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Ziglu, the crypto trading and payments app launched by former Starling Bank co-founder Mark Hipperson, has closed a £6.1 million crowdfunding round.

Staged on U.K. equity crowdfunding platform Seedrs, Ziglu hauled in an average of £4,800 from more than 1,250 retail investors. Its initial target was to raise £1 million through the platform.

Ziglu is one of just three crypto firms to have been added to the Financial Conduct Authority’s crypto-assets register of authorized firms, alongside Gemini and Archax, the exchange businesses. The app allows individuals to buy, sell and pay with a range of fiat and cryptocurrencies.

The £6 million crowdfunding raise brings the total amount raised by Ziglu to more than £11 million. The company announced that it had secured £5.25 million in seed funding from angel investors in June 2020. Hipperson founded the business in late 2018.

Yang Li, chief growth officer at Ziglu, said the raise was Seedrs’ largest equity campaign so far in 2020.

“As an innovator in the fintech space, Ziglu has been classified as a Knowledge Intensive Company (KIC) by HMRC, enabling KIC investors to claim tax relief on investments up to the value of £2 million,” Li continued, adding:

“This means that the research and development Ziglu is completing as a result of the funding will be the key driver of growth and income for years to come.”

© 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 Facebook-backed Libra Association is shaking up its mission — and it’s got a new name to go along with it. 

“We are excited to introduce Diem — a new name that signals the project’s growing maturity and independence,” said Stuart Levey, the Diem Association’s CEO, in a public statement. “The Diem project will provide a simple platform for fintech innovation to thrive and enable consumers and businesses to conduct instantaneous, low-cost, highly secure transactions.” 

In addition to the name change, Diem Association appointed new executives to emphasize “its organizational independence as it progresses toward regulatory approval for launch.” New hirees include Dahlia Malkhi as the Diem’s Chief Technology Officer, Christy Clark as Chief of Staff, Steve Bunnell as Chief Legal Officer, and Kiran Raj as Executive Vice President for Growth and Innovation. 

Libra, which first began as a project under the wing of social media giant Facebook, turned the heads of policymakers and regulators around the world when it launched in the summer of 2019. But the view among regulators were broadly negative, prompting questions from members of Congress as well as central banks. 

“The original name was tied to an early iteration of the project that received a difficult reception from regulators. We have dramatically changed that proposition,” Stuart Levey, the Diem Association’s chief executive, told Reuters.

At the same time, Libra’s ascent arguably spurred on digital money projects being pursued by central banks and governments, such as China and the European Union.

Indeed, the revised white paper posted to Diem’s website points to such ambitions on the central bank digital currency front:

“[O]ur hope is that as central banks develop central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), these CBDCs could be directly integrated with the Libra network, removing the need for Libra Networks to manage theassociated Reserves, thus reducing credit and custody risk. As an example, if a central bank develops a digital representation of the US dollar, euro, or British pound, the Association could replace the applicable single-currency stablecoin with the CBDC.”

With the new team in place, the Diem Association plans to prioritize its readiness for launch. It says it will only proceed upon getting regulatory approval, which involves a FINMA-approved payment systems license.

© 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 privacy experts are unimpressed with a circulating slideshow-style privacy report that targets upcoming Bitcoin upgrade Taproot.

Bitcoin’s bull run stalls while ether is still acting like a little brother despite the audacious Eth 2.0 upgrade.

Trade volume across legitimate crypto exchanges rose by 134% in November compared to the previous month, according to data collected by The Block Research.

November’s legitimate trade volume came in at $289.25 billion compared to $123.58 billion in the previous month. November saw the third-highest monthly trading volume since January 2018, during which time trading volumes totaled $307.83 billion.

 

Binance had the largest market share of exchange volume at 60.9%, followed by Coinbase (10.4%), and Kraken (5.7%).

© 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.

Investors looking to buy bitcoin now should consider implementing a dollar-cost averaging (DCA) strategy, according to leading traders in the cryptocurrency space.

In a research note intended for clients, investing giant AllianceBernstein says it changed its mind on bitcoin’s role in asset allocation.

Yearn Finance is eyeing yet another merger – only this time, the candidate, SushiSwap, has a larger market size than Yearn itself.

Quick Take

• Crypto firms won’t be able to operate in the UK after January 10 if they aren’t registered with the FCA.
• Thus far only three companies have made it onto the register while another 160 applications await approval.

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About 65% of users would use bitcoin as a currency at PayPal’s 28 million merchants.