FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

US neobank Cogni has raised $23 million in Series A funding in a round co-led by Hanwha Asset Management and CaplinFO. 

Launched in 2018 by Archie Ravishankar, the startup says it aims to build personalized financial services based on the typical Gen Z and millennial user’s lifestyle. It didn’t disclose the valuation assigned to the company. 

Along with providing carbon emission information data on transactions and digital gift cards, he believes that building a simplified multichain wallet service in-app will attract these users. 

“86% of the millennials and Gen Z that we have spoken with don’t have the knowledge or time to understand how to set up a wallet but everyone has a bank account,” he says. 

Set to launch in the next year, this wallet, and a forthcoming savings “account” on DeFi rails, will power its web3 vision of social commerce — the use of social media to drive e-commerce sales.

For instance, Ravishankar says the company is set to partner with a company that provides NFTs for college athletes, with the idea behind this being that anyone with a Cogni bank account would receive this through their wallet.

While the end result will be a multichain wallet, he says that it will likely launch first on Solana, a participating investor in the round through its venture arm.

A cog in the vision

However, the company may face a few hurdles to achieve this vision. For starters, a crypto interest account created by BlockFi was subject to a $100 million fine after the SEC classed it as a security.

Ravishankar admitted to The Block that they are still currently working through how such an account would be compliant but stressed his intention was to provide a high yield account with rates above that seen in traditional finance.  

In a crowded neobank market, the company may also face pushback in its plans. Its number of users — still in the tens of thousands — is far below the top neobanks in the US where Chime and Current reign supreme with 13.1 million and 4 million users respectively. With this pivot into web3, however, Cogni hopes to reach 150,000 users and is currently onboarding 50-60 customers a day via word of mouth, says its founder. 

Ravishankar would not disclose the valuation implied by this fresh funding but said that the company is already looking ahead, hoping to raise a Series B in about a year’s 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.

Crypto services provider Fireblocks has added support for the Terra blockchain on its platform as institutional demand for decentralized finance (DeFi) grows.

The company said it’s the first to provide Terra access to institutional customers, meaning its clients can now access Terra-based DeFi apps such as lending protocol Anchor and liquid staking protocol Lido.

Terra support comes in response to “record-breaking demand” from customers of its early access program, the company said today. The program is for Fireblocks clients who wish to participate in “special, early releases” of features and integrations that will launch on the Fireblocks platform before the public has access, CEO Michael Shaulov told The Block.

These customers deployed more than $250 million into Terra-based protocols within the first 72 hours of the integration being live on April 18, said Shaulov. That amount has now grown to over $470 million, he added.

Terra is the second-largest DeFi ecosystem, after Ethereum, by total value locked (TVL). The value locked in Terra-based protocols currently stands at over $25 billion, compared to over $113 billion in Ethereum-based protocols, according to data from DeFi Llama.

Why are institutions interested in DeFi?

Shaulov said institutional investors benefit from accessing DeFi markets as they offer new yield generation opportunities that are not available in traditional markets and assets.

They can also build new products and services for their clients using Fireblocks’ infrastructure and generate revenue, said Shaulov.

Fireblocks currently supports both centralized and decentralized crypto trading platforms and saw a total transfer volume of $42 billion just in the last week of March, according to Shaulov.

The Terra support comes three months after Fireblocks added support for Solana. Shaulov said the firm aims to support “every major DeFi ecosystem” in the coming months and years.

Fireblocks is backed by notable investors, including Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, Ribbit Capital and Bank of New York Mellon. The firm recently raised $550 million in a Series E round at an $8 billion valuation.

© 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 CleanSpark announced on Tuesday that it raised $35 million in non-dilutive equipment financing.

The company closed a three-year deal with Trinity Capital Inc. backed by 3,336 new S19j Pro miners and with an annual interest rate of 9.9%.

The new capital will be used for CleanSpark’s growth capital expenditures.

The company recently announced that it would expand mining capacity by 200 megawatts in west Texas until the spring of 2023, with the goal of adding an extra 300 megawatts in the future.

“We intend to continue our efforts of obtaining non-dilutive capital to finance our growth capex needs,” said CFO of CleanSpark Gary Vecchiarelli. “It is worth noting that we have not drawn on our ATM since November.”

CleanSpark currently owns 23,000 “latest-generation” bitcoin mining machines and is waiting on the delivery of approximately 12,000 new ones, per the announcement.

© 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 Otherside metaverse project said it will require Know Your Customer (KYC) verification to take part in this week’s virtual land auction, in a break from the more easygoing practices common in the sector. 

Those who wish to bid in the auction of metaverse land NFTs, which is scheduled for 12 pm ET on Saturday, will first need to pass a KYC check, according to a Twitter announcement from Otherside.

Otherside is a metaverse or blockchain-based virtual world from Yuga Labs — the creator of popular NFT collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC). For developing the Otherside metaverse, Yuga raised $450 million in a March seed funding round — led by Andreessen Horowitz — which valued it at $4 billion. 

In its coming weekend auction, Yuga Labs will sell units of land, a term that refers to digital real estate used as NFTs in any metaverse. Per the announcement, land NFTs will be sold in a Dutch-style auction, a bidding war where the asking price starts high and then falls toward a minimum reserve price.

KYC, a process in which personal details of individuals are collected, is an uncommon practice in the unregulated NFT space. Notably, all prior Yuga Labs’ NFTs — Bored Ape, Mutant Ape and Kennel Club NFT collections — did not involve KYC. And unlike its past sales made in the ether cryptocurrency, the coming auction will accept bids in apecoin, a cryptocurrency tied to the Bored Ape NFT ecosystem. 

Another post from Otherside indicated that existing Bored Ape and Mutant Ape NFT holders will be able to claim the land NFTs. While this appears to be an airdrop to Ape NFT holders, the team did not fully clarify the situation.

“BAYC and MAYC holders, you’ll be able to claim an NFT for 21 days after the auction,” a Twitter post read. This specific claim will not need a KYC check. Only those who make bids in the auction will be asked to go through personal verification, the project added.

© 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.

UK-based challenger bank Starling Bank has completed a £130.5 million internal fundraising round at a £2.5 billion valuation.

The funding came from existing investors Fidelity Management and Research Company, RPMI Railpen, Qatar Investment Authority, Goldman Sachs and Harald McPike. 

In a statement on Tuesday, the company said the money would enable it to continue growth and “build a war chest for acquisitions.” 

“We are looking at a number of potential targets,” a spokesperson added.

Although the bank declined to go into specifics about targets, The Block understands that Starling Bank is interested in acquiring lenders, and is currently looking at specialist lender Kensington Mortgages. This Is Money first reported Starling’s interest in the business in January. 

Starling Bank was founded in 2014 by Anne Boden as an alternative bank account provider. Boden has previously said that the company aims to go public by 2023.

In July last year, Starling Bank acquired buy-to-let mortgages lender Fleet Mortgages in a £50 million cash and share deal.

© 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 derivatives company Bybit will start offering options trading to customers, adding to its existing product line of perpetual futures contracts and expiration futures contracts.

Making the announcement on Tuesday, the company has not yet given an exact launch date but it said that Bybit users would be able to trade USDC options and perpetuals through portfolio margin. 

“Options is something that our existing clients have long been asking for since there has been no other revolutionary product offered in the market at the moment,” Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Bybit, said in the company’s statement.

“We are confident that our state-of-the-art offering will set the bar for the sector and normalize crypto options trading, just like what Robinhood did for stock options.”

 Zhou floated the idea of offering options trading as far back as July last year, initially saying the product would be available by the end of 2021.

The company has high hopes for its success in the options trading market. Speaking with media at the Dubai Crypto Expo 2022 last month, Bybit head of communications Igneus Terrenus claimed that the company was focused on getting a 50% share of the crypto options market within the next 18 months.

Crypto derivatives exchange Deribit is the current market leader for crypto options trading.

The news is the latest in a flurry of announcements by Bybit, which last week also said it would enable users to purchase crypto using their credit and debit cards.

Last month it also joined the ranks of companies shifting their headquarters from Singapore to Dubai as the UAE’s new Dubai Virtual Asset Regulation Law aims to boost the crypto industry in the emirate.

Being welcomed into Dubai comes after a much frostier reception for Bybit elsewhere over the previous year. Its lack of registration in several jurisdictions saw warnings issued against it by financial authorities in the UK and Japan. In June the Ontario Securities Commission in Canada started proceedings against the company as part of a broader provincial-wide crackdown on unregistered crypto exchanges.

© 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.

Fidelity Investments will allow its clients to allocate part of their retirement savings to bitcoin.

The company, which manages some $4.2 trillion in assets, said on Tuesday that it plans to permit investors to add a bitcoin account in their 401(k)s, so long as their employers allow it. The Wall Street Journal was first to report the news.

Reports suggest the new functionality could be rolled out as soon as the summer of this year.

Management fees for the bitcoin account will range between 0.75% and 0.90%, with the exact amount depending on the amount invested and the employer, plus an as yet undisclosed additional fee, per reports.

Fidelity was among the first global financial institutions to wade into the crypto market. It launched a digital assets arm focused on custody and execution services in October 2018.

© 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.

On Monday, Elon Musk finally got what he wanted: Twitter.

The $44 billion-odd deal, the rumblings of which began late this weekend, closed the book on the theatrical swirl around the billionaire entrepreneur’s efforts to acquire the social media site he uses so assiduously. The deal will see Musk, who already runs the electric automaker Tesla and private space contractor SpaceX, take the reins at Twitter, which was founded in 2006. Musk became a user in mid-2009.

Since Musk unveiled his takeover bid, a fair share of digital ink has been splashed on the question of what impact such a deal would entail. But what about the impact on the social media site’s crypto ecosystem? What changes may come to “Crypto Twitter” now that Musk is in charge?

In a press release, Musk offered a few clues:

“I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”

Musk versus the bots

Earlier this month, Musk discussed his potential approach during a TED talk stage appearance. It was during that discussion that Musk highlighted what is likely to be his most visible impact with respect to Crypto Twitter: the bots.

If you spend any time in crypto Twitter, you’d have to be using the site incorrectly to not notice the near-constant deluge of spam bot replies attempting to point you in the direction of the latest Twitter-based crypto scam. Musk himself has been a prominent target of numerous impersonation attempts, a history that has no doubt informed his position on the matter.

“Frankly, a top priority I would have is eliminating the spam and scam bots and the bot armies that are on Twitter,” Musk said. “They make the product much worse. If I had a dogecoin for every crypto scam I saw, I would have a hundred billion dogecoin.”

Unclear, however, is what Musk will do differently than what Twitter is doing today to combat the situation. But it’s undeniable that the scam bot campaigns are having a real economic impact on their targets, and Musk would be under pressure to affect change now that he’s in charge.

Musk versus the moderators

Musk is not alone among the critics of Twitter’s content moderation approach — in fact, many Crypto Twitter personalities share his views. As the site’s new owner, he’s now in a position to change the company’s direction on this issue.

But it’s a complicated problem. Musk is very likely not going to toss the whole system in the trash and create digital Wild West, given possible opposition by Twitter’s board and the larger risk of allowing violent and sexually exploitative content to spread unfettered.

If he follows through on his pledge to open-source the site’s algorithms, that will provide a wealth of information about how Twitter governs the site. The public response to that may shape whatever actions Musk takes with respect to moderation approaches.

Musk’s influence will likely be most tangibly felt in what is known as the “gray area,” referring to posts on cultural, political and sociological fault lines where the responsibility for drawing the line between genuine discourse and outright malice falls on the site’s content moderators. For instance, it’s possible that Musk could push to relax the ways in which an account might be suspended or banned. 

It is here where the ideological battle of Twitter is most acutely seen, where trigger-happy fingers hit “report” and the accusations that the site’s moderators are prioritizing one faction over another are loudest.

It is also here where many crypto enthusiasts side with Musk, and they may be more likely to increase their use of the platform. Those that disagree with Musk, on the other hand, may leave Crypto Twitter and shift more of their focus to platforms like Discord, or they could invest more time and resources into decentralized alternatives.

© 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.

Major crypto exchange and service provider Crypto.com launched a major lobbying operation at the beginning of 2022.

According to lobbying disclosure documents reviewed by The Block, Crypto.com spent $300,000 on lobbying in Q1 of 2022, immediately making it one of the largest players in the crypto lobbying space. It was the first time that the company had reported any lobbying disclosures at all.

Crypto.com is globally based in the Cayman Islands but operates in the US via the Delaware-registered Foris DAX, Inc. Foris DAX launched an internal lobbying operation that did $130,000 worth of lobbying.

The firm also enlisted teams at Hill East Group, Atlas Crossing, S-3 Group, Miller Strategies and K&L Gates for contracts that totaled $170,000 in Q1. Additionally, lobbying and advocacy teams at Blue Star Strategies and Sidley Austin filed registrations to lobby for Foris DAX, but did not report any actual lobbying spending as of the Q1 due dates for those reports.

The Lobbying Disclosure Act classifies a relatively narrow range of activities as lobbying that requires disclosure on these reports. Consequently, the $300,000 is not indicative of the whole of Crypto.com’s government relations or strategy work.

“We are actively seeking to work with regulators globally as we continue to build our operations and to educate policymakers about our company and the category,” a spokesperson for Crypto.com told The Block but declined to elaborate on their plans for building those operations.

Politico’s Caitlin Oprysko reported recently that the firm’s government wings “expected the teams to have upwards of 40 staffers around the globe by the end of the year.”

The firm did not provide details on the team’s size. Matt David, the firm’s chief communications officer, is currently leading the team. Madeline Dyer, formerly of Visa, is the firm’s current director of government affairs and the only other lobbyist currently named on its disclosures.

Per LinkedIn, since February the firm has also hired Chris Golden in Washington, DC and George Tucker in London to work on government affairs.

© 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 crypto industry’s trade associations in the US saw a dip in their federal lobbying activity last quarter for the first time in years.

Per Senate lobbying disclosure reports, federal spending by crypto trade associations dipped from $1,034,663 to $917,406 between the last quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022.

It’s only a 10% slip in total lobbying activity, but it means that Q4 was at least a local peak.

Source: Senate lobbying disclosures. +con indicate contracts between the trade associations with outside lobbying firms.

As The Block reported in October, 2021 saw a massive ramp-up in trade association spending. Many, including Blockchain Association executive director Kristin Smith, attributed the trend to a major push in response to cryptocurrency provisions that showed up in the infrastructure bill at the end of last summer.

The Blockchain Association was the sole crypto-focused trade association to increase total federal lobbying spending in Q1, with totals rising from $540,000 to $590,000. Those increases were due to expanded spending on internal lobbying and a new contract with Forbes-Tate Partners.

The Chamber for Digital Commerce, the oldest industry trade association, saw a dip in total spending from $404,663 to $327,406 over the same period, all due to decreased spending on the association’s internal lobbying.

The Crypto Council for Innovation reported the end of their sole lobbying contract — with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck — in Q4 and has apparently not resumed action. The CCI has never reported spending on in-house lobbying activity, but the council has been busily staffing up in recent months and anticipates more lobbying work going forward. 

“It’s a new team so we wanted to start fresh,” comms director Amanda Russo told The Block. “We’re actively hiring. So watch the space because there’s going to be stuff coming.”

Though total figures for trade association lobbying in Q1 are lower than Q4, they remain far above Q3’s total of 621,000.

Per the Lobbying Disclosure Act, these associations must report spending on a surprisingly limited range of activities. Their total spending on government relations is significantly higher.

For example, the largest lobbyist, the Blockchain Association, reported funding of almost $8 million in 2021, while in the past year its lobbying disclosures totaled $1,760,000.

Representatives for the Blockchain Association and the Chamber for Digital Commerce had not returned requests for comment as of 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.