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Estimates place the total market capitalization of all mined gold between $10 trillion and $11 trillion. 

By the estimate tracked by The Block Research, drawing from Gold.com’s GoldHub, bitcoin’s market capitalization is now just over 10% that of gold’s, as shown in the chart below:

The heightened figure comes after bitcoin’s market cap exceeded $1 trillion for the first time last week. The cryptocurrency’s price advances have seen its value shoot above $57,000, bringing the total market capitalization to roughly $1.1 trillion, according to Coinbase data. 

© 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.

A blank-check company tied to blockchain lending startup Figure has formally unveiled its plan for an initial public offering, according to a press release. 

Figure Acquisition Corporation I aims to sell 25 million units for $10 each, which will be listed under the ticker symbol “FACA.U” on the New York Stock Exchange. Trading begins on February 19 and is expected to conclude on February 23, 2021. 

When discussing how each unit relates to stock, the firm said: “Each unit consists of one share of Class A common stock and one-fourth of one redeemable warrant. Each whole warrant entitles the holder thereof to purchase one share of Class A common stock at a price of $11.50 per share. Only whole warrants are exercisable.”

In all, the SPAC aims to raise some $250 million. 

Figure’s specific focus is on mortgages and loans, using a blockchain as the technological basis for the lending process. Founded in 2018, Figure has raised about $225 million to date, with a valuation north of $1 billion at the time of its last raise in December 2019. Figure was founded by Mark Cagney, the former CEO of financial services firm SoFi.

Figure is one of a number of firms in the crypto and blockchain industry attempting to becoming a national bank. The firm submitted an application to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency last fall. 

© 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 week-by-week number of tweets containing the word ‘bitcoin’ hit a new this month, according to data compiled by The Block Research.

For the week ending February 14, there were roughly 675,000 tweets containing the term ‘Bitcoin.’ That figure represents a 17.13% increase from the previous volume peak, which occurred in mid-January with a weekly total of about 576,000 such tweets. 

Related metrics showed significant spikes in interest, including the number of new followers for crypto exchange accounts on Twitter. The week ending February 15 saw about 150,000 new followers in this category — still, the all-time peak for such activity was in early January, as the graph below illustrates.

New followers for crypto data and research services have been growing since December, but the high point of activity remains mid-January, as shown below.

These Twitter metrics surrounding Bitcoin may suggest that while discourse and information on Bitcoin is increasing, that interest is not translating to people joining crypto exchanges.

© 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.

Purpose Investments’ bitcoin exchange-traded fund debuted on Thursday and has since accrued more than $400 million in assets under management (AUM).

The figure, according to Purpose’s website, highlights the rapid pace at which the ETF has taken hold since it began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The AUM figure was first reported by Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas.

As previously reported, the Purpose Bitcoin ETF won final approval from regulators in Ontario earlier this month, a development that led to last week’s official listing. The approval appears to be the first in what may be a series of bitcoin-tied ETF approvals — on Thursday, the Evolve Bitcoin ETF was given the regulatory nod and began trading Friday. Evolve’s website shows that ETF has $1.2 million in assets under management.

Public filings indicate that similar products are waiting in the wings while investment firms — such as those that already offer closed-end funds focused on bitcoin — are advancing new ETFs as well. Canadian investment firm CI Financial’s prospectus for a bitcoin ETF became public on February 18.

Market observers expect that the advancement of bitcoin ETFs may put pressure on U.S. securities regulators to pivot away from their years-old opposition. Hester Peirce, who was confirmed for a fresh five-year term as a Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner last year, has pushed the agency to approve a bitcoin ETF for the U.S. market.

Peirce recently told CoinDesk that the U.S. market is “ready” for bitcoin exchange-traded products.

© 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 price of Ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency on the Ethereum network, has set new record highs. 

The second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is now changing hands at $2,003 on Coinbase Pro as of writing, after topping the $2,000 level for the first time around 3:45 UTC on Saturday.

The price rally of ETH over the past few weeks have pushed Ethereum’s market capitalization to above $225 billion, data from CoinGecko shows.

That is up 30% since February 2 when ETH set an all-time-high above $1,500 at the 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.

Decentralized derivatives exchange dYdX is expanding.

After raising $10 million in Series B funding last month, the team is gearing up for its coming V3 launch. Detailing that push, founder Antonio Juliano sat down with The Scoop this week to talk about where the decentralized finance (DeFi) space is going in the coming year.

Platforms like dYdX could be the answer to the traditional financial system’s transparency and security woes. But first, they have to grow. 

Juliano told The Scoop how dYdX is handling scalability, including the mitigation of high gas fees. They’re using ZK-Rollups, which involve the deployment of zero-knowledge proofs. These proofs take information and create a “constant sized data object” which means no matter how much data is input, the information remains the same size. The idea is that thousands of trades can be compressed into a small size to run on Ethereum, thereby circumventing the problem of high fees.

dYdX plans to launch their scaling solution in partnership with StarkWare in the next two weeks, according to Juliano.

Juliano broke down dYdX’s path to ZK-Rollups in this week’s episode of The Scoop, along with:

• How dYdX’s originated and why it was long before the boom of DeFi.
• How its flagship product, the perpetual swap, works.
• Why Ethereum layer-2 scaling solutions help projects like dYdX build out their market and which solutions dYdX considered for sure.
• When the DeFi market might collide with the broader market.

© 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

• Nigeria’s central bank appears to be cracking down on cryptocurrency — just as the nation’s crypto industry is taking off.
• Opponents say the move will force legitimate crypto transactions into riskier markets and discourage foreign investment.

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Deep-pocketed investors appear hungry for Coinbase equity ahead of the crypto exchange’s long-awaited direct listing. 

As per data compiled by The Block, the average clearing price for shares on Nasdaq Private Market continues to tick higher since the first secondary sale four weeks ago. The most recent cleared price was $373 a share, which would imply a valuation of about $100 billion. 

That’s an increase from the first average cleared price of $200 in January, according to data shared with The Block. 

Nasdaq enables secondary offerings for Coinbase stock, a process that allows ex-employees and investors of the crypto exchange to sell their shares.

The secondaries start Monday morning and end Thursday afternoon each week. The auctioning and clearing process happens after the close and results are posted Friday morning. The identities of the bidders are not clear at this time, but a source said that they are likely large investment firms. 

Sizable resting bids came in over the course of the most recent secondary offering. To be clear, buyers don’t need to pre-fund their account and can bid at whatever price they want. Data from the top of the order book shows two large multi-million dollar bids at $350 and $450 a share. 

It’s not clear which of these bids were filled (typically about 100,000 shares match per secondary). 

© 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 European fintech firms focused on facilitating investments are hiring teams to build new crypto trading tools, The Block has learned.

London-headquartered Freetrade and Plum both have crypto products in the works. The former’s core business is to enable users to invest in individual stocks, while Plum currently offers baskets of stocks that vary by theme and risk.

Freetrade, which is backed by the venture capital firm Draper Esprit, is currently seeking a principal product manager for its crypto offering. The person will be tasked with “devising and owning” Freetrade’s crypto strategy and will be given “a blank sheet of paper,” suggesting the specifics of the product are still to be fleshed out.

“This role will lead the scoping and implementation of an institutional-grade crypto offering on Freetrade,” a spokesperson told The Block, adding: “This move into crypto has been in the works for some time now. Crypto assets are highly requested by our customers and are increasingly being acknowledged as a key part of long term, diversified portfolios.”

Plum’s co-founder and CEO Viktor Trokoudes, a TransferWise alumnus, recently posted on LinkedIn that the company is seeking product managers to help with “adding stocks and crypto” in the UK and Europe.

Trokoudes told The Block that Plum currently offers a selection of hand-picked mutual funds but plans to expand on this significantly this year by launching stocks, ETFs and, later, crypto.

“A significant percentage (30%) of our investors told us they wanted to explore crypto, and that was before the recent bull run that put crypto firmly in the headlines. It’s a natural addition to our investment offering,” he added.

Meanwhile, Berlin-based neo-broker Trade Republic has recently hired Bryce Ferguson, former senior product manager at Coinbase.  

A spokesperson for the company said “crypto is an exciting area we are constantly monitoring”, but clarified that Trade Republic has not committed to entering the market. Ferguson will be joining the general product team to work on the company’s trading product, they added. 

Trade Republic, which has been characterized as German’s Robinhood, raised €62 million in April 2020 in a round led by Accel and Founders Fund. 

© 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 market capitalization has crossed the $1 trillion milestone for the first time after over a decade’s development as it gains increasing mainstream attention.

Bitcoin’s price set new record highs above $53,700 around 19:38 UTC on Friday following a 4.1% 24-hour increase. It comes just days after it surpassed $50,000 for the first time.

Data from CoinGecko shows the circulating supply of bitcoin is around 18.63 million units as of writing, which, at the current price level, are worth $1 trillion.

The price movements follow an increasing number of investments into the asset class from mainstream institutions.

Tesla said in early February that it invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin in January as part of its treasury policy and said it may accept bitcoin as a payment method for its electronic cars.

MicroStrategy, the NASDAQ-listed business intelligence software company, first made headlines in August when it disclosed that it purchased 21,454 BTC using existing cash on its balance sheet at the time.

The firm closed a $650 million debt financing in December with the proceeds to buy additional bitcoin. It just announced on Friday that it has completed another issuance of senior debts raising $1.05 billion in order to buy more bitcoin. 

© 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.