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REP is the native cryptocurrency of Augur, which is software that gives users incentives to maintain and enhance a prediction market running on the Ethereum blockchain.

Unlike exchanges where assets are traded, prediction markets let users bet on the outcome of future events. Users can create and exchange “shares” of an outcome and its value without relying on intermediaries.

REP Price

The Forecast Foundation developed Augur in 2014, and sold its native tokens to the public in an initial coin offering (ICO) in 2015. During the ICO, 8.8 million REP tokens were sold for $5.5 million, but Augur didn’t go live on the Ethereum blockchain until 2018.

The total supply of Augur tokens is 6.9 million REP, and unlike with most other cryptocurrencies, new REP won’t be issued in the future.

REP price hit its all-time high of $341.85 in February 2016, but has never come close to that level since. In January 2018, REP prices briefly returned above $100 but crashed again as the entire market turned bearish. Despite a few slight uptrends since that time, REP has mostly traded in the $20-$25 range.

How Does Augur Work?

Augur runs on the Ethereum network and uses Ethereum’s consensus mechanism and blockchain features. The project runs on smart contracts issued on the Ethereum blockchain and will benefit from the upcoming ETH 2.0 sharding support.

Sharding is a blockchain scaling solution that involves using multiple smaller blockchains to process transactions and smart contracts, as opposed to a single blockchain. This solution will enable Ethereum to handle significantly more transactions per second, reducing transaction time and costs. This mean faster and cheaper transactions for Augur users too.

All purchases of shares in Augur’s prediction market are made with eth, the native token of Ethereum, or with the stablecoin dai.

Augur has a four-layer execution process:

• Market creation: anyone can introduce a new betting market for real-world events.
• Market trading: users buy shares in an event’s outcome
• Reporting: Augur’s oracle determines the outcomes of events by bringing real-world information to the blockchain.
• Settlement: traders close positions and collect payouts.

Key Events and Management

Augur was founded by Forecast Foundation, a venture founded by biophysicist Jack Peterson and investor Joey Krug, among others, in 2014. After the ICO in 2015, the project raised undisclosed amounts in two funding rounds in 2016 and 2017. All of the project’s founders are still on board, except for Matt Liston, who left in 2014. The network had a major upgrade in September 2021.

ANT is the native cryptocurrency of Aragon: a blockchain-based platform that allows users to build and manage their own decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

A DAO lets people form groups that are governed by a defined set of computer codes, as opposed to a single leader. Users are required to hold ANT in order to vote on certain proposals related to a DAO, such as how to invest everyone’s pooled funds. They can also trade ANT for two other coins that exist in the Aragon ecosystem  – ANJ and ARA.

The Aragon project runs on the Ethereum blockchain platform, relying on a globally distributed network of users to collectively manage its code.

ANT price

ANT is an ERC-20 token – a type of fungible token created to be compatible with the Ethereum network. In May 2017, 70% of ANT tokens were sold to the public via an initial coin offering (ICO). The project raised 275,000 ETH (about $25 million at the time) in just 26 minutes. The remaining 30% of the supply was divided between the Aragon Association and its founders.

After the ICO, there were 39.6 million tokens, but the project stated new ANT tokens would continue to enter circulation until the Aragon network had officially launched. After that, control over the inflation rate would be passed to ANT holders. That transition happened two years later in 2020, when the Aragon network launched its version two platform.

ANT’s price reached an all-time high of $14.64 in April 2021, right around the time the project integrated Key Performance Indicator (KPI) options – a feature where people can bet on whether a DAO proposal will be completed. The idea is that if people bet that a KPI will be completed, they are more likely to make sure it succeeds, which ultimately benefits both themselves and the DAO.

How Aragon works

The Aragon team created ANT tokens to be owned and operated by the project’s users. ANT can also be used to purchase ANJ coins, which are required to participate in Aragon Court resolutions. The Aragon Court allows users to settle disputes across the Aragon network that cannot be solved by smart contracts.

Users (jurors) who hold ANJ coins can review arguments and cast votes to mediate certain matters. The quantity of ANJ held determines the chance of a user being selected as a juror.

When an argument is resolved, jurors are rewarded with original ANT coins, and the DAO automatically updates rules and outcomes on the software.

ARA is another ERC-20 token that fuels the Aragon chain – a secondary layer proof-of-stake blockchain that’s now in development and that will facilitate faster transactions between DAOs. ANT holders will need to deposit their tokens as collateral to create ARA tokens. Users can then stake their ARA tokens (locked up in a smart contract) in order to become validators of the Aragon chain and participate in verifying transactions, in exchange for ARA-denominated rewards.

Key events and management

The Aragon network was created in 2016 by Spaniards Luis Ivan Cuende and Jorge Izquierdo and was launched on the Ethereum blockchain two years later.

In January 2021, 12 staff members from the Aragon Association (the nonprofit company that handles funds from the 2017 ICO) and Aragon One (the company that develops tools on the Aragon network) left the company. It’s speculated there was internal conflict regarding the Aragon Association’s handling of the ICO funds.

A few days later, the project announced a merger with governance-focused blockchain protocol, Vocdoni.

New York-based Paxos is ending 2020 with one of the crypto world’s biggest funding rounds.

The firm’s $142 million Series C funding round will underpin Paxos’s plans to expand its business lines, which include stablecoins, cryptocurrency trading and blockchain-based settlement. 

The fresh injection of capital brings several heavyweights onto Paxos’ cap table: lead investor Declaration Partners, PayPal Ventures, RIT Capital Partners, and investment banking legend Ken Moelis.

The firm declined to share the valuation under which the funding round was conducted, but the new cash brings the total amount raised by the firm to more than $240 million. Data from The Block Research shows that the Paxos round is the tenth-largest fundraise among blockchain and crypto companies.

The funding round caps a busy year for Paxos, which drove headlines earlier this year via its partnership with payments giant PayPal. That partnership comes care of Paxos’ recently launched API-based brokerage service, Paxos Crypto Brokerage, which handles the regulatory, technological and liquidity aspects of the crypto features. European fintech firm Revolut is also a customer.

A spokeswoman for Paxos said the pipeline of clients for its white-label services is strong, noting that some of the largest financial technology, banks, and brokerages are lined up to partner with the firm. 

“There are many firms that are considering us on the brokerage side — some of the largest ones in the world,” chief executive officer Chad Cascarilla said during an episode of The Block Live. 

“But we also have firms that rely on us for our other products — Soc Gen, Credit Suisse, Instinet Nomura,” he said, referring to the firm’s blockchain settlement platform, which it announced at the end of 2019. 

Already, the firm’s new client relationships with PayPal and Revolut have been a boon for its exchange, itBit. Since the beginning the year, Paxos’ exchange has clocked in $3 billion in trading volumes with nearly half of those volumes coming since PayPal began offering crypto in October. 

Looking to the future, the firm plans to leverage its new capital to lure Wall Street to its settlement and crypto products. 

To that end, Paxos plans to expand its headcount by more than 100 in 2021 and beef up its regulatory efforts by seeking a national bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to complement its New York trust charter. 

A stronger regulatory position and strengthened balance sheet could make Paxos a more attractive partner. It’s also a continuation of the firm’s established affinity for being regulated. 

“You know, it’s just, some of these things take time,” Cascarilla said. “We’ve been investing in this regulatory infrastructure now for seven years. We started in 2012.”

“We’re excited to get it and that will definitely be able to allow us to offer a different product and service,” he added.

© 2020 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 options’ daily trading volume has crossed the $1 billion mark for the first time, as bitcoin surges past $23,000.

Crypto exchange Deribit leads the bitcoin options market, followed by Bit.com and OKEx, according to tracker Skew. Meanwhile, bitcoin is trading hands at around $23,550 on Coinbase, according to TradingView.

© 2020 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.

Cryptocurrency wallet provider Math has raised $12 million in Series B funding.

The round was led by Binance Labs, with participation from NGC Ventures, Amber Group, and Capital6 Eagle.

With fresh capital at hand, Math looks to expand its products and services, as well as support the growth of Binance’s native blockchain Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

“Math will work with BSC to expand to additional markets, bringing more trading volume and users into the ecosystem,” said the wallet provider.

Binance, on the other hand, looks to grow the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem with its native blockchain. In other words, it plans to onboard as many DeFi apps as possible on its BSC network.

Math is a multi-chain wallet, supporting more than 60 blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Polkadot. It claims to have more than 1 million users.

Math’s Series B comes just two months after it raised Series A in October. At the time, the Singapore-based firm raised $7.8 million in the round led by Alameda Research and Multicoin Capital.

© 2020 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 price has been hitting new records. It has crossed $22,000 for the first time.

At the time of writing, the world’s first and largest cryptocurrency is trading hands at around $22,167 on Coinbase, according to TradingView.

The surge to $22,000 occurred in less than 12 hours. Last night, bitcoin was trading at around $21,260.
Source: TradingView 

© 2020 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.

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, briefly broke yearly highs on Wednesday.

The price of the cryptocurrency hit $639.58, but by press time, it was at $633.62. The previous yearly high was $636.53 on December 1. This is the highest Ethereum’s price has been since May 2018.

© 2020 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 price continued its elevated market action Wednesday with a push above $21,000.

Per TradingView, the cryptocurrency’s price hit a high of $21,170 on Coinbase. At time of writing, bitcoin is trading hands at $21,260.22.

Wednesday saw a range reports focused on institutional-level market participants, including confirmation of UK investment firm Ruffer’s exposure to Bitcoin and a report that billionaire hedge funder Alan Howard is backing a new crypto-focused fund. 

© 2020 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.

Crypto exchange Coinbase announced that Kelly Kramer will be joining the company’s board of directors, according to a Medium post from the firm.

Marc Andreessen will also take on a more active role on the board, shifting from board observer to board director. Kramer will serve as chairperson of the Audit and Compliance Committee, per the post.

Kramer worked for tech conglomerate Cisco for nine years. She spent six of those years as the Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer before joining Coinbase. Before Cisco, Kramer was the CFO of GE Healthcare Systems. 

Kramer will replace Chris Dodds, who is said to have expressed a desire to transition off the board to focus on family matters.

“Kelly brings a wealth of experience in financial planning and analysis, and mergers and acquisitions, among other areas, to her role as Chairperson of our Audit and Compliance Committee,” Coinbase said.

© 2020 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.

American Express appears to be edging closer into the crypto world after investing in the cryptocurrency trading platform FalconX via its venture unit, according to a press release published Wednesday. 

“FalconX is helping bring simplicity to the increasingly complex digital asset space through a platform that provides discovery and pricing all in one place,” said Harshul Sanghi, Global Head of Amex Ventures.

It’s still unknown how much was invested into FalconX, but the development represents yet another step in AmEx’s exploration of cryptocurrency. 

Sanghi says Amex Ventures invests in startups to stay on top of the emerging spaces in the payments ecosystems. 

“We’re seeing growing interest from traditional asset managers who are adding cryptocurrencies as an inflationary hedge, catalyzed by recent macro-economic policies,” FalconX CEO and co-founder Raghu Yarlagadda said in a statement. “It is a great pleasure to welcome American Express Ventures as we continue to invest in expanding FalconX’s product offering.”

© 2020 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.