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Ledger, the Paris-based producer of crypto hardware wallets, has closed a $380 million Series C fundraise valuing the startup at more than $1.5 billion.

10T Fund, a digital assets fund founded by renowned macro investor Dan Tapiero, led the raise. Tapiero’s $200 million fund was set up earlier this year.

10T Fund invested alongside existing investors and new backers, including Tekne Capital, Uphold Ventures, Felix Capital, Inherent, Financière Agache (Groupe Arnault) and iAngels Technologies. 

“It’s a $1.5 billion valuation that we’ve reached through this round, but the reality is that our real target is a $100 billion valuation, and the reason why we think it’s going to be a $100 billion valuation is because the market’s going to be really huge,” Pascal Gauthier, chairman and CEO of Ledger, told The Block. “Comparing bitcoin to gold is fun, but this market is going to be the whole value in the world going onto blockchain at one point, the whole value in the world being tokenized… Ledger is ideally and uniquely positioned to be that secure gateway to Web3.”

The proceeds of the Series C raise will go towards product innovation, with plans to give users access to new transactional services such as Decentralized Finance (DeFi) solutions through Ledger Live, the firm’s crypto management app. Ledger is also planning to expand its enterprise capabilities and invest in upgrading its operating system. 

Further international expansion is also on the cards. Gauthier said Ledger, a global service, is investing in “internationalization and localization” — with a focus on tailoring the service to suit non-English speaking countries. 

Ledger currently employs 360 people, with plans to hire another 300. 

The company closed its Series B round – a $75 million raise led by Draper Esprit, the London-based venture capital firm – in January 2018. It then raised an additional $2.9 million from South Korean technology giant Samsung in April the following year. Other backers of the company include FirstMark Capital, Cathay Innovation, Korelya Capital, CapHorn Investment and Digital Currency Group.

Ledger has become one of the world’s most popular manufacturers of hardware wallets, which allow crypto holders to store their private keys — which control access to funds — on devices that are kept isolated from internet-connected devices, such as mobile phones and laptops. The company also offers tools to allow customers to buy, sell and stake crypto through its mobile app.

In a press release, the firm said it secures an estimated 15% of all cryptocurrency globally, having sold more than 3 million hardware wallets in 190 countries. 

Since the summer of last year, Ledger’s users have been beset by phishing attacks after it suffered a breach during which customer contact and order information was compromised. 

In December 2020, a database containing the personal information for more than a quarter of a million Ledger customers was posted online — for which a “rogue member” of Shopify’s customer support team was blamed. In January 2021, Ledger put up a bitcoin bounty worth approximately $350,000 for information on the people behind the data leaks.

© 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.

© 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 flocking to Miami, setting up new offices in the Floridian city.
• An alluring tax environment and a business-friendly mayor have played a role.
• The push by some firms to set up shop in Miami was on full display during a recent industry event.

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In a June 9 Senate hearing on central bank digital currencies, Subcommittee Chairwoman Elizabeth Warren opened up her commentary with a salvo against cryptocurrencies, calling on lawmakers to face the problem “head on.”

Warren, a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination during the 2020 presidential election, attacked cryptocurrencies writ large as facilitating high-profile ransomware attacks like those against the Colonial Pipeline or meat producer JBS.

Regarding such attacks, Warren said: “Every hack that is successfully paid off with a cryptocurrency becomes an advertisement for more hackers to try more cyber attacks.”

These comments fall in line with recent signaling from the Biden administration that cryptocurrencies are moving up on the list of national security priorities.

Warren continued to highlight longstanding though controversial claims about Bitcoin’s energy use, repeating claims that the network’s mining consumes more energy than the Netherlands.

“Many cryptocurrencies are created using proof-of-work mining,” the senator explained. “uch mining has devastating consequences for the climate. Some crypto mining is set up near coal plants, spewing out filth in return for a chance to harvest a few crypto coins. Total energy consumption is staggering, driving up demand for energy.” 

Before pivoting to the issue of central bank digital currencies, the subject of the hearing, Warren warned:

“Congress and federal regulators can’t continue to hide out, hoping that crypto will go away. It won’t. It’s time to confront these issues head on.”

On the topic of a government-sanctioned digital currency, Warren declared: “Legitimate digital public money could help drive out bogus digital private money.”

© 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 mining company Luxor has raised a $5 million Series A round led by financial services firm NYDIG.

Bitnomial, Hodl Capital, and Routemaster took part in the round, as well as Blockware Solutions, Celsius Network, DPO, Navier and Supplybit, according to a press release published Wednesday. Celsius announced that it had invested in Luxor earlier this month. Luxor also said it raised funds from a group of angel investors. 

Luxor develops mining pool software as well as data visualization tools geared toward the mining sector. On Monday, a deal was announced between Luxor and mining firm Canada Computational Unlimited involving the expanded use of its software.

“We’re pleased to lead this Series A funding round and are thrilled to partner with Luxor to develop first-of-their-kind products and competencies for North American miners,” Robert Gutmann, co-founder and CEO of NYDIG, said in a statement.

According to data collected by The Block, bitcoin miners hauled in $1.45 billion in revenue during May. 

© 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.

Kraken is making changes to its margin trading offerings for U.S. customers in response to regulatory guidance on leveraged trading.

Starting June 23, Kraken clients based in the U.S. will no longer be able to access margin trading. However, some clients may be permitted continued access depending on certain requirements. Kraken said in a blog post on Wednesday that more information will be communicated on those standards.

Clients outside the U.S. will not be affected.

But after the June 23 date, those stateside who do not meet those standards will only be able to reduce their margin exposure and any open positions will expire 28 days from the day they were opened. 

Kraken did not indicate which agency’s guidance led it to close margin trading for many U.S. clients, but those stateside can possibly look to the CFTC guidelines for the reasoning behind the change. The commodities regulator released guidance in March of last year on “actual delivery” of digital assets. In response, Coinbase shuttered its margin program months later in November. 

Though it did not specify which regulations led to the change, nor its stance on the guidance, Kraken said it would continue to advocate for fair regulation in the space.

“We believe in common-sense regulations that protect market participants and do not restrict their freedom to purchase, sell, hold and use cryptocurrency,” said the announcement. “We will continue to advocate for that freedom.”

© 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.

In a June 8 keynote address, Commissioner Dan Berkovitz of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission spoke out against decentralized finance or DeFi.

Berkovitz’s speech focused heavily on the importance of financial intermediaries that regulators can hold legally accountable for malfeasance. He said: 

“Intermediaries such as banks, exchanges, futures commission merchants, payment clearing facilities, and asset managers — such as many of you at this conference — have developed over the past two or three hundred years of modern banking and finance to reliably provide critical financial services to support the financial markets and the investing public.”

With DeFi, Berkovitz said, there are no intermediaries that regulators can charge with protecting investors. He described such a system as “a Hobbesian marketplace” and said of unregulated DeFi markets that he does “not see how they are legal under the CEA.”

At the same time, Berkovitz’s commentary seems to depend on an extremely limited vocabulary of DeFi knowledge, repeatedly citing the Wikipedia article for “decentralized finance” and, indeed, describing the experience of Googling the term: “If you type “DeFi” into Google search, a top link is to a Coindesk article, ‘What is DeFi?'”

The challenge of regulating DeFi markets has loomed large since an explosion in interest in platforms like Uniswap and Sushi last summer. Commissioner Hester Peirce of the Securities and Exchange Commission has spoken at length about her vision of forbearance for DeFi development.

But as Berkovitz’s commentary shows, attitude towards decentralization is inversely proportional to attitude towards intermediaries. What’s more, his speech indicates that there is a gulf between more DeFi-friendly regulators like Peirce and those who view the space as problematic. 

© 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.

Interactive Brokers is entering the crypto game, according to its chief executive.

CNBC reported Wednesday morning that Thomas Peterffy, IB’s chairman and CEO, said during an event that “customers are certainly asking for [crypto trading] and we expect to be ready to offer it to them by the end of the summer.”

It’s unclear which cryptocurrencies IB will offer access to; as noted by the news outlet, the service allows its customers to access CME’s bitcoin futures offering. Nor was a specific date specified, per the CNBC report.

The brokerage firm’s step into direct crypto trading is a notable gone, given negative comments from Peterffy several years ago.

He notable took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal to issue a warning against what he called links between the cryptocurrency and traditional worlds.

“I think bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are great ideas. They should be allowed to be traded freely and used freely to find their appropriate role in the economy,” told CNBC in an interview at the time. “What I am objecting to is linking bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies by federal regulations to the real economy, which would happen if we were to clear bitcoin along with other products in the same trading house.”

© 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.

Solana Labs, the developer of the Solana blockchain, has raised $314.15 million in a private token sale round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Polychain Capital.

Other participants in the round included Alameda Research, CMS Holdings, CoinShares, Jump Trading, Multicoin Capital, Sino Global Capital, and many others. The news comes shortly after some reports said Solana could raise anywhere from $300 million to $450 million.

With fresh capital at hand, Solana Labs plans to launch an incubation studio to speed up the development of projects building on the Solana blockchain and set up a venture investing arm for the Solana ecosystem.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

© 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.

Some of the world’s biggest bitcoin mining pools that cater to Chinese miner clients have seen a sharp hash rate drop over the past 24 hours.

Data from BTC.com shows that major China-based bitcoin mining pools, in particular AntPool, F2Pool, Poolin, BTC.com, have seen hash rate drops between 11% to 30% in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin mining pools run by Huobi and Binance have also seen a 24-hour decline of over 10%.

The hashing power of the two main non-Chinese mining pools, namely Slushpool and Foundry USA, have remained steady over the past day.

BTC.com; as of 11:10 UTC time on June 9

Such a notable hash rate drop of Chinese bitcoin mining pools comes as China continues to crack down on bitcoin mining. Today, the Changji prefecture in China’s Xinjiang province ordered bitcoin mining farms in the Zhundong Economic Technological Development Park to shut down their operations by 2:00 pm China time on June 9.

The Zhundong park is a 15,500 square km economic zone home to a variety of coal production industries including coal-based power plants and industrial factories. It also houses a significant portion of the bitcoin mining facilities in the Xinjiang province. 

In April, bitcoin miners in Xinjiang were forced to shut down due to security concerns surrounding local coal-based power plants after several security incidents. Bitcoin’s hash rate also dropped by around 25% in the next seven days before mining farms plugged back in.

Expanding outside of China

Since the crackdown began, there have been reports of Chinese bitcoin miners starting to relocate their equipment away from China. This may see hash power move toward Central Asia, North America and some parts of the EU.

Bitcoin mining hardware firm Canaan said, in its Q1 financial report, that overseas sales of mining equipment made up nearly four fifths of its revenue that quarter. This appeared to be the first time Canaan has reported that its domestic sales were eclipsed by its overseas business.

Over in the US, bitcoin mining farms are doubling down on mining. Companies including mining companies Argo Blockchain, Riot Blockchain and market making firm GSR are planning to increase their bitcoin mining operations, with GSR focusing on using hydroelectric power. Payments firm Square has also partnered with Bitcoin technology startup Blockstream to launch a 100% solar-powered Bitcoin mine in the United States. 

© 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.