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Financial services provider Stripe will support payments in the USDC stablecoin on the Polygon blockchain, according to an announcement today.

Such payments will be accessible through Stripe Connect — its system for integrating payments into online marketplaces — starting with Twitter as its first partner.

“With crypto payouts, a select group of creators on Twitter — our first partner — will be able to use cryptocurrency-based rails to receive their earnings from Twitter,” said Stripe in a blog post.

Twitter will let content creaters who use Twitter’s products, such as Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows, to receive their earnings in the stablecoin.

Stripe claims that businesses and platforms using Stripe Connect will be able to pay out in USDC, without having to buy or hold the stablecoin itself.

“With crypto payouts, platforms using Stripe can instantly send money to verified recipients nearly anywhere in the world,” said Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal.

Stripe said that it plans to add support for additional “rails” and payout currencies over 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.

Binance reportedly agreed to share user information with a Russian agency that collects and analyzes information about financial transactions as the crypto exchange seeks to enjoy better relations with governments around the world. 

According to messages obtained by Reuters, in April last year, Binance’s head of Eastern Europe and Russia Gleb Kostarev met with the agency, known as Rosfinmonitoring or Rosfin, in Moscow at the invitation of a Russian non-profit organization called the Digital Economy Development Fund.

Via the obtained messages, Kostarev indicated he didn’t have “much of a choice” in the matter. 

Kostarev subsequently agreed to share client data and set up a local unit in Russia through which authorities can request access to data such as names and addresses to help them fight crime. At the time, Rosfin was seeking to trace millions of dollars in bitcoin raised by jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, according to the report. 

A Binance representative told Reuters that they had never received contact from Russian authorities regarding Navalny nor did they confirm whether they had proceeded with setting up the local Russian unit. 

“Should we consider establishing a local entity in Russia in the future, Binance will never share data without a legitimate law enforcement request.,” said Binance. The exchange declined to comment when The Block contacted a representative for further comment. 

This information emerges as Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao continues his charm offensive toward government officials around the world. Last month, Zhao met with key figures in the UK government including officials from Downing Street and the Treasury. Most recently, it also announced a €100 million investment into France alongside a partnership with startup incubator Station F. 

© 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.

Blockchain security firm CertiK raised an additional $60 million just two weeks after it announced an $88 million Series B3 round at a $2 billion company valuation. 

The new round is an extension of the Series B3 round because there was demand from investors, CertiK co-founder Ronghui Gu told The Block. “Series B3 is oversubscribed. Considering the enthusiasm of investors, we managed to facilitate this extension,” he said.

SoftBank Vision Fund and CertiK’s existing investor Tiger Global are the only two backers involved in the extension round, Gu said. It was SoftBank’s first investment in a blockchain security firm, according to CertiK.

CertiK’s valuation has doubled in just three months as an increase in crypto hacks has underlined the need for security.

So far this year, more than $1 billion in crypto has been lost amid major DeFi hacks, including the Ronin Network and Wormhole. Still, attacks have occurred even after projects have been audited by firms like CertiK.

Audit is not a ‘certificate’

Gu said that an audit by CertiK is not a “certificate” or an “endorsement that a project is safe” from hacks. It is just a report of vulnerability findings with recommendations.

“CertiK or any other auditor provides audit scope around a particular contract, meaning the audit relates to a particular contract or version of code of a project,” Gu said. “Projects can fork their code, update their code or decline to remediate issues in their code after an audit is complete. This results in a persistent or new risk, which in some cases results in a hack.”

CertiK plans to continue expanding its offerings and its team with the fresh capital. The current headcount of the firm is about 200 and it has various open positions, including in its engineering and business development functions.

 The Series B3 extension round brings CertiK’s total funding to date to more than $300 million.

CertiK isn’t looking to raise more funds any time soon because it is a “cash flow positive” company, Gu said. Still, it could consider investments if a backer was strategically suited for CertiK, he 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.

An estimated 25,000 people descended on Miami, Florida earlier this month for Bitcoin 2022, the world’s largest Bitcoin-focused conference. That’s more than double the attendance the conference saw last year.

The annual Bitcoin conference is known for its fanfare, including some anti-government and anti-regulatory sentiment. That was still on display at Bitcoin 2022, with incidents like billionaire Ricardo Salinas including a slide titled “The Devils” depicting regulators and a Braveheart-style freedom chant from the crowd. But the tone seems to be shifting. 

In this episode of Policy Scoop, The Block’s Aislinn Keely delves into that change in tone, particularly the way this year’s conference put a much greater emphasis on policy. The anti-government sentiment that pervaded Bitcoin 2021 turned into a neutral and perhaps even friendly stance toward policymakers at the 2022 event. This may be because most Bitcoiners have accepted that mass adoption won’t come without regulation.

Keely covered the conference on the ground in Miami, and in this week’s episode, she chats with The Block Managing Editor Michael McSweeney about the key takeaways from the policy-related discussions at Bitcoin 2022. They dive into the following topics:

• The differences between Bitcoin 2021 and Bitcoin 2022
• The major policy events that have occurred in the past year to give Bitcoiners a more hopeful outlook on regulation
• Why the push for mass adoption seems to require some degree of working within the political system
• The difference in financial services regulation and mining regulation.

This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Fireblocks, Coinbase Prime & Cross River
Fireblocks is an enterprise-grade platform delivering a secure infrastructure for moving, storing, and issuing digital assets. Fireblocks enables exchanges, lending desks, custodians, banks, trading desks, and hedge funds to securely scale digital asset operations through the Fireblocks Network and MPC-based Wallet Infrastructure. Fireblocks serves over 725 financial institutions, has secured the transfer of over $1.5 trillion in digital assets, and has a unique insurance policy that covers assets in storage & transit. For more information, please visit www.fireblocks.com.

About Coinbase Prime
Coinbase Prime is an integrated solution that provides institutional investors with an advanced trading platform, secure custody, and prime services to manage all their crypto assets in one place. Coinbase Prime fully integrates crypto trading and custody on a single platform, and gives clients the best all-in pricing in their network using their proprietary Smart Order Router and algorithmic execution. For more information, visit www.coinbase.com/prime.

About Cross River
Cross River is powering today’s most innovative crypto companies, with banking and payments solutions you can rely on, including fiat on/off ramp solutions. Whether you are a crypto exchange, NFT marketplace, or wallet, Cross River’s API-based, all-in-one platform enables banking as a service, ACH & wire transfers, push-to-card disbursements, real-time payments, and virtual accounts and subledgers. Request your fiat on/off ramp solution now at crossriver.com/crypto.

© 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.

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO of the Binance crypto exchange, said his team was able to seize $5.8 million from North Korean hackers who last month stole $600 million from the Axie Infinity play-to-earn game.

After the theft, US regulators identified the hackers to be the Lazarus Group, a North Korean entity associated with the regime. 

CZ said in a Twitter post today that the exchange was able to recover $5.8 million from hackers who had moved a part of the stolen funds to Binance and spread it over 86 user accounts. He did not clarify who the user accounts belonged to.

Earlier this month, security firm PeckShield reported how the hackers had laundered 7.5% of the stolen funds through Tornado Cash — an Ethereum mixer protocol that obfuscates transactions. The hackers’ efforts may now have shifted to converting the stolen assets into fiat money through centralized exchanges like Binance. 

The Axie team previously said that it was working closely with crypto exchanges to track down the stolen funds.

Earlier this month, Binance led a $150 million funding round with the game’s creator, Sky Mavis, aimed at reimbursing victims of the hack.

© 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.

Russia is planning to run “pilot transactions” as early as next year using a digital ruble that could be used for international payments, according to a new report. 

Elvira Nabiullina, governor of the Central Bank of Russia, said that the digital ruble was already being tested and that the bank was gearing up for real-world digital ruble transactions, according to Reuters.

“We have fairly quickly created a prototype… now we are holding tests with banks and next year we will gradually have pilot transactions,” Nabiullina reportedly told Russia’s State Duma, the lower house of the country’s government.

The idea of a Russian central bank digital currency has been in the works for over a year. Last April, central bank leaders announced that a full launch could take place in 2023.

Nabiullina also said that Russia is looking to widen the pool of countries that accept the central bank’s MIR, a payment system that offers an alternative to Visa and Mastercard, which suspended operations in Russia, following the invasion of Ukraine.

In an attempt to cut Russia off from the global financial system in the first days of the war, western countries decided to ban certain Russian banks from the international payments messaging system SWIFT.

Officials in the US have been watching out for possible ways in which the country might be able to sidestep economic sanctions. Some have voiced concerns over whether crypto could serve that purpose.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen addressed some of those worries when she testified before the House Financial Services Committee earlier this month. “We’re monitoring for any attempts to use cryptocurrency to evade sanctions,” she told lawmakers.

Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, announced last month that it would soon start issuing and exchanging digital financial assets, after getting the green light from Russia’s central bank.

© 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 US’s national bank regulator is not happy with Anchorage Digital’s know-your-customer (KYC) program.

On April 21, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released a consent order, citing what it called Anchorage Digital’s lax compliance with KYC and anti-money laundering provisions. 

“The OCC holds all nationally chartered banks to the same high standards, whether they engage in traditional or novel activities,” said acting comptroller of the currency Michael J. Hsu. “When institutions fall short, we will take action and hold them accountable to ensure compliance with federal laws and regulations.”

The order requires Anchorage to instate a bank secrecy officer to preside over its compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act, the backbone of AML and KYC programs in the US. It also mandates the creation of a compliance committee of at least three members and a review of existing high-risk clients. 

A consent order usually means that both parties ⁠— in this case, the OCC and Anchorage Digital ⁠— have reached an agreement as to steps forward. Per the order, Anchorage “has begun corrective action and is committed to taking all necessary and appropriate steps to remedy the deficiencies identified by the OCC.”

Anchorage has operated under a conditional national bank charter from the OCC since early January, issued under Brian Brooks, who was at the time acting comptroller of the currency. The nature of that charter means that Anchorage is operating under a sort of probationary status. Since Michael Hsu took over the position the OCC has not issued any more such charters. 

© 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

• Sustained interest in crypto from traditional finance industries continues to grow, as can be seen through the total AUM and the number of new fund launches within the last year.
• The space still remains largely fragmented with various investment products spread out throughout various markets, but mainly concentrated in Europe and North America.
• Crypto Equity ETF exposure has shown to be an attractive option to various funds that are starting to explore this new asset class through US equities.

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Cricket NFT platform Rario announced a $120 million funding round led by Dream Sports’ venture capital and M&A arm Dream Capital on Thursday.

Along with Alpha Wave Global (previously Falcon Edge Capital), Dream Capital will join existing investors Animoca Brands, Presight Capital and Kingsway Capital.

Based in Singapore, Rario offers cricket fans NFT player cards, video moments and cricket artifacts. The company said it has sold over 50,000 NFTs since its launch last year. 

Sporting teams have been quick to jump on the NFT bandwagon of late. In December, Michael Jordan secured $10 million in seed funding to launch fan engagement platform Heir. Last month it dropped its first NFTs, which were priced at around 2.3 SOL ($220). 

In soccer, Tim Mangnall, the CEO of Capital Block, an agency that specializes in helping teams and organizations in Europe and the MENA region launch NFTs for fans, claimed all 20 English Premier League clubs were considering involvement in NFTs. However, he also believes “95%” of NFT projects are destined to fail and advised caution among buyers. 

Indeed, the liquidation of fan engagement platform Iqoniq, which counted LaLiga and the McLaren Formula One team among its partners, has already led to calls for more regulation around crypto sports sponsorships. And in December, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority banned ads for Arsenal fan tokens on the grounds that they took advantage of customer inexperience in crypto assets. 

Nevertheless, this trend in sports clubs creating NFTs shows little sign of abating just yet: Deloitte Global has predicted that NFTs for sports media will generate more than $2 billion in revenue this year and that by the end of 2022 4-5 million sports fans will have bought or been given an NFT sports collectible.

Rario so far has exclusive partnerships with six international teams and a roster of over 900 cricketers on its books, and recently signed a multi-year exclusive partnership with Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers’ Association to create an Australian cricket metaverse of collectibles and gaming. 

With the latest investment, the company will now get access to Dream Sports’ 140 million users, to whom they will offer more fiat-only products in India. Dream Capital has a nine-company portfolio focusing on sports, gaming and fitness tech.

© 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 Crusoe Energy Systems raised $505 million in a Series C round to accelerate the growth of its mining operations powered by natural gas that is typically burned as a waste product of oil extraction.

The Denver-based company got $350 million in equity financing from G2 Venture Partners and an additional $155 million in credit facilities from SVB Capital, Sparkfund and Generate Capital, according to an announcement on Thursday.

The company currently operates 86 “Digital Flare Mitigation” data centers, which bring energy demand to places where excess natural gas is being flared, like oil drilling operations. It plans to expand them in the US and internationally.

This setup has been touted as a win-win situation. The miners use excess natural gas, in theory reducing methane emissions while generating a profit. Crusoe recently launched a pilot project with oil and gas behemoth Exxon in North Dakota and is considering setting up similar ones in Alaska, Nigeria, Argentina, Guyana and Germany.

In the market for flare mitigation and modular data center technologies, Crusoe is the “clear leader in scale,” said Ben Kortlang, a partner G2 Venture Partners, in a statement. “This capital will enable Crusoe to deploy Digital Flare Mitigation at greater scale, to use its solution to accelerate renewable energy deployment, and to continue innovating its industry-leading technology,” said Kortlang.

The company will use the money to accelerate the launch of CrusoeCloud, a cloud computing platform that uses “high-performance computing” powered by stranded energy such as flare gas and curtailed renewables, according to the company’s website.

Crusoe currently employs 157 people and plans to expand its workforce to 250 by the end of this year.

Other participants in the funding round include Valor Equity Partners, Lowercarbon Capital, Polychain Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, Founders Fund MCJ Collective, Winklevoss Capital, Zigg Capital, DRW Venture Capital, Atreides Management, Exor Seeds, CMT Digital and Upper90.

© 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.