest expense, this $34 million reduction in borrowing gives us the ability to utilize more of our BTC holdings strategy as it frees up BTC that would otherwise be used to collateralize this credit facility,” said CFO Jeff Lucas.

The loan was secured with crypto-focused trading and investment firm Galaxy and collateralized at 143% of the amount borrowed. Per the loan agreement, Bitfarms is required to contribute additional collateral anytime the value of the collateral falls below 133%.

“A substantial decrease in Bitcoin price may result in the Company being unable to meet the minimum Bitcoin collateral requirements, which could result in the disposition of the Company’s Bitcoin pledged as collateral by the Facility Lender, or repayment of the facility in fiat currency on demand,” the company stated in a recent report.

On May 31, Bitfarms reported that it owned 6,075 BTC. Their holdings now stand at 3,349 BTC, taking into account the full 3,000 BTC sold and the added June production at an average of 14 BTC per day.

With the current Bitcoin price of around $21,500, those holdings could be worth roughly $72 million, which is above the 143% of the remaining $38 million borrowed (about $54.34 million).

Bitfarm’s stock was up by 6.90% on the Toronto Stock Exchange and 8.20% on Nasdaq at the time of publication.

Expansion opportunities

Bitfarms also closed a deal with NYDIG for a $37 million loan collateralized by mining machines at some of the company’s facilities, at a 12% interest rate. There’s a possibility of additional financing in July and October.

Lucas said the company was now “better positioned” to take advantage of possible acquisitions or expansion opportunities resulting from current market conditions.

Just last week, rival CleanSpark announced that it had secured the acquisition of 1,800 bitcoin miners, in a deal that benefited from “the unique circumstances that current market conditions have created,” per CEO Zach Bradford.

“We have proactively taken non-dilutive strategic actions to increase our financial liquidity and flexibility during this period of macroeconomic crypto challenges,” Lucas also 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.

Over a quarter of the supply of Convex Finance (CVX) is about to be unlocked, spurring fears about a further price decline. This comes as the amount of liquidity on the platform — which can help absorb selling pressure — has shrunk considerably.

Right now, Curve’s main pool for CVX tokens is balanced. Data from Curve shows there’s currently about $11.2 million of wrapped ETH available as potential liquidity, alongside over $11.8 million of CVX tokens.

But come June 30, about 27.4 million CVX coins worth over $126 million will be unlocked, according to this Dune Analytics dashboard. This figure amounts to over 27% of the total Convex token supply.

These unlocked tokens are the first of 16 unlocks for vote-locked CVX tokens that will happen once a week from June 30. In total, 52.2 million CVX tokens will be unlocked.

Convex is a DeFi protocol built on top of Curve (CRV) which is a decentralized exchange for token swaps. Convex provides a platform for CRV holders to stake the token and compound rewards from Curve.

CVX holders can lock their coins for voting on which pools to incentivize liquidity for on Curve. As such, stablecoin issuers like Frax Finance and other DeFi protocols tend to own the most CVX tokens. Other projects can also bribe holders of these vote-locked Convex tokens to vote for more yield on their liquidity pools. Vote-locked Convex tokens cannot be unlocked for a minimum of 16 weeks.

It is not a given that this unlocking process will lead to further selling pressure for CVX. At its current price of $4.82, Convex is down more than 90% of its all-time high of $60 achieved in January. As such, holders may choose to re-lock their coins and keep their Curve voting power.

Should significant sales of Convex happen, then the Curve pool for CVX (which is currently still balanced) may become unbalanced in the short term, as the liquidity for swaps evaporates.

© 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.