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Count this as the latest hurdle for cryptocurrency exchange giant Binance. 

The ambiguously-headquartered firm told users in an email that it would suspend euro bank deposits sent from one of Europe’s critical payment networks: the Single Euro Payments Area, or Sepa, according to a report by The Financial Times. 

The exchange said the decision was caused by “events beyond our control,” the FT noted. 

Binance previously accessed Sepa through various intermediaries, according to the report. Sepa links up payment networks throughout the region, allowing customers to move euros across countries. Binance said the move to cut deposits would be temporary. 

The alert follows a string of regulator actions against the firm. Last month, UK regulators said the firm is banned from participating in regulated activities in the country, as previously reported by The Block. 

Meanwhile, Japan’s financial regulator issued a warning against the firm, saying it’s not registered to operate in the country.

© 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.

The largest institutions globally, have discovered that the optimal combination of LMAX Digital ultra-low latency trading technology, institutional grade exchange venue controls plus solid LMAX Group liquidity relationships, effortlessly handle market volatility spikes.

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LMAX Digital: secure, liquid, trusted crypto trading & custodial services. Regulated by the GFSC.

© 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.

It’s no secret that investors find themselves in a low-yield environment. And that backdrop is forcing investors to explore DeFi.

That’s part of the logic behind the recently announced Compound Treasury, a new company that allows investors and firms to access the yields on Compound without engaging directly with the blockchain.

On this episode of The Scoop, Compound Labs’ Founder Robert Leshner unpacks how institutional flows hunting for yield are finding their way to DeFi — and how he sees Compound Treasury playing a role facilitating that migration.

“Compound Treasury is what we hope is an embodiment of this, where we can source the yields from the compound protocol and pass it to institutional customers and abstract away all of the nuance of interacting with smart contracts and managing the flow of funds.” Leshner predicted that over time, DeFi and traditional finance will become more intertwined.

“I think over time, yields will converge,” he noted. Until then, fintechs will look to services like Compound Treasury to juice yields which have been on a downward spiral. Wealthfront — which at one point offered a return of 2.5% APY for cash accounts — currently offers 0.10% APY. Robinhood offers 0.30%.

There are a number of factors that are playing into high DeFi yields, including the existence of “natural risk premiums” in DeFi compared to traditional technical risks in legacy finance. He posited how DeFi could prove to be more resilient against risk relative to traditional financial systems in the long run:

“You have what I would call ‘natural risk premiums’ that exist in DeFi that don’t exist in traditional markets. The best being technical risk. So technical risk is the risk that the protocol itself just breaks in an unexpected way. Now, longterm, DeFi is safer infrastructure than anything in traditional markets. The reason being a smart contract when it’s immutable, if it works, it’ll work forever.” 

© 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.

On July 6, Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko proposed August 4 as the date for the upcoming “London” mainnet upgrade.

The proposal would set the switchover to London at block 12,965,000. As of publication time, Ethereum has just passed block number 12,775,000.

Anthony Sassano, co-founder of research platform EthHub, said that a final decision on the date will be made at a core developers meeting on July 9. Beiko indicated he wished to have client releases ready by then.

The Ropsten, Goerli and Rinkeby testnets have been rolling out the upgrade over the past several weeks. London follows the Berlin upgrade, which went live in April. 

London will delay Ethereum’s mining difficulty bomb — a move to make the network significantly harder to mine — and resulting “ice age” until December as the network’s long-awaited move to proof of stake has yet to get fully off the ground. Other EIPs included in London aim to simplify the way transaction fees are priced.

© 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.

N26, the Berlin-based neobank valued at $3.5 billion, is planning to launch crypto trading tools as part of a new marketplace initiative.

A spokesperson for the firm told The Block that it is working with “top-tier crypto exchanges” to launch the new product. It is not yet clear, however, which partners the neobank is working with.

“We plan to offer crypto features through a marketplace environment, integrating elements of a crypto exchange experience inside the banking and budgeting features at N26,” they added.

News of N26’s crypto expansion was first reported by German publication Finance FWD, which stated that the neobank’s customers will be able to trade bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by the end of the year.

N26 is currently expanding its “marketplace enablement team” to spur on development of the crypto product, according to the company’s spokesperson.

“It is our aim to become the one-stop-app for our customer’s finances. We want customers to be able to access all of their financial services in one place, without having to sign-in through several different places. This will include saving products, loans, trading, taxes and crypto,” they added.

N26 is one of Europe’s largest neobanks, with backers including Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Tencent and GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. It has raised €744 million (roughly $879 million) in equity investment to date.

Another fintech foray into crypto

Since late last year, a period in which bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have — until recently at least — surged in price, fintech firms have been rushing to add new crypto trading tools to their apps.

The Block reported in February that Plum and Freetrade, two United Kingdom-based investment apps, were hiring crypto experts to expand their offerings. In the same month, on the other side of the pond, mobile banking app MoneyLion announced plans for a new suite of crypto products. In April, German neobroker Trade Republic officially entered the crypto market.

Although the space is becoming increasingly crowded, N26 seems to feel that the convenience of meshing crypto tools together with a banking app will help it stand out.

“By observing consumer trends in crypto as well as regulatory landscape changes, we believe that we can bring great value to our customers by making crypto part of their banking experience with us. Our aim is for our customers to be able to choose the right crypto product and to give them full control over their financial decisions,” said the company’s spokesperson.

© 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.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has created an advisory position for digital currency policy. The agency has installed Michele Korver as chief digital currency advisor to the director of FinCEN, according to a statement today.

Korver has served as a crypto advisor to a number of government arms, serving as digital currency counsel for the United States Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, an advisor to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Stability Oversight Council and part of the U.S. delegation to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

At the DOJ, Korver developed policy related to crypto forfeiture procedures in legal proceedings. She also coordinated money laundering investigations, playing a key role in the first nationwide operation targeting a darknet cryptocurrency ring and bringing the first crypto money laundering case in the Central District of California. 

At FinCEN, she will work “across internal and external partners toward strategic and innovative solutions to prevent and mitigate illicit financial practices and exploitation,” related to digital currency.

Before installing its own crypto czar, the agency was already seeking industry help with cybersecurity and privacy hurdles. In late May, it put out a call for companies that deal with zero-knowledge proofs to join its Innovation Hours Program in September.

© 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.

BlockFi — the cryptocurrency financial-services firm — has announced that its much-anticipated bitcoin rewards credit card will be rolled out to select customers on its US waiting list. 

The firm, which rolled out the waiting list for the BlockFi Rewards Visa Signature Card in December 2020, said it now has 400,000 people on it.

The card offers users up to 1.5% back in bitcoin on every purchase, according to a media release. That reward is transferred to a BlockFi Interest Account, which will yield clients additional bitcoin. 

BlockFi announced a number of other bonuses on Tuesday, including a trading bonus that gives traders on its platform up to 0.25% of their trading volumes back in bitcoin, up to $500 a month. 

BlockFi, which has expanded into a number of new institutional and retail business lines — including a new prime brokerage business — has been raising money at a fast clip. The firm, which announced a $350 million Series D in March, was in the process of raising an additional $500 million at a $4.75 billion pre-money valuation, sources told The Block at the time.

In terms of its main interest account offering, BlockFi has had to drop its rates in recent months, citing changing market conditions. The interest accounts, which used to bear 6% APY on amounts up to 2.5 bitcoin, now offer 4% APY on amounts up to 0.25 bitcoin, and 1.5% beyond that.

© 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.

London-based hedge fund Marshall Wace, with $55 billion in assets under management, reportedly plans to invest in the crypto sector.

The Financial Times reported the news on Tuesday, citing people familiar with Marshall Wace’s plans. The hedge fund is said to be interested in acquiring stakes in crypto companies that are at a late stage in their development.

Specifically, Marshall Wace will target investments in sectors such as stablecoins, payments systems for digital currencies, and blockchain technology, per the report.

Marshall Wace is already an investor in Circle, the company behind the stablecoin USDC. The hedge fund participated in Circle’s $440 million fundraising round, which closed in May.

Marshall Wace’s crypto portfolio will reportedly be headed by Amit Rajpal, CEO of Marshall Wace Asia. Besides investing in crypto firms, the fund could also potentially trade cryptocurrencies, per the report.

Marshall Wace is the latest big hedge fund to enter the crypto sector. U.K. hedge fund billionaire Alan Howard is an investor in at least nine crypto firms, including CoinShares and Ledn. American hedge fund Renaissance Technologies also held positions in crypto mining stocks, including Canaan and Marathon, as of March this year.

© 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.

Two financial regulators in the Chinese capital city of Beijing have taken measures to curb activities affiliated with crypto-related business.

The Business Administration Department of People’s Bank of China (PBoC) and the Beijing Financial Supervision and Administration Bureau jointly issued a statement on Tuesday that warned against the risks surrounding crypto trading activities. 

The Business Administration Department of the PBoC is the de facto Beijing division of the Chinese central bank, which has mandates include managing the monetary policy and ensuring financial stability in the capital city.  

The company has been deactivated

The two regulators said in the statement they have recently cracked down on a little-known company called Beijing Qudao Cultural Development Limited that was accused of “providing software services to crypto trading activities.”

Following the government crackdown, the company has been deactivated and its website has been suspended, the two regulatory bodies said. 

Based on Chinese business registration records, Beijing Qudao was incorporated in 2016 and had been operating in the marketing, public relations, modeling and entertainment businesses. 

Further, the two municipal regulators warned that entities under their judicial remit shall not provide services such as business premises, ad display, marketing or paid online traffic. Financial and payment institutions under their jurisdiction must not provide any service directly or indirectly to customers related to crypto transactions, the statement added.

The move by the Beijing regulators comes weeks after the PBoC directed domestic commercial banks to cut off the fiat currency funding channel for over-the-counter trading desks if found. 

The recent regulatory efforts followed a comment about cracking down on bitcoin trading and mining activities from China’s State Council, the country’s central government cabinet. The high-level comment has already led to the shutdown of almost all the bitcoin mining activities in China. Here’s a timeline of all the events over the past one and half months.

© 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.

Swiss crypto bank Sygnum has launched an Ethereum 2.0 (ETH2) staking service, claiming to be the first bank to offer this service.

The development means Sygnum clients can now stake their ether (ETH) holdings with the bank and earn a yield of up to 7% per annum currently. The yield depends on the amount of ether being staked in the network — the more people staking, the lower the yield.

ETH is one of the most popular staking coins. To date, over 6 million ETH, worth nearly $13.65 billion at current prices, have been staked in the Ethereum 2.0 staking contract, according to The Block’s Data Dashboard. One ETH is currently priced at around $2,280.

Sygnum currently also offers a staking service for tezos (XTZ) and a yield-generating fixed-term deposit on its digital Swiss franc stablecoin (DCHF).

© 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.