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Quick Take

• Visa builds on 2020 momentum with new deals to power BlockFi’s bitcoin rewards credit card and Circle API integrations to support USDC for B2B transactions

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

Quick Take

• Over the past three months, we have identified at least 36 DeFi applications that received funding for their projects
• In aggregate, roughly $100 million was allocated to DeFi projects, with an average deal size of approximately $3 million, and a median deal size of $1.8 million
• One of the most dominant trends or 25% of all investment deals was providing capital to applications that are either being built on protocols other than Ethereum or providing an interoperable bridge to other protocols

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

The department wants state and federal regulators to keep a vigilant watch on digital asset innovation.

OMG helps speed transactions and lower fees on the Ethereum by handling transactions off-chain,

Payments processor Stripe is teaming up with banks like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Barclays to provide checking accounts and other banking services, reports the Wall Street Journal. See also: Stripe to Pay $120,000 in PlexCoin ICO Settlement With Massachusetts Attorney General

Layer-2 Ethereum scaling solution OMG Network has been acquired by Genesis Block Ventures (GBV).

GBV is a subsidiary of Genesis Block, a Hong Kong-based crypto over-the-counter (OTC) trading firm. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

As part of the deal, GBV plans to grow the adoption of OMG Network (formerly OmiseGo) in Asia and beyond. “A number of integrations and partnerships are in the works,” said GBV, adding that it will work with OMG “to leverage resources and explore new directions, such as building lending and trading platforms, to achieve DeFi’s massive adoption and growth potential.”

GBV has acquired OMG from SYNQA, its former parent company, which raised $80 million in Series C in June. As a result of the acquisition, OMG’s team and business will move from SYNQA to GBV.

The OMG network was first announced in 2017. Its mainnet went live in June of this year. The network claims to support “thousands of transactions per second at a third of the cost of the same transaction on Ethereum.”

OMG was recently integrated with Tether (USDT) to help users of the stablecoin save time and cost on transactions.

The acquisition news has sent the price of the OMG token up by about 5% in the last 24 hours. The token is currently trading at about $4, according to CoinGecko.

© 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 Ethereum 2.0 or Eth2 staking contract continues to attract deposits, even after the beacon chain was successfully launched last week.

The contract has now accrued more than 1 million ETH (worth over $605 million). There is no closing date for the contract, meaning people can continue to make deposits to earn staking rewards.

Rewards for early stakers are high, at around 20% per annum. They will continue to drop as more validators join the network. Anyone can become a validator by depositing a minimum of 32 ETH through the staking contract.

With more than enough deposits in the contract, Phase 0 of Eth2 — the beacon chain, was launched on December 1. The launch marked the beginning of the multi-stage transformation of Ethereum into a proof-of-stake blockchain. The new blockchain is said to be more efficient and scalable than the current proof-of-work network.

To be sure, it will take years to fully transition into the new network. “We’re over half-way there,” Justin Drake, Eth2 researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, told The Block in an interview last week. “Phase 0 was extremely difficult, and I’d say, with it, above 50% of the total Eth2 work is done.”

© 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’s largest audio streaming service is on the hunt for a new associate director to lead its activity within the Libra stablecoin project.

Coinbase is the latest company to join Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), a consortium developed by Square to increase access to crypto technology through the creation of a collaborative patent library, according to an announcement published Thursday. 

Square announced the creation of the consortium in September. Since then, 18 companies have joined the initiative, including Satoshi Labs, Kraken, Protocol Labs and Blockstream. 

COPA also announced the board appointments of Steve Lee, Square Crypto Lead, and Dan Robinson, Paradigm Research Partner. Independent board members are individuals considered to be “well-known for their contributions to the advancement of cryptocurrency initiatives,” per the announcement. 

“As the crypto economy continues to grow, we believe it is important to help empower all projects building towards an open financial system,” said COPA Board Member and Senior Counsel at Coinbase Brittany Cuthbert. “We look forward to working alongside the members of COPA to create a foundational patent shield for our industry.”

Through the consortium, Square aims to make crypto technology accessible and available for everyone to use. COPA members pledge to never use their crypto patents against anyone, except for defensive purposes, making these patents free for all to use. COPA also creates a collaborative patent library where any developer can share their crypto patents and develop more technologies in the space.

© 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.

Spotify is hiring an associate director to lead a payments strategy team involved in Spotify’s cryptocurrency and digital asset efforts, according to a new public posting on the streaming service’s website. 

The associate director “will play a key part in defining and implementing Spotify’s payments strategy as well as leading Spotify’s activity within the Libra stablecoin project and wider digital asset & cryptocurrency space,” per the posting. Libra rebranded to Diem earlier this week. 

The associate director will also “drive further consideration of new opportunities and innovation” through the use of distributed ledger technology, blockchains, cryptocurrencies, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and other assets. The role will be based in either London or Stockholm. 

Spotify did not respond immediately to The Block’s requests for comment.

© 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.