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The decentralized, non-custodial exchange Bonfida has raised $4.5 million in a seed round, the team behind the project announced Tuesday. 

The round was led by CMS Holdings with participation from Three Arrows Capital, Spartan Group and Genesis Block Ventures, among others.

Bonfida is built on top of the open-source Serum trading protocol and is powered by the Solana blockchain. 

“Bonfida has built a full-featured exchange on top of the Serum protocol, helping it live up to the promise that decentralized exchanges can be as robust and powerful as their centralized counterparts,” said CMS Holdings co-founder and partner Bobby Cho. 

© 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.

SBI Group, one of the largest financial services firms in Japan, has acquired crypto market-making firm B2C2.

The deal, first reported by Reuters, comes several months after the Japanese firm acquired a minority stake in the UK-based B2C2, which earlier this year said it would expand its business into so-called prime brokerage services. 

Since the summer, SBI has been providing its clients access to B2C2’s platform. 

As reported previously by The Block, B2C2 has been leveraging its relationship with SBI to lure some of Japan’s largest conglomerates into the market. 

Although terms of the deal were not disclosed, the companies said they hope the deal will “create the counter-party of choice for mainstream financial firms looking to invest in cryptocurrencies,” according to Reuters.

“B2C2 has an exceptional reputation for its world-class products and services, superb technology and valuable client base. Their vision, expertise and offering complement SBI’s, and we look forward to working in partnership as we expand our footprint across the global markets,” SBI Holdings CEO Yoshitaka Kitao said in a statement.

Founded in 2015, B2C2 is among the largest cryptocurrency market-making firms and is known for being a pioneer in electronic trading in the market. 

© 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.

An attacker who stole about $8.25 million from Nexus Mutual founder Hugh Karp’s wallet address yesterday has now successfully withdrawn almost 35% of the funds.

According to The Block Research, the attacker used renBTC — an ERC-20 token backed 1:1 by bitcoin, to withdraw 137 bitcoin to two addresses. The withdrawn bitcoin is currently worth about $2.65 million or about 35% of the stolen funds. It was worth about $2 million at the time of withdrawal (see chart below).

The attacker initially stole Nexus Mutual (NXM) tokens and then converted them into ether (ETH) first and then renBTC via decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator 1inch and DEX protocol Matcha. Specifically, the attacker sold 102,000 NXM on 1inch and 16,000 NXM on Matcha. The rest of the funds are still intact in the attacker’s other addresses.

One of the attacker’s addresses has a connection with crypto exchange Huobi, i.e., it is their Ethereum address on the exchange.

The attacker’s withdrawals suggest that they are unlikely to return funds to Karp, who offered a bounty of $300,000 yesterday. While Karp has lost most of his funds, he said he still has a “material amount of NXM left.”

As for how the attack occurred, Karp was tricked into approving one spoof transaction since the attacker gained access to his computer and altered his MetaMask extension.

© 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.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has finalized a platform that tracks CO2 emissions during mining processes using blockchain.

Mt. Gox’s trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi has at last filed a draft plan for the rehabilitation of creditors including former users. See also: Mt. Gox Deadline Extended Again After Creditors Criticize Refund Proposal

Bankhaus von der Heydt partnered with Bitbond to launch its euro-backed stablecoin on Stellar last week.

Quick Take

• The following is an excerpt from the ‘2020 Macro Overview’ section of the Block Research’s forthcoming year-end report.
• We first break down the historic decline that traditional and digital asset markets experienced in Q1 2020. 
• Looking at the Treasury-EuroDollar rate (TED) spread, we show that credit risk in the economy reached its highest level since the depths of the global financial crisis (GFC) in 2008. 
• We then use studies and testimonies by US monetary authorities to understand both the cause of March’s credit market freeze, as well as the policy response by the Federal Reserve that helped restore confidence in the financial system.
• Lastly, we plot the relationship between digital assets and traditional market metrics to challenge Bitcoin’s “safe-haven” narrative at this moment in time.

This research piece is available to
members of The Block Genesis.
You can continue reading
this Genesis research on The Block.

Quick Take

• Binance’s spot volume market share has grown from 55% in January to 60.7% in November.
• Despite an overall reduction in exchange BTC and ETH holdings, year-to-date, Binance was able to grow both its BTC and ETH holdings by 19.6% and 27% respectively.
• Moreover, Binance was able to more than double its market share for both Bitcoin and Ethereum futures to about 28%.

This research piece is available to
members of The Block Genesis.
You can continue reading
this Genesis research on The Block.

Huobi Global saw an influx of larger-than-average bitcoin deposits soon before the price drop, an analyst said.

The hybrid blockchain maker said it is collaborating with fintech firm Celo to on-board its stablecoin, cUSD, to Kadena’s platform using a trustless bridge.