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Indian cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX raised over $135 million in a Series D funding round led by Pantera Capital and Steadview.

The round brings CoinDCX’s valuation to $2.15 billion, a spokesperson for the exchange told The Block. CoinDCX has doubled its valuation in just seven months. The exchange was valued at $1.1 billion in August when it raised $90 million in a Series C funding round.

CoinDCX says it is now the highest valued crypto company in India.

Other investors in the Series D round included Kingsway, DraperDragon, Republic, and Kindred. Previous investors, including B Capital Group, Coinbase, Polychain and Cadenza also participated in the round.

With fresh capital in hand, CoinDCX plans to triple its headcount to over 1,000 employees by the end of this year and continue to launch new products and services. The exchange will also look to continue spending on investor education initiatives. It currently runs the DCXLearn platform, providing free courses and articles on crypto and blockchain.

The Series D round brings CoinDCX’s total funding to date to around $245 million.

© 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.

Apollo Global Management is reportedly evaluating the possibility of partnering with Elon Musk or another bidder who similarly wants to put in an offer to buy Twitter.

Sources told the Wall Street Journal that the alternative investment management firm has had discussions about a deal that would provide a bidder like private equity firm Thoma Bravo LP with the necessary equity or debt.

Musk made a $41.4 billion cash offer to buy Twitter last week and the social media giant responded by putting in place a defensive strategy known as a “poison pill” that could make it harder for the billionaire to do so.

Musk currently acquired a 9.2% stake in Twitter last month and later declined to join the company’s board.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that Appollo is also considering a “cooperation” between Yahoo, which it owns, and Twitter.

© 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.

If you haven’t yet heard about Moonbirds, there are two big things to know.

For starters, Moonbirds is the latest non-fungible token (NFT) collection to reach blue-chip status, garnering over $200 million in sales volume this weekend.

But its success has also attracted a swarm of scammers who are using verified, apparently stolen Twitter accounts in an attempt to exploit the enthusiasm around the project and pilfer fund from users on the social media site.

“What are these Twitter @verfied accounts that keep spamming my mentions to promote NFT drops but then no crypto or NFT people follow them? This is bizarre,” tweeted journalist Laura Shin, who appears to be just one of the dozens of users on the receiving end of the spam messages.

Justin Mezzell, a co-founder of Proof Collective, the group behind the Moonbirds collection, tweeted Monday morning that “these are scammers who purchase verified accounts” and pretend to be involved with the Moonbirds project.”

It’s unclear if all the scam accounts are hacked accounts of actual verified users or if the verification status is purchased. Twitter did not address this question when contacted by The Block.

In one instance, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’s son Levi Sanders’s account appeared to be hijacked, with the account name changed to “Moonbirds.” The hijackers of the account then tweeted a link encouraging people to enter a giveaway. What followed were dozens of other tweets from the account that tagged Twitter users. 

Screenshot of Levi Sanders’s hacked Twitter account

Sanders’ account appears to have been re-controlled, with the handle changed back to “Levi Sanders” and some of the offending messages removed. However, numerous posts tagging numerous users are still available as of the time of writing. 

The scams follow the same pattern as other recent NFT-related scams on Twitter. Just last week, Twitter users were raising alarms about verified accounts that were tagging users to click on a fake free NFT airdrop link for Azuki, an NFT collection of 10,000 avatars.

Last month, scammers used verified Twitter accounts to steal a reported $1 million in a fake ApeCoin airdrop. One victim lost $500,000 worth of NFTs after connecting his wallet and approving transactions on a scam website.

It’s unclear what steps Twitter may take to prevent future scams of this kind. The company, which started offering NFT profile pictures earlier this year, doesn’t state in its current “Misleading & Deceptive Identities” policy what happens when scammers hijack verified accounts like Sanders’ to deceive users.

The company’s “spam” policy states that spamming can lead to temporary account locks or permanent suspension. But this would punish the users whose accounts were hacked versus the hackers themselves.

At the moment, users who are aware of the issues are reporting the scam accounts and warning others.

© 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

• A Rhode Island green housing bill introduced last week proposes a “green coin” to be issued as an incentive for carbon emission reduction.
• The proposed crypto token is part of a larger plan to fund new housing units in a sustainable way.

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Quick Take

• Founded in 2017, OpenSea is a decentralized peer-to-peer marketplace for NFTs, covering a wide range of digital assets from art, game items to music
• OpenSea experienced explosive growth in 2021, with transaction volume increasing over 600.0x and $423 million cumulative funding raised in less than twelve months – OpenSea is currently valued at $13.3 billion
• Improving user experience has been a persisting issue for OpenSea, and the team plans to tackle this issue in 2022 by scaling the team, focusing on safety and reliability efforts, and accelerating the product development
• OpenSea seeks to contribute to the NFT and web3 ecosystem through its new investment efforts – OpenSea ventures and Ecosystem Grants program

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Andrew Spinella and Renee Spinella of Derry, New Hampshire, and Nobody (formerly Richard Paul) of Keene, New Hampshire have pleaded guilty to wire fraud involving the use of cryptocurrencies.

As a release from the Department of Justice states, Andrew Spinella, Renee Spinella and Nobody allegedly opened fraudulent bank accounts to allow another defendant in this case, Ian Freeman, to trade crypto. 

Andrew Spinella opened a personal account, while Renee Spinella and Nobody both opened business accounts in the name of the “Crypto Church of NH” and “Church of the Invisible Hand” respectively. 

“By using fraudulent means to mislead banks about the true purpose of these bank accounts, the defendants assisted in the operation of an unlawful virtual currency business,” said U.S. Attorney Farley in the DOJ statement. 

Andrew Spinella, Renee Spinella, Nobody and three others were charged in March of 2021 for facilitating the operation of an illicit cryptocurrency-based money transmission business accruing over $10 million in fees, The Block previously reported. 

The Spinellas and Nobody are to be sentenced in July of 2022 while the other defendants go to sentencing in November of this year.

© 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.

Two Republican lawmakers have taken issue with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent rule changes.

On April 18, Representatives Patrick McHenry (R-NC) and Bill Huizenga (R-MI) wrote to SEC Chair Gensler criticizing the commission’s recent rulemakings as they relate to crypto.

The two proposals in question — one from January and one from March — push for expanded definitions of terms that appear in the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. In general, the rulemakings seem to require crypto exchanges to register with the SEC as exchanges and market makers to register with the SEC as broker-dealers. 

According to today’s letter in response to the rulemakings:

“The SEC fails to identify the problem that the rulemakings are intended to solve, particularly as it relates to requiring certain market participants facilitating digital asset transactions to register with the SEC.” The letter also criticizes the length of the rulemakings, saying: “We are concerned the proposed rulemakings total nearly 800 pages and include more than 300 questions for comments combined.”

McHenry and Huizenga both sit on the House Financial Services Committee, with McHenry serving as the top-ranking Republican on the overall committee. Several of their colleagues wrote to Gensler back in March over the SEC’s unofficial probes of a number of unnamed crypto companies. 

Earlier this month, Gensler called for greater oversight on the division of crypto firms’ different businesses. 

© 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.

WonderFi Technologies, backed by venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary, has announced that it will acquire Coinberry, one of the largest crypto exchanges in Canada, for a reported fee of 38 million Canadian dollars ($30 million) in an all-share deal.

The news marks the second Canadian crypto exchange purchased by the Vancouver-based DeFi platform WonderFi following the Bitbuy acquisition in January. Following the Coinberry deal, WonderFi will own two out of the six licensed crypto trading platforms in the country.

According to the announcement, Coinberry services over 220,000 customers and controls more than $80 million in assets under management. 

WonderFi says its acquisition of Bitbuy and Coinberry is geared towards consolidating Canada’s crypto trading platforms against unregulated entities like FTX and Coinbase.

The country’s securities regulator began cracking down on unlicensed exchanges in 2021 with the likes of Kucoin and Poloniex facing enforcement actions at the 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.

Popular DeFi architect Andre Cronje has decried the nature of “crypto culture” arguing that it stands in contrast to the ethos of the emerging ecosystem in a blog post published Monday.

According to Cronje, crypto culture with its drive for wealth drive is stifling the more noble pursuits associated with crypto’s ethos.

“I have long been vocal on my disdain of crypto culture, and my love for crypto ethos. Reading that might sound weird, but crypto ethos is concept like self-sovereign rights, self custody, self empowerment. Crypto culture is concepts like wealth, entitlement, enrichment, and ego,” Cronje stated.

Cronje also argued that many crypto builders have an insufficient understanding of monetary policy.

According to Cronje, it appears DeFi developers read Wikipedia articles on things like bonds, debt instruments, and seigniorage and think “they can do it better.”

According to the article, the crypto builders of today seem to be repeating the same mistakes made by those who designed the current monetary policies in mainstream finance.

The famed DeFi developer called for more regulation, stating that a robust legal framework is necessary to protect participants. Under such a regulatory framework, Cronje predicted the rise of a new crypto ecosystem driven by trust and not by greed.

When this new crypto age emerges, the current culture-driven iteration will become the badlands populated by rogue actors and their unknown wallets lurking in the shadows, Cronje stated.

While not explicitly indicating a return to the crypto scene, Cronje did state that he was excited about the future of the industry:

“We are entering a new age, the current iteration will become the badlands, where unknown wallets lurk in the shadows, we will see the rise of a new blockchain economy, not one driven by greed, but instead driven by trust, not trustlessness. There is an irony in having come full circle, yet I find myself more excited than ever. I won’t step foot into the badlands again, but I’m vastly excited about this new future.”

In March, Cronje and Fantom Foundation developer Anton Nell exited the crypto space. Their departure came just weeks after the launch of Solidly and its yield optimizer protocol Solidex on the Fantom chain.

The value of Fantom’s DeFi ecosystem declined after the departure, and both Solidly and Solidex have seen significant dips in activity since early March.

© 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.

During an episode of The Scoop from last November, Mastercard EVP Jess Turner explained how Mastercard was pivoting to become a ‘crypto first’ company.

Mastercard has since made significant progress on this decision, including the filing of over a dozen metaverse and crypto-related trademarks.

During this latest episode of The Scoop — recorded at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami — Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard’s EVP of Blockchain/Digital Asset Products & Digital Partnerships, shared the progress the payments company has made since entering the crypto industry, and how the move is a natural extension of Mastercard’s core business.

As Dhamodharan explained:

“We are a payment company that enables commerce. That’s what we are about. The reason we got into crypto is this is about providing choice and making sure people can exercise that choice safely and securely. That’s what our network always stood for: enabling safe commerce experiences across multiple rails.”

Mastercard has also made progress on the NFT front, including a partnership with Coinbase and an OpenSea integration. These decisions form part of Mastercard’s broader efforts to simplify the crypto experience for end-users.

As Dhamodharan commented during the interview:

“This is not about a crypto native going and buying an NFT… it’s really about enabling every artist and every creator to be able to have a large market for them to sell their artwork, and it’s really powering the creator economy. And how can we do that if we don’t enable common consumers to be able to purchase and hold the NFT using a simple consumer experience?”

During this Episode, Chaparro and Dhamodharan also discuss:

• Mastercard and the metaverse
• Multi-chain/multi-currency future
• The NFT purchasing experience

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.