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Quick Take

• Security Token Offerings (STO) are a new branch of regulated tokens that represent the rights to a physical and usually illiquid asset
• STOs are valuable to the sellers (liquidity premium and no administrative costs), as well as the buyers (lower minimum investment amounts – greater access)
• The Block has mapped out 101 projects across nine verticals in the STO ecosystem

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JPMorgan is on a hiring spree for its blockchain unit, seeking to fill positions across audit, engineering and marketing, several LinkedIn postings reveal. 

The bank—which has been active in the blockchain space for several years—announced in October 2020 that it would bring all of its blockchain-related products and services under a new business unit, dubbed Onyx. Those services including Liink, a blockchain network of hundreds of financial-services firms and corporations, as well as its Coin Systems business, as per its website. 

As for the job ads, JPMorgan has plastered dozens of new postings on LinkedIn, including engineering related roles. One role for a blockchain platform software engineer is looking for someone with background in proof of stake, Ethereum, and bitcoin and would create a “forum for innovation with the blockchain technology community that drives thought leadership around the digital architecture roadmap and strategy.”

There’s also evidence the firm wants a stronger external presence for the blockchain work being worked on at the firm.

“This individual will drive the Liink marketing strategy by developing a thorough understanding of our strategic objectives, positioning, brand voice, and offerings so that you can create consistent and engaging content across multiple touchpoints,” the ad reads. The person hired would be tasked with creating a marketing strategies that “spark engagement – both internally and externally.”

The bank added that they want the person to have a sense of humor that is a touch irreverent.

JPMorgan has already made quite a number of big-ticket marketing hires for Onyx. At the beginning of the year, Ariana Gianacopoulos — formerly VP of global commercial marketing at Conde Nast — joined the firm as a marketing director. Ray Beharry — previously a marketing executive for IBM’s cloud services division — also joined at the beginning of the year as head of marketing at Onyx, as per his LinkedIn. 

© 2021 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.

Since its launch in 2018, Nexo quickly made its name as the most retail-friendly crypto lender. The company’s success promptly led to the release of a now thriving institutional offering, but what many don’t know about Nexo is that they recently also began providing B2B services, in particular their Earn API. The highly customizable B2B product allows companies’ users to earn up to 10% compounding interest p.a. on their idle crypto and stablecoins.

Who Is Nexo’s Earn API for?

The product is ideal for custodial and non-custodial wallets as it creates an easy way to offer users yields on their clients’ crypto holdings. Non-crypto fintechs can also leverage Nexo’s Earn API to very quickly and cost-effectively expand their product portfolio into the cryptocurrency space.

Nexo’s Earn API Benefits Both Businesses & Their Clients

The Earn API service naturally helps businesses both attract new users as well as retain existing clients by enabling their customers to grow their portfolios directly from within their wallets. Additionally, Nexo’s offering is designed to not only increase profits for users, but also for the businesses that leverage it. 

First, companies using the Earn API collect a percentage of the daily compounding interest paid to their clients. Second, businesses have the option to decide how much interest to be paid out to end clients and how much interest to be retained by the company. Finally, through its passive income and thanks to the deflationary nature of cryptocurrencies, Nexo’s Earn API is an excellent hedge against inflation both for businesses and their clients.

While the Earn API B2B service is relatively new, the product has already been battle-tested by some of the large players in the crypto industry, including keyless crypto wallet ZenGo.

How to Get Started?

It takes just six easy steps and an approximate IT cost of USD 5,000-10,000. The product is fully customizable allowing companies to achieve a native look and feel with a tailored front-end UX/UI journey, while their clients earn passive income through Nexo without ever leaving their native platform.

Why Nexo? 

Nexo is the leading licensed and regulated institution for digital assets behind the Instant Crypto Credit Lines™, the Earn on Crypto & Fiat suite, the Nexo Exchange, and, of course, the Earn API product. The company is known in the blockchain space as one of the most secure and sustainability-focused crypto lenders with some of the most rigorous KYC and AML procedures out there. As such, Nexo’s Earn API offers stable and predictable yields that do not change in the short term and supports a wide variety of digital assets, including 16 leading cryptocurrencies and stablecoins. The B2B earn product comes with another perk – the flexibility to add and withdraw funds at any time. All clients of Nexo’s services, including business clients, have access to 24/7/365 Customer Support, ensuring a seamless service no matter the circumstances.

Interested in integrating Nexo’s Earn API product into your product? Drop them a line and sign up for a demo now.

© 2021 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.

As crypto trading volumes slump across the board, Robinhood — the soon-to-be public brokerage firm — is warning that it might be impacted by the market doldrums. 

Exchange volumes on legitimate cryptocurrency trading platforms fell precipitously from May to June, dropping to $1.2 trillion from $2.3 trillion, according to The Block’s data dashboard. Meanwhile, daily exchange volumes have dropped to $21.5 billion from peaks near $45 billion. 

Robinhood attributed a potential revenue dip for the three months ending in June 2021 to the crypto trading slump in a revised version of its S-1 filing, published Monday as part of its long-running bid to go public.

“We expect our revenue for the three months ending September 30, 2021, to be lower, as compared to the three months ended June 30, 2021, as a result of decreased levels of trading activity relative to the record highs in trading activity, particularly in cryptocurrencies, during the three months ended June 30, 2021, and expected seasonality,” the filing noted. 

The subdued trading environment followed a more robust period during the first two months of the year, according to Robinhood. 

“Trading activity was particularly high during the first two months of the 2021 period, returning to levels more in line with prior periods during the last few weeks of the quarter ended June 30, 2021,” the firm said. 

Robinhood, which dropped its S-1 at the beginning of this month, derives a sizable portion of its revenues from cryptocurrency trading. For the three months ending March 31, Robinhood said 17% of its transaction-based revenue was from crypto transactions. 

© 2021 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.

South China Morning Post, the largest English media in Hong Kong and one of the oldest publications in Asia, is moving into the non-fungible token (NFT) and metaverse space.

The firm said in an announcement on Monday that it is partnering with The Sandbox to recreate the media assets of its 118 years of journalism on the decentralized virtual space platform owned by the NFT digital property firm Animoca Brands.

The project, called Artifacts, aims to present an NFT collection of the SCMP’s archives that has captured historical events in the city since the publication was founded in 1903, according to its whitepaper.

“The South China Morning Post is committed to engaging and educating a global audience with information and technology,” said Gary Liu, SCMP’s CEO, in a statement. “The ‘ARTIFACT’ project is an opportunity to discover, collect, showcase, trade, and reanimate meaningful moments and objects from our collective human experience and we are excited to introduce this standard to the world.”

The publication said it will start the project on a few selected blockchains but did not specify names. It has “the intention to be chain-agnostic in the long-run.”

“At launch, the ability to issue authenticated ‘ARTIFACTs’ will be available to a group of trusted partners who are globally recognized owners and guardians of authentic historical assets,” it said in the announcement.

The move comes just after Animoca Brands raised nearly $140 million in its latest founding round announced earlier this month.

One notable participating investor in the round was Blue Pool Capital, a family office that was reported to hold a portion of Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s $40 billion fortune as well as the $10 billion wealth of Ma’s right-hand man Joe Tsai. Alibaba, as you may know, is the owner of the SCMP.

© 2021 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.

Digital asset manager Grayscale Investments is launching a DeFi Fund and index, according to Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein.

Speaking on Squawk Box, Sonneshein said the firm has seen interest from a broad base of its existing investors — along with prospective ones — for DeFi assets. As a result, the firm has developed an institutional-grade index, along with a fund.

The fund will give investors the ability to invest in DeFi protocols through a singular investment vehicle, he said. It will give them broad-based exposure to DeFi assets, including uniswap (UNI) and aave (AAVE).

Sonneshein noted that this will be Grayscale’s 15th investment vehicle. The firm currently offers a range of trusts for bitcoin, ether and other cryptocurrencies along with a digital large cap fund, which gives exposure to a range of top cryptocurrencies. The firm recently announced that this crypto fund has become an SEC-reporting company, following its bitcoin and ether trusts.

Grayscale is also trying to turn its main bitcoin trust (GBTC) into a bitcoin ETF, likely to deal with its consistent negative premium. It is now working with BNY Mellon to achieve this. On the show, Sonneshein added that, in his view, the SEC approving a bitcoin ETF is “really a matter of when, not a matter of if.”

For more breaking stories like this, make sure to subscribe to The Block on Telegram.

© 2021 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

• The past year has been marked by significant growth in user and development activity across multiple Layer 1 blockchains
• This report is the first in a new recurring series by The Block Research covering some of the most noteworthy data and latest developments on Layer 1 blockchains

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DriveWealth, a fintech startup fuelling the boom in retail stock trading, is set to raise up to $400 million in a Series D round led by SoftBank and Insight Partners, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The exact size of the raise is still being finalized, according to one of the people close to the situation, while another person said the deal will close imminently. The valuation of the company is unclear. A spokesperson for DriveWealth declined to comment.

Based in Chatham, New Jersey, DriveWealth is an infrastructure firm focused on giving retail investors access to the American stock market. The firm’s API-based platform helps a range of so-called neo-brokers, robo-advisors and other fintech firms to offer trading in fractional shares of United States equities. Its clients include the likes of Hatch, Revolut, Stake and MoneyLion.

DriveWealth closed a $56.7 million Series C raise in October 2020 led by Point72 Ventures, with participation from Raptor Group, SBI Holdings, Route 66 Ventures, Mouro Capital and Fidelity International Strategic Ventures. Founded in late 2012, the company has raised a little over $100 million in venture funding to date.

A trading frenzy

Taking their cue from Robinhood, DriveWealth’s customers have capitalized on an explosion in amateur stock trading over the past year.

The trading boom gained global attention in January 2021, when a group of retail traders coordinated by the subreddit WallStreetBets triggered a surge in the share price of American video game retailer GameStop, dealing huge losses to hedge funds that were short the stock.

On July 14, DriveWealth published research based on aggregated data from the millions of retail investors supported by its clients. It found trading volumes and overall number of trades in the first half of 2021 had surpassed full year totals for 2020. In June, a record $28 billion in retail investor funds flowed into U.S. stocks, according to the company. The frenzy meant a 20% increase in assets under management for DriveWealth in the second quarter.

“The retail revolution that began last year marked the beginning of a new era of investing — and we saw that continue throughout the first half of 2021,” said Bob Cortright, founder and CEO of DriveWealth, in a statement issued alongside the research. “As digital wallets make it easier for consumers to seamlessly invest in the brands they know, we expect these trends to continue.”

SoftBank invests in fintech

SoftBank has been investing vast sums of capital into the fintech and crypto sectors in recent months.

The Japanese company led by Masayoshi Son announced a $200 million investment in 2TM Group, parent company’s of Brazil’s largest crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin, on July 1. That deal was financed by the SoftBank Latin America Fund.

Last week, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 co-led an $800 million Series E investment in neobank Revolut alongside Tiger Global Management. Business Insider reports that SoftBank is also set to lead a $530 million investment in non-fungible token (NFT) trading platform Sorare.

SoftBank and Insight were contacted for comment but did not respond by press time.

© 2021 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’s mining difficulty has set yet another downward adjustment with a 4.81% decline over the weekend. It has now been revised to 13.67 trillion.

Network data shows that this is the lowest point in 18 months — since January 2020 — and that it’s down 45% from its recent high of 25.05 trillion that held through the two weeks between May 13 and 30. It follows the largest ever network difficulty ease recorded on July 3, which saw a plunge of nearly 28%.

This also marks the fourth consecutive drop of bitcoin’s mining difficulty since China’s systematic crackdown on bitcoin miners that started in May 21. The last time when the network’s mining difficulty recorded negative adjustments for more than four times in a row was in 2011.

As a result, for every terahashes per second (TH/s) of computing power that is running on the network, the 24-hour mining results in theory have jumped up to around 0.00000931 bitcoin. 

That being said, the drop rate over the weekend has slowed down as the network’s hash rate has stabilized over the past two weeks, showing signs that it’s on a slow recovery, The Block’s Data Dashboard shows.

Following China’s crackdown orders, local miners have accelerated their migration process — that already started before the crackdown — to overseas regions like Russia, Kazakhstan and North America.

© 2021 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

• Crypto firms are rapidly trying to scale their teams, with far more demand than supply.
• Here’s why workers from traditional finance and tech are jumping in to fill the gap.

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