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ProShares, which launched the first bitcoin futures ETF last fall, is seeking approval for a new product that will allow investors to bet against the price of bitcoin.

The ProShares Short Bitcoin Strategy ETF traces the opposing performance of a bitcoin futures index. Bloomberg first reported the news Wednesday morning.

In a Tuesday regulatory filing, ProShares said that the proposed fund “seeks daily investment results, before fees and expenses, that correspond to the inverse (-1x) of the daily performance of the Index. The Fund does not seek to achieve its stated investment objective over a period of time greater than a single day.”

ProShares’ product, and the similar ones that have come in its wake, represented a significant sea-change for bitcoin-tied exchange products in the US. Still, the Securities and Exchange Commission has been resistant to spot bitcoin ETFs, having shot down numerous proposals in recent months from well-known industry firms. 

Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst for Bloomberg, remarked in a Wednesday tweet that ProShares may succeed in its bid “given ProShares’ perfect read on SEC w/ $BITO and the lack of issues w/ futures ETFs so far.”

© 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.

Payments infrastructure service Worldpay announced on Wednesday that it will offer merchants the ability to receive settlement directly in the stablecoin USDC. 

In partnership with Circle, the move will let both crypto-native and traditional businesses build stablecoin settlement into their offerings, Worldpay’s parent company FIS said in a release. Crypto.com will act as a pilot customer. 

For traditional merchants and other corporates, the ability to receive settlement in stablecoins can help drive adoption of digital assets by enabling them to experiment with cryptocurrency in a less volatile and lower-touch environment, FIS said. 

FIS processes over $2 trillion in transactions annually across more than 100 countries in numerous payment types and currencies.

Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle, said the partnership is a “glimpse into a future where value is exchanged  frictionlessly.”

The move highlights a growing appetite for connections between fiat and crypto-native payment systems. Last year, Visa became the first major payments service to roll out settlement on Ethereum for USDC payments. 

Last week, MoonPay announced a partnership with OpenSea to enable users to buy NFTs with a credit card, having launched the plug-and-play service in January. 

© 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.US, the American affiliate of global crypto exchange Binance, has closed its inaugural funding round after months of seeking it.

The firm has raised over $200 million in a seed round at a pre-money valuation of $4.5 billion. Investors included RRE Ventures, Foundation Capital, Original Capital, VanEck, Circle Ventures, Gaingels and Gold House. There was no lead investor for the round.

The round comes seven months after Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said in August that Binance.US had expected to close funding shortly from “reputable investors.” At the time, the then CEO of Binance.US, Brian Brooks, left the exchange just after three months of joining, reportedly after a failed $100 million funding effort.

Now with fresh capital in hand, Binance.US aims to offer new products and services. A Binance.US spokesperson declined to comment on specific offerings but said the exchange is exploring a host of new services organically or through strategic mergers and acquisitions. It expects to bring some of these services to market in the near term.

Binance.US currently offers crypto spot trading services to retail and institutional clients. The exchange was launched in 2019 and is now available in 45 US states and eight territories. It plans to offer its services across all US states and territories.

As for trading volumes, Binance.US is far behind its rival Coinbase. The exchange had a trading volume of over $9 billion last month compared to Coinbase’s over $81 billion, according to The Block’s Data Dashboard.

Other top US-based exchanges, FTX.US and Gemini, had trading volumes of over $5 billion and nearly $4 billion, respectively, in March.

After Brooks left, Binance.US promoted its president and board member Brian Shroder as CEO in October. Since then, the exchange says, it has doubled its headcount. The current headcount of Binance.US is over 350 and it expects to continue hiring for various roles, including marketing, compliance and risk, customer support, product and tech, said the spokesperson.

To that end, Binance.US also plans to raise more funds in the coming months. The exchange is also looking to go public “in the next two to three years,” said the spokesperson.

Crypto fundraising has been thriving in recent months. Several exchanges have recently raised mega-rounds, including Gemini and FTX.US. Both exchanges are valued higher than Binance.US. Gemini raised $400 million in its first round at a $7.1 billion valuation and FTX.US also raised $400 million in its first round at an $8 billion valuation.

Binance.US is reportedly under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission over its relationship with two firms — Sigma Chain AG and Merit Peak — owned by Zhao. The two firms are said to be trading crypto on Binance.US as market makers, profiting from the differences in bid and ask prices.

Zhao is reportedly the majority owner of both Binance and Binance.US.

© 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.

Coin Metrics announced Monday that it has raised $35 million in a new round of financing.

The round was led by BNY Mellon and Acrew Capital, according to a press statement. Other participants in the round included Goldman Sachs — which led Coin Metrics’ $15 million round last spring — and Fidelity.

Brevan Howard Digital, Cboe Global Market, Avon Ventures, JAM FINTOP Blockchain, Morningside Technology Ventures, Mubadala Investment Company, and Highland Capital Partners are among the firm’s new and existing investors that participated in the Series C round.

“This financing will enable us to accelerate both our business and product roadmap, including through continued investment in new novel risk, DeFi and other Dapp metrics, and in our world-class infrastructure,” co-founder and CEO Tim Rice said in a statement.

The round signals the continued interest among investors in crypto data-centric companies. Recent examples include Dune Analytics’ $69.42 million funding round and the $75 million raised by Nansen in December.

© 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 project NEAR Protocol has raised $350 million in a funding round led by Tiger Global, with participation from Republic Capital, Hashed, FTX Ventures, Dragonfly Capital, and others.

The new funding will help NEAR increase “the number of regional hubs in key community centers across the globe,” according to a company statement.

“NEAR is poised to be a leading smart contract blockchain platform, combining first-rate technology with a fast-growing developer ecosystem. We’re excited to support NEAR as we ramp up our investments in the digital asset space,” John Curtius, a partner at Tiger Global, said in a statement.

NEAR Protocol was founded in 2018 as an open-source platform for decentralized applications. In January, the NEAR Foundation, which governs the development of the NEAR blockchain, raised $150 million in a round led by Three Arrows Capital, Alameda, and Jump, as The Block reported at the time. In a January interview with The Block, the foundation’s CEO, Marieke Flament, said part of NEAR’s overall mission is to be the go-to place to build web3 applications and make the ecosystem as a whole more inclusive. 

This funding round follows a busy year for NEAR.

In April 2021, NEAR launched Rainbow Bridge to allow the transfer of ERC-20 tokens between the Ethereum and NEAR blockchains. In June, NEAR joined ICON’s Blockchain Transmission Protocol (BTP) allowing data to be sent to partners like Polkadot and Harmony. In November, NEAR also partnered with Ardana, to build a bridge to allow assets to flow between Cardano and NEAR.

More venture investment in projects building on NEAR Protocol will be announced in the upcoming weeks with a focus on NEAR-and Aurora-based DeFi projects and applications, according to the company. At the moment, there are around 300 applications running and building on NEAR, with more than 200,000 community members worldwide.

“Republic Capital did an in-depth analysis into the NEAR ecosystem and found that the builders in the space recognize the protocol as key to their deployment roadmap,” said Boris Revsin, managing director of Republic Capital, in a statement. “Community, tooling, documentation and support are critical to successful applications, and we believe NEAR is best in class in these important areas.”

© 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.

American Bank, a community bank headquartered in Allentown, Pennsylvania, has signed a deal with Bakkt in a bid to offer its customers the ability to buy and sell bitcoin and ether.

The service is expected to go live in the second quarter of 2022. Bakkt has announced such deals with several other regional and community-focused banks, including Variance Bank and Hanover Bank, in recent weeks. Bakkt announced a similar deal with New Jersey-based Manasquan Bank in December. 

“As one of the pioneers in online banking innovation and, as the longest operating ‘online bank’ in the country, we are always looking for ways to enhance our customers’ banking experience,” said Mark Jaindl, President and CEO at American Bank.

Bakkt, which was launched by Intercontinental Exchange in 2018 with a focus on institutional products and custody, later pivoted to offering a retail-focused app.

The firm began trading as a public company last October after merging with a special purpose acquisition company or SPAC. 

© 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.

HSBC Holdings has launched a fund focused on investment opportunities in the metaverse for wealthy clients in Singapore and Hong Kong.

According to a statement seen by Bloomberg, the Metaverse Discretionary Strategy portfolio will focus on five key areas of the metaverse: infrastructure, computing, virtualization, experience and discovery, and interface.

“The metaverse ecosystem, while still at its early stage, is rapidly evolving,” Lina Lim, regional head of discretionary and funds for investments and wealth solutions, Asia Pacific, at HSBC, said in the statement, according to Reuters.

“We see many exciting opportunities in this space as companies of different backgrounds and sizes are flocking into the ecosystem,” she added.

The portfolio is designed specifically for high and ultra-high net worth professional investors and accredited investor clients. It will be managed by HSBC Asset Management and “aims to capture the [metaverse] growth opportunities globally over the next decade.”

Audit, consulting and tax services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated last year that the value of the global metaverse market would increase from $45.4 billion in 2019 to $1.5 trillion by 2030.

Meanwhile, a report from investment banking company Citigroup last Thursday increased that figure to $8-13 trillion by 2030.

HSBC opens up to the metaverse

HSBC appears considerably warmer towards metaverse investment than it is towards cryptocurrencies. 

It has always been fairly skeptical of crypto in general. In May 2021, HSBC CEO Noel Quinn stated the bank had no plans to launch a crypto trading desk or invest in cryptocurrencies on behalf of clients due to concerns about volatility and transparency. His comments were made during a market rout attributed to Chinese government comments about “cracking down on bitcoin mining and trading activities.”

That said, in November last year, HSBC backed a $200 million funding round for blockchain technology firm ConsenSys, suggesting it may be changing its tune somewhat.

As for the metaverse, the bank is much more openly positive. Suresh Balaji, HSBC’s chief marketing officer for the Asia-Pacific region, said that the metaverse “is how individuals will experience web3, the next generation of the internet.”

It has been putting its money where its mouth is too. On March 16, the bank announced the purchase of virtual real estate in the Sandbox Metaverse, a subsidiary of venture capital company Animoca Brands.

 JP Morgan, however, was the first large bank to enter the metaverse when it opened a lounge in Decentraland in February.

© 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 Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) has bought another $230 million worth of bitcoin today, according to activity on LFG-owned crypto wallets.

To buy the sum of bitcoin, LFG transferred $231 million in USDT stablecoin from its Ethereum wallet to crypto exchange Binance, exchanged it for 5,040 BTC and withdrew it to its custody in three transactions.

LFG is a Singapore-based non-profit working on the Terra blockchain that plans to purchase billions of dollars in bitcoin as reserve assets for Terra (UST), the largest algorithmic stablecoin on the blockchain.

Terraform Labs CEO and LFG director Do Kwon confirmed the large bitcoin purchase in his recent Twitter post saying he “bought 230M in BTC” among a few other personal chores he finished.

LFG transferred its newly-bought bitcoin from Binance to a bitcoin wallet believed to be in its control. Separately, it withdrew 490 BTC, 586 BTC and 3,964 BTC in three transactions amounting to 5,040 BTC ($230 million) as a whole at the time of transfer.

LFG’s wallet currently holds 35,767.9 BTC worth over $1.6 billion — a sum that has been rapidly growing over the last month. Based on its transactional history, LFG’s last major buy-in prior to today came in on March 30 at 2,943 BTC, worth $139.3 million. 

As earlier reported by The Block, LFG aims to amass $3 billion of bitcoin in the short run and keep it as a second reserve cryptocurrency (in addition to LUNA) to support the UST. The stablecoin stands at a $16.7 billion market capitalization making it the fourth largest stablecoin in the crypto space.

To achieve the $3 billion objective, it is hoped that LFG will continue to buy more bitcoin in the near future. In the long haul, LFG aims to hit a massive $10 billion reserve made of bitcoin for its stablecoin reserves, Kwon stated last month.

© 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.

Sky Mavis, the creator of play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, has raised $150 million to reimburse its users who lost funds during the $600 million exploit on Ronin —  the Ethereum sidechain that hosts the blockchain game.

The funding round was led by Binance with participation from Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic and Paradigm, Sky Mavis announced in a Substack post today.

Combining its own funds along with latest raise will help Sky Mavis deliver on its promise of paying back everyone who was affected by the exploit, the firm said.

© 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.

Sequoia Capital has been invested in crypto since 2015, but the VC firm recently raised the stakes by announcing its first sector-specific fund: a $500 million Sequoia Crypto Fund focused on liquid tokens and digital assets.

In this episode of The Scoop, Sequoia partners Shaun Maguire and Michelle Bailhe sit down with host Frank Chaparro to discuss Sequoia’s new fund and explain how the power dynamic between venture firms and crypto native founders has evolved.

As Maguire explained:

“Crypto founders now have a lot more options than they did in the past. There were so few VCs that would invest in crypto – at least during the bear markets the last five years – those funds had huge amounts of leverage and could operate in a way that was very beneficial to the funds. That leverage has shifted to the founders, and now the founders get to be very selective and choose what they want.”

So what are these crypto-native founders looking for when it comes to selecting VC firms? Maguire believes they are looking for funds that can keep pace with the fast-paced crypto industry:

“Crypto moves so fast, crypto founders want to work with funds that can move incredibly fast,  they want to work with funds that deeply understand their problems, deeply understand the landscape. Those properties are primarily going to live within crypto specific funds rather than in generalist funds.”

The crypto-specific fund structure certainly seems to be working well for Sequoia, which recently led a $135 million Series A+ investment in LayerZero Labs, along with FTX Ventures and A16Z.

In fact, Bailhe believes that this is why Sequoia’s technical knowledge and understanding of the problems in cross-chain interoperability that LayerZero Labs is attempting to solve made such an impact on co-founder Bryan Pellegrino.

“I remember him saying, ‘You really tried to engage on the way that we had constructed LayerZero and how it was working, versus focusing on kind of the easy questions…’” Bailhe recalled. “They felt like they would get people who were deeply committed to crypto.”

During this episode, Chaparro, Maguire, and Bailhe also discuss:

• Crypto bridges and bridge exploits
• Sequoia’s investment in liquid tokens
• Yuga Labs & NFT investments

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.