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Crypto custodian Copper has quietly started offering custody solutions for non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

A Copper spokesperson told The Block that it launched the product last week, allowing customers to deposit, store and withdraw their NFTs just as they would cryptocurrencies — supported by the London-based startup’s multi-party computation (MPC) technology. Initially, Copper will support ERC-721 and ERC-1155 tokens, they added.

Alex Ryvkin, Copper’s chief product officer, said the move was driven by demand from institutional clients.

“As this market has rapidly grown, we have seen that an increasing number of our institutional clients are diversifying into NFTs as an asset class and want to house these holdings within their Copper vault,” he said. “With the latest addition of NFTs, clients can streamline management of all their digital assets and store their NFTs as securely as the rest of their assets.”

The NFT space is far less developed and far more retail-dominated than wider crypto markets, but there are tell-tale signs of institutional adoption. In January, market making firm GSR said it planned to begin algorithmically trading NFT collections this year.

The new NFT product comes at a turbulent time for Copper, which has raised more than $80 million from investors including Alan Howard, the hedge fund heavyweight, and is advised by former UK chancellor Philip Hammond.

The company had been pursuing a raise of at least $500 million that would value it in the billions of dollars, but the deal has been slow to close with regulatory issues in the UK reportedly spooking potential investors.  

© 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 exchange KuCoin’s valuation has hit $10 billion following a $150 million funding round led by Jump Crypto.

The raise was its first in four years and was also supported by Circle Ventures, IDG Capital and Matrix Partners, the firm said in a release on Tuesday.

The move comes as KuCoin looks to push further into the web3 ecosystem. In April, its venture capital arm set out its stall with the launch of a $100 million “Creators Fund.”

The influx of capital will be used to “go beyond centralized trading services and expand its presence in Web 3.0,” the firm said. This will include crypto wallets, GameFi, DeFi and NFT platforms through investment arms like KuCoin Labs and KuCoin Ventures. KCC, the public chain built by KuCoin’s community members, will host its decentralized ecosystem, the company said. 

The latest round follows its series A in November 2018, when it raised $20 million at a $100 million valuation. 

According to CoinMarketCap, KuCoin is the fifth largest crypto exchange. It has 8 million users in 207 countries.

KuCoin is the latest exchange to announce it’s intention to push forward with new NFT-related products. Coinbase also recently launched an NFT marketplace in beta – a product which hasn’t managed to lift its ailing stock price.

© 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 UK will introduce a bill to tackle illicit finance, Prince Charles said in the Queen’s Speech, as he marked the opening of Parliament.

“A bill will be brought forward to further strengthen powers to tackle illicit finance, reduce economic crime and help businesses grow. Measures will be introduced to support the security services and help them protect the United Kingdom,” he said.

There was no clear mention of cryptocurrencies, which were expected to be highlighted in the speech.

Earlier in the speech, Prince Charles said, “Measures will also be published to create new competition rules for digital markets, and the largest digital firms. “

The speech also highlighted a focus on the economy and on helping with the cost of living in the midst of the recent cost of living crisis. Further, the Bank of England will focus on returning inflation to its target.

The Queen’s Speech marks the start of a new Parliamentary session in the UK. The government writes and approves its content, which outlines upcoming government policy and the legislative program. This year marks a departure from tradition, however, as for the first time it was read by the Queen’s son, Prince Charles.

© 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.

Talos, a crypto trading infrastructure firm that provides tooling for institutional investors across the trade lifecycle, has raised $105 million in a Series B round as it plans global expansion.

Growth investor General Atlantic led the round, with Citigroup, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, BNY Mellon, DRW, SCB 10x, Stripes, Voyager and others joining as new investors, Talos announced on Tuesday.

Previous investors, including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), PayPal Ventures, Castle Island Ventures and Fidelity Investments, also participated in the round. The round brings Talos’s valuation to $1.25 billion. The firm raised $40 million in a Series A round last year.

Talos provides tooling for institutional crypto investors across pre-trade, execution and post-trade stages, Samar Sen, head of Asia Pacific at Talos, told The Block in an interview. In the pre-trade stage, the firm aggregates liquidity from multiple venues, including exchanges and over-the-counter trading desks. For the execution stage, Talos uses algorithms and smart order routers on its platform. And on the post-trade side, the firm provides settlement services.

Talos was founded in 2018 in New York and now has offices across the globe. With fresh capital in hand, the firm specifically plans expansion in Europe and Asia Pacific. “We have been growing organically in these regions but now want to scale our reach through outbound strategies,” said Sen.

To that end, Talos also plans to increase its current headcount of 80, according to Sen.

Sen declined to share absolute numbers on trading volumes Talos has supported on its platform to date, but said it grew 20x in the past year and its end-user base is now more than 20 million.

Talos currently supports centralized crypto trading venues on its platform, but it is also exploring launching support for decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, said Sen.

Talos’s close competitors were recently acquired by big crypto firms, including Tagomi by Coinbase and Omniex by Gemini. As for Talos’s exit plan, it intends to remain an independent company for the near future, CEO Anton Katz said in an emailed statement.

“We enjoy being independent and the ability to work with the wide-range of different service providers and entities across the entire digital asset ecosystem,” said Katz.

© 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 exchange Binance has suspended withdrawals of LUNA and UST tokens as the Terra-based stablecoin struggles to recover its peg to the US dollar.

Binance announced the temporary suspensions in a blog post earlier this morning, blaming “a high volume of pending withdrawal transactions” caused by network congestion.

“Binance will reopen withdrawals for these tokens once we deem the network to be stable and the volume of pending withdrawals has reduced. We will not notify users in a further announcement,” the company added.

The news comes amid a period of marked turbulence for Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin UST — the third largest stablecoin by total issuance behind USDT and USDC — which has fallen sharply against the dollar in the past few days. 

Significant efforts have been made to bolster UST. Luna Foundation Guard (LFG), a Singapore-based nonprofit that was formed to support both Terra-based stablecoins and the broader Terra ecosystem, announced a plan to lend $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and UST to third-party trading firms with the intention of providing support for UST’s peg on May 9.

Yet the price of UST has continued to fall against that of USDT, the largest dollar-pegged stablecoin. Binance data had it down to a low of $0.6065 on Monday. It has recovered somewhat in the hours since to around $0.85 at press time.

Meanwhile the price of LUNA, the Terra blockchain’s native asset which in normal market conditions can be burned in exchange for UST, has plummeted from around $62.50 just 24 hours ago to roughly $28.50 at press time, per data provided by CoinGecko.

There is also considerable volatility in wider crypto markets for Terra and LFG to contend with. The price of bitcoin briefly slipped below $30,000 yesterday before recovering to around $31,500 at press 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.

Bitcoin’s price traded below $30,000 late Monday amid continued turbulence in the crypto market.

According to data from TradingView, BTC fell to $29,825 before posting a recovery. At press time, the cryptocurrency is trading at $29,850.

Source: TradingView

As reported earlier Monday, the algorithmic stablecoin UST has incurred a significant price decline, falling more than 30% on Binance against USDT. At press time, UST is trading for roughly $0.67, with a low of $0.6065.

Speaking to The Block on the market situation Monday, Genesis Global Trading head of derivatives Josh Lim said that “[w]e’re seeing a slow-motion meltdown, partially because it’s mostly been long holders selling (instead of levered liquidations) and also because OTC market structure has shifted to slow-moving algo executions instead of at-risk blocks.”

“Now that some corporate treasuries are underwater on their BTC cost basis and others are very close, markets are waiting and watching to see if shareholders will force some de-risking,” he continued.

Frank Chaparro contributed reporting.

© 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 miner stocks fell by double digits during Monday’s trading session. 

Core Scientific, Marathon and Riot saw their stocks go down 13.15%, 19.20% and 19.18%, respectively.

Some of these companies have held on to a large sum of the bitcoin they mine instead of selling it, following a HODL (or hold on for dear life) strategy, which means their assets are closely tied to the current value of bitcoin.

According to its latest April production update, Core Scientific reported having a total of 9,618 BTC by the end of the month. Marathon said it had 9,673 and Riot 6,320 BTC.

Riot, which typically tends to keep its bitcoin, sold half of bitcoin mined last month after a 150% month-over-month production increase. The company also recently announced a massive expansion plan which includes a facility in Texas of up to 1 gigawatt (GW) .

Here is a look at how other crypto mining companies faired in the markets on Monday, May 9:

© 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.

Latin American crypto exchange Bitso is now offering its clients the opportunity to rack up extra earnings on the crypto in their wallets through a new yield feature.

Bitso users in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico are now able to earn yields on their crypto balance by using this new feature, which is called Bitso+. The exchange says the yields will reach up to 15% annually for stablecoins and 6% annually on bitcoin, without any extra fees or lock-up period. Bitso offers USD Coin (USDC), Pax Dollar (USDP) and Binance USD (BUSD) stablecoins.

“Bitso partnered with reputable yield providers to take advantage of strategies such as earning interest by lending crypto assets, earning rewards by staking on proof-of-stake blockchains or providing liquidity to DeFi protocols, and profit by simultaneously buying and selling a crypto asset on different markets at different prices,” David Álvarez López, Bitso’s savings product manager told The Block in an email statement. 

The yield option will appear automatically in the latest version of the Bitso app and reward users every week, the company said in a press statement. 

Bitso is registered and regulated in Gibraltar, but operates in Latin America. It has more than 4 million users in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. The exchange is also expanding into Colombia. 

“Inflation continues to rise globally and [e]specially in Latin America, and with this new feature we are giving our clients and the Latin American population as a whole a new way to increase their wealth in crypto just by having their assets on their Bitso wallet,” Bitso CEO Daniel Vogel said in the press statement. 

© 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

• As bitcoin mining rapidly expands in Texas, many in the industry assert that this will both strengthen the state’s unique power grid and encourage the growth of renewable energy.
• With so many different moving parts, experts say it’s hard to confidently say what the actual outcome will be.

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The US Federal Reserve has spotlit the risk of market runs on stablecoins in a newly issued report.

In a May 9 report on financial stability, the Fed emphasized stablecoins alongside certain money market funds and bonds as areas of risk in the current financial system, specifically funding. 

“Some types of money market funds (MMFs) and stablecoins remain prone to runs,” the Fed’s report reads. “Funding risks at domestic banks are low, but structural vulnerabilities persist at some money market funds, bond funds, and stablecoins.”

The report’s timing is notable, as TerraUSD (UST), one of the largest stablecoins and the largest algorithmic stablecoin by total supply, is struggling to maintain its peg against the US dollar amid a broad sell-off in crypto markets and global equities.

Researchers for the Federal Reserve published work on stablecoin risks and benefits back in January. The topic has been growing in prominence in the policymaking world, particularly since the President’s Working Group put out its report calling for new legislation to limit stablecoin risks back in November.

that report, the Financial Stability Oversight Board may step in to supervise stablecoins if Congress does not make new law addressing the sector.

© 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.