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The Crypto Council for Innovation, a well-heeled but until recently quiet trade association for global blockchain policy, has onboarded its first executive team. 

On April 7, the CCI announced five new hires, including three new members of the leadership team, who join executive director Sheila Warren. 

The new executives include former Senator Cory Gardner, who is CCI’s chief strategist of political affairs. The council’s new director of communications will be Amanda Russo, who, like Warren, formerly worked with the World Economic Forum. Annie Dizon, formerly of the nonprofit TechSoup, joins CCI as director of operations.

In addition, former Algorand Foundation CEO Sean Lee has signed on to advise CCI on its Asia-Pacific expansion. Katherine Wu, a venture partner at Archetype, is CCI’s first research fellow. 

Backed by Fidelity Digital, Coinbase and Block (then still known as Square), Crypto Council for Innovation made headlines upon its emergence last spring, but remained largely dormant in the absence of leadership.

Sheila Warren left the World Economic Forum to join the CCI as executive director in January, after which crypto exchange Gemini came on as a member company. 

© 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.

Bolt, a payments and e-commerce firm, has acquired crypto company Wyre in a deal valued at around $1.5 billion.

“Bolt and Wyre plan to close the transaction and fully integrate before the end of the year, and once complete, the acquisition will bring the power of Bolt’s CheckoutOS—one-click checkout, authentication, payments, and fraud protection—to the cryptocurrency ecosystem,” the firms said in a press statement shared with The Block. 

The news signifies the latest intersection of the crypto space and the broader fintech industry. The acquisition deal, among the biggest in the crypto industry to date, was first covered by the Wall Street Journal Thursday morning. 

“This acquisition will fast-track our efforts to democratize commerce—and it will serve as a powerful proof point for the union of cryptocurrency and commerce,” Ryan Breslow, Bolt’s founder and chairman. 

© 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 has reached a valuation of $2 billion in a new funding round, as a rise in crypto scams underlies the need for more security and protection.

The firm has raised $88 million in a Series B3 round. Insight Partners, Tiger Global, and Advent International co-led the round, with Goldman Sachs, Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participating.

The new funding round comes just three months after CertiK raised $80 million in a Series B2 funding round at a nearly $1 billion valuation.

So what led to the double valuation in three months?

CertiK co-founder Ronghui Gu told The Block that it was triggered by the firm’s growing revenue and increasing demand for its services. CertiK says its revenue increased 12 times last year and profits surged by 3,000 times. Gu declined to share absolute numbers since CertiK is a private company.

Founded in 2018, New York-based CertiK audits smart contracts of blockchain projects to ensure they are secure to launch and use. Hacks and exploits are commonplace in crypto. Last year, over $1.3 billion in crypto assets were lost to cybercriminals, according to CertiK. This year thus far, over $1 billion in crypto has already been lost due to major attacks such as Ronin Network and Wormhole.

Gu said recent security incidents have made project developers realize that a security audit is “not just a nice to have.”

CertiK claims to have protected over $300 billion worth of crypto assets to date by serving over 2,500 enterprise clients. Its clients include Aave, Polygon and Terra.

With fresh capital in hand, CertiK plans to continue enhancing its offerings. Gu said the firm aims to be “the one-stop vendor for all project needs.”

To that end, CertiK also looks to expand its current team of around 200 people, said Gu. The firm is hiring for multiple roles, including engineering and business development.

The Series B3 round brings CertiK’s total funding to date to $230 million. Gu said the firm isn’t looking to raise more funds in the near future and it doesn’t have any IPO plans.

© 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.

Varun Paul, the head of the fintech hub at the Bank of England, has said he has left to take up a role at Fireblocks, ending a nearly 14-year stint at the UK central bank. 

Although it is not yet clear what role he will take at the custody platform, a person familiar with the matter told The Block that Paul is set to join the firm’s corporate strategy team.

“16 years after starting my first internship and more than 13 years after starting as a graduate, today I’ve parted ways with the Bank of England,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.

Paul’s tenure at the bank spans a period of significant change. According to his LinkedIn profile, he spent around two and a half years from September 2018 leading a project on the future of the financial system. He was named head of the fintech hub in February 2021. 

The Block contacted Paul, Fireblocks and the Bank of England for comment but had not heard back by the time of publication. 

The hiring move points to a growing trend of officials formerly housed at public entities, such as central bankers, politicians and regulators, moving in-house at crypto and fintech firms in the UK.

Last year, Austrian exchange Bitpanda hired former Financial Conduct Authority official Matthias Bauer-Langgartner as its managing director for UK and Ireland. Zodia’s chief compliance officer Chris Kiew-Smith is also ex-FCA. Alongside these, ex-UK chancellor Philip Hammond joined Copper as a senior advisor last 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.

Despite the news Wednesday that El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele would be canceling his Thursday appearance, the event agenda still includes speakers who have been actively working to increase bitcoin adoption in Latin America over the past year.

At least two big announcements are planned for Thursday. 

Samson Mow, Pixelmatic CEO and former Blockstream chief strategy officer: April 7, 10:45 a.m. 

Former Blockstream Chief Strategy Officer Samson Mow will appear at the Bitcoin 2022 conference to make a morning announcement.

Mow played a key role in developing El Salvador’s bitcoin bond, which was scheduled to launch in May and is now on hold until further notice. Those bonds would be issued using Blockstream’s Liquid Network sidechain. 

Mow announced on March 1 that he was leaving Blockstream after five years to “focus on nation-state bitcoin adoption.” While some rumors have emerged about whether a country could follow El Salvador in making bitcoin legal tender, nothing has been confirmed as of yet.

“I guess I have to use 100x leverage on my announcement tomorrow then,” Mow tweeted after it was announced that Bukele would not be attending the conference.  

Jack Mallers, CEO of Strike – April 7: 4:35 p.m.

Strike CEO Jack Mallers is returning to the Bitcoin conference this year to make an announcement.

While details have not been announced, it may involve connecting merchants to the Lightning Network-powered mobile payments app based on information Mallers has teased ahead of the event. The app is currently available in the US, El Salvador and Argentina. 

“We need to get more merchants on board,” Mallers told podcast host Natalie Brunell during a March 31 interview when asked to give a preview of what Bitcoin 2022 attendees could expect. He said that attracting merchants has been a priority for him in recent months. The event agenda shows a picture of Mallers next to a description of the talk, which cryptically says “Untitled” and “Jack Mallers Announcement Keynote.”

On March 24, Mallers posted a series of images to Twitter, including a graphic with logos of Starbucks, CVS Pharmacy, Whole Foods, Best Buy, The Home Depot and Target alongside a screenshot of a QR code that would be used to pay for fast food items. On the other side are logos of companies including Strike, Cash App, Muun and Tor.

“With Bitcoin as the monetary network, the financial system will be cheaper, faster, more innovative, and more inclusive,” Mallers tweeted. “Two weeks.”

Mallers was scheduled to appear just after Bukele, before the president dropped out of the event.

At the Bitcoin 2021 conference last year, Mallers gave a speech about opportunities for countries to adopt bitcoin, which ended up being the moment when Bukele announced he would make bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador. Mallers said he had played a role in helping form the legislation to make that happen. 

Ricardo Salinas Pliego, Chairman of Salinas Group? 10:00 a.m. and 2:45 p.m.

Mexican billionaire and Salinas Group chairman Ricardo Salinas Pliego will be speaking during two panels at Bitcoin 2022.

While it is unclear whether he will make any announcements, Salinas is one of the most high-profile speakers at the event and a key bitcoin supporter in Latin America. One of his companies, the popular retailer Grupo Elektra, accepts bitcoin payments.

Salinas will first appear on the panel entitled “Billionaire Capital Allocators,” along with Thoma Bravo’s Orlando Bravo, ex-SoftBank COO Marcelo Claure, 10T Holdings’ Dan Tapiero and bitcoin strategist Greg Foss. Later, he will give a talk entitled: Cult of the Central Bank: A Fiat Religion. 

© 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.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will speak on cryptocurrencies today at American University in Washington, DC.

A much-anticipated event, it is the first time Yellen is addressing the subject at length. Based on excerpts of the speech shared with The Block and conversations with Treasury officials familiar with the matter, here’s what to expect.

The speech comes in response to President Joe Biden’s March executive order on cryptocurrencies, which directed agency coordination on broad frameworks for cryptocurrency policy. 

Like that executive order, Yellen’s speech will be high-level and politically minded, which is to say scant on details for specific policies. However, Yellen appears set to emphasize existing statutory authorities more than she will push for any new law expanding Treasury’s authority in crypto:

“In many cases, regulators have authorities they can use to promote these objectives and Treasury supports those efforts. To the extent there are gaps, we will make policy recommendations, including assessment of potential regulatory actions and legislative changes.”

Yellen’s remarks likewise say: “Wherever possible, regulation should be ‘tech neutral.”

She will also, Treasury officials say, be careful to contextualize cryptocurrency within historical assets and make recommendations “[c]onsistent with existing statutory mandates.”  

The primary exception will be stablecoins. Yellen will continue to support the President’s Working Group’s recommendations from November in some form or another.

Of note from the standpoint of regulation rather than new legislation, Yellen’s comments focus particularly on custody and tax reporting:

“Firms that hold customer assets should be required to ensure those assets are not lost, stolen, or used without the customer’s permission. And taxpayers should receive the same type of tax reporting on digital asset transactions that they receive for transactions in stocks and bonds, so that they have the information they need to report their income to the IRS.”

At the same time, Yellen’s speech will emphasize the Treasury’s support for innovation. Particularly, she will point to problems with the speed, cost and inclusiveness of existing payments as areas that could benefit from digital ingenuity. 

On April 6, Yellen appeared before the House Financial Services Committee to testify on the state of international finance, in a hearing that focused extensively on crypto’s role in Russia’s sanctions evasion. 

© 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.

MicroBT announced its latest generation of bitcoin miners, the M50 series, which includes the M50, the M50s and the M53.

MicroBT COO Jordan Chan said in a recorded message during the Bitcoin 2022 conference that the new miners are now ready for shipment.

The new WhatsMiner M50S can produce up to 126 terahash per second (TH/s) at an efficiency of 26 joules per terahash (J/T) and the WhatsMiner M50 can achieve 114 TH/s at 29 J/T, according to the company’s presentation.

The news series machines feature a Samsung 5 nm processor and single-silo designs, and are compatible with former generations, according to the announcement.

The company also announced a water-cooled rig, the M53, which is still under development and can reach 226 TH/s at 29 J/T. Per the firm’s presentation, the machine operates with ultra-low sound, a +95% heat-recovery rate, and a lower failure rate.

“Our solutions can provide our customers carbon neutrality,” Chan said about the M53. “We can reuse heat generated by the water cooling machine to provide heart to greenhouses, to homes, to fishery farms, to hospitals, etc.”

© 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.

El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele canceled his Thursday appearance at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, citing “unforeseen circumstances” in his home country. 

An English-language letter from Bukele to conference attendees started circulating on social media during the afternoon of April 6. The letter was shared by the conference’s official Twitter account, among others. 

“I have just made the hard decision of cancelling my participation in the conference due to unforeseen circumstances in my home country that require my full time prescence as President of a Nation,” Bukele wrote.

The president did not elaborate on what the specific circumstances were. However, El Salvador recently experienced a spike in gang violence, prompting the government to issue a state of emergency on March 27. 

“We’re sharing a letter from President @nayibbukele who is unfortunately no longer able to attend Bitcoin 2022 due to unforeseen circumstances in El Salvador which require his urgent attention,” the Bitcoin 2022 conference tweeted when sharing the letter. “We stand in solidarity with the Salvadorian people during these difficult times.”

Bukele had been one of the most sought-after speakers scheduled to attend the Bitcoin 2022 conference, with attendees speculating for the past few weeks about what kind of announcement he might make this year at the event. After all, it was during last year’s edition of the conference that Bukele first revealed plans to make bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador.

Some have wondered whether Bukele would give an update about the so-called bitcoin bonds, which were scheduled to launch in March but have since been delayed without a revised date. He was scheduled to talk Thursday afternoon before Strike CEO Jack Mallers.

“A lot has happened since the last conference and it was my sincere hope to celebrate our collective victories with another announcement, another small contribution in our fight for the liberation of money, one of the pillars of modern society,” Bukele wrote in the letter. 

© 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.

Another proposed approach to stablecoin regulation has entered the Congressional arena.

On April 6, Senator Pat Toomey (R-PN) released a draft of his Stablecoin Transparency of Reserves and Uniform Safe Transactions Act, or Stablecoin TRUST Act. 

The bill as currently written focuses on a new definition, “payment stablecoin,” which must be redeemable for fiat currency. Its backing must also be limited to assets “that are cash and cash equivalents or level 1 high-quality liquid assets denominated in United States dollars.” The last category is slightly more expansive than the cash and 3-month T-notes that have become standard among most of the larger stablecoins, but would limit, for example, commercial paper.

Payment stablecoin issuers would then be able to operate within one of three separate licensing regimes for issuers of what it defines as “payment stablecoins.” These are traditional bank charters, a new charter for payment stablecoins, and state-by-state money transmitter licenses — the latter of which is what most US crypto exchanges currently possess. 

The current text would also mandate disclosure of backing, redemption policies, and regular attestations. Critically, it makes no mention of audits. It also mandates that the Securities Exchange Act read ‘‘[t]he term ‘security’ does not include a payment stablecoin,” preserving stablecoins from the oversight required of, say, stocks. 

Last year, Toomey put out requests for comment on stablecoin legislation and published core principles for any pending measure. It’s a subject that has been at the top of the legislative priorities list since the President’s Working Group released a report calling for stablecoin issuance to be limited to insured depository institutions — effectively, banks. 

Important to note is that Toomey has not formally introduced the draft legislation. Instead, he is circulating it for public comment, meaning that any final version could vary drastically before a formal introduction.

“I look forward to receiving feedback on this legislation from my colleagues and stakeholders as Congress continues its work on stablecoin regulation,” he said in a statement. 

Given that Toomey has said he will not run for another term, time is limited for any legislation addressing stablecoins during his tenure in the Senate.

© 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.

Investor and Shark Tank personality Kevin O’Leary gave a decidedly pro-policy message during his keynote at the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami .

During his keynote on Wednesday, O’Leary argued with meaningful regulation in place “spigots of capital are going to flood into the sector like you’ve never seen.” That includes becoming the 12th sector of the S&P 500 in the next decade, according to O’Leary.

And that crypto-savvy regulation is on the horizon, he said.

“I’ve been spending a lot of time in Washington in the last three months,” he told attendees. “The good news is, on a bipartisan basis, there are many senators and reps that are thinking about this in a proactive way.”

Policy in the works

He pointed to the much-hyped bill from bitcoin-friendly senator Cynthia Lummis and recently announced co-sponsor Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. The concrete details of that bill have yet to come to light, but Lummis and Gillibrand said on a recent panel that the bill will establish a broad regulatory framework for crypto. 

He also touted the concise format of the recently introduced “Stablecoin Transparency Act” from Senators Trey Hollingsworth and Bill Hagerty. The two-page legislation requires stablecoins to be backed by dollars or government securities that mature in less than a year. It also mandates issuers publicly release third-party audits of their reserves. O’Leary said stablecoin regulation is a priority for his own business aspirations.

“My own auditor won’t let me and my operating company do anything with stablecoins because there’s no regulation on it,” he said. 

Regulatory minefields for miners 

But O’Leary sees some regulation on the horizon as potentially onerous.

He pointed to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) proposed carbon audit standards, which would require public companies to obtain a quarterly third-party audit of their carbon footprint.

Because bitcoin mining is an energy-intensive business, this could spell trouble. And as miners mainly mitigate their carbon use by purchasing offsets, the regulation could prove troublesome for the industry at present.

“The problem with a carbon offset is the tracking error is so huge that no public auditor will sign off on those statements,” said O’Leary.

Though O’Leary said a carbon audit is “bad for proof-of-work and bad for bitcoin mining,” he also said the policy could ultimately lead to leaps in renewable energy use. In an effort to divest from carbon, some miners are exploring hydroelectricity, wind and nuclear power, among other technologies.

O’Leary argued that bitcoin mining is a valuable enough enterprise that miners will fund the next generation of renewable energy in order to avoid a carbon audit.

“I’ll install the turbines,” O’Leary quipped. “Why? Because it’s great economics if I can use that and not be hassled by a carbon audit. This is the future of bitcoin mining. We will be developing power for all communities while we mine coins in an ethical and 100% green mandate that we can do with hydroelectricity.” 

O’Leary has a variety of crypto projects in his portfolio. He backs decentralized finance platform WonderFi, which recently acquired Toronto-based exchange Bitbuy. At the time of the acquisition, O’Leary also pointed to Canada’s progressive regulatory stance as a main driver of the 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.