FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Quick Take

• While this rally has been driven by institutional capital, retail investors are starting to show up again
• We look at the data for Google searches, Twitter followers, Wikipedia views and exchange web traffic
• There is a noticeable uptick in all of these indicators but most are not even 50% there compared to 2017

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Bitcoin custody and trading services provider NYDIG announced Monday that it has acquired crypto data firm Digital Assets Data ahead of a bigger push to expand its platform. 

NYDIG is not as well-known as some more retail facing exchanges like Coinbase or Kraken, but the firm counts more than $4 billion in assets under management and operates a business that spans prime brokerage, corporate treasury, and custody services, as per its website. NYDIG made headlines in December when insurance giant Mass Mutual said that it had invested $5 million in the company, and utilized NYDIG services to acquire $100 million worth of bitcoin for its general insurance account. 

Digital Assets Data has raised more than $9 million from venture investors, including Morgan Creek Digital, Digital Currency Group, and North Island. In 2020, the firm’s co-founder and chief operating officer—Kurt Fenstermacher—departed the firm, according to his LinkedIn. 

As for the acquisition deal, NYDIG says it will help the firm expand its data capabilities, according to a press release. While the firm declined to share any financial details of the transaction, the firm told The Block that Digital Assets Data’s platform will “broaden NYDIG’s digital asset data capabilities to provide even better insights to the firm and its clients.”

“As NYDIG’s client base and the digital asset market rapidly expand, the addition of new high-quality data sources and analytical capabilities serve to enhance NYDIG’s existing research, trading, and advisory capabilities,” the firm said in a statement shared with The Block. 

Digital Assets Data’s twin co-founders—Mike and Ryan Alfred—will be joining the NYDIG team as head of M&A and head of product, respectively. As head of M&A, Alfred will focus on identifying potential acquisition targets as NYDIG expects to “significantly” increase the volume of strategic acquisitions in 2021, the firm said. 

This deal is among the first of 2021—a year in which many market pundits expect to see a flurry of M&A activity. 

As noted by The Block Research’s John Dantoni, data and analytics is one sector of the crypto market that is ripe for M&A activity. 

“With banks, traditional financial institutions, and fintechs entering the space with new crypto offerings, more consolidation amongst current market participants should be expected as they compete to be the premier source for information and data services,” Dantoni wrote.

Dating back to 2016, there’s been a total of 26 deals conducted in the crypto data and analytics space, totaling $460 million.

Disclosure: Digital Assets Data participated in a previous funding round of The Block.

© 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.

Blockchain developer tools provider Biconomy has raised $1.5 million in seed funding.

The round was led by Eden Block, with participation from Binance Labs, Fenbushi Capital, and Digital Asset Capital Management (DACM), among others.

With fresh capital at hand, Biconomy looks to expand its team and launch version 2 of its platform in the coming months.

As a blockchain infrastructure provider, Biconomy helps developers build simpler decentralized apps (dApps) to increase crypto’s mass adoption. “We essentially remove friction for blockchain developers, so that their end-users are more likely to use a dApp,” CEO Ahmed Al-Balaghi told The Block.

One of that friction is paying gas fees or Ethereum transaction fees. Al-Balaghi said Netflix doesn’t charge its users an AWS (Amazon Web Services) fee for every video they watch, so why should dApps charge users a gas fee for every transaction. Netflix rather has subscription plans, and its users don’t have to go through a cumbersome process of paying fees every time, said Al-Balaghi.

“So we allow blockchain developers to pay gas fees on behalf of their users. This helps optimize the fees. What we essentially do is we don’t always go for the fastest transaction, and we also use gas tokens,” said Al-Balaghi.

To further optimize gas fees, Biconomy is launching V2 of its platform, which will have transaction batching and a feature called “Forward” that would help pay gas fees in stablecoins, said Al-Balaghi.

To that end, Biconomy is hiring engineers and looking to expand its current team of eight to around 13 in the coming months, said Al-Balaghi.

“Improving the UX [user experience] is a key element of further accelerating adoption of DeFi [decentralized finance] and other blockchain use-cases,” said Richard Galvin, CEO of DACM. “The Biconomy team’s solutions reduce transaction friction whilst also freeing dev teams to spend more time focusing on the value-adding ideas unique to their project.”

Some of the existing DeFi projects using Biconomy’s tools are Curve Finance, Idle Finance, Perpetual Protocol, and Decentral Games, among others. Al-Balaghi said the firm is looking to onboard more projects with the V2 launch.

© 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 Conduct Authority, the UK financial services regulator, has issued a stern warning about the “very high risks” faced by consumers who choose to invest in cryptocurrency.

The warning comes as bitcoin fell from all-time highs of more than $40,000 to less than $33,000 overnight.

“If consumers invest in these types of product, they should be prepared to lose all their money,” said the FCA in a statement on January 11, 2021.

The watchdog advised consumers to be wary about being contacted out of the blue by scam artists offering returns that sound too good to be true.

The statement also included a reminder that cryptoasset businesses in the UK, as of January 10, must be registered with the FCA as part of rules designed to tackle money laundering. The regulator recently unveiled a temporary register which includes some 90 crypto firms, providing a pathway for those businesses to continue operating while awaiting full authorisation.

The FCA also laid out some of the key risks to investing in crypto, including a lack of consumer protection, volatility, product complexity, a lack of transparency around fees, and misleading marketing which may overstate potential returns.

© 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.

One of the four largest state-owned banks in China has been testing digital yuan on its ATMs in Shenzhen.

According to local news reports on Sunday, the Agricultural Bank of China has rolled out ATMs in selected Shenzhen branches that allow customers to convert their bank savings or cash into digital yuan on their smartphones, and vice versa. 

Based on the reports, the digital yuan-supported ATM is part of the ongoing test of China’s central bank digital currency in Shenzhen, where the government issued $3 million worth-of digital yuan to 100,000 local residents via a lottery.

The state-owned bank has also launched a “Digital Yuan Innovation Lab” division this year to spearhead various applications that can support the usage of digital yuan, the reports said.

The city of Shenzhen is currently having a second test of China’s digital yuan, after its first run in October last year.

Additional features that are supported this time include the digital yuan ATM as well as the offline touch-to-pay function.

Recently, another test in a Shanghai hospital also revealed the prototype of a card-based hardware wallet of China’s central bank digital currency.

© 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.