Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Investments news
- Social media company Twitter’s board of directors urged shareholders to approve the proposed USD 44bn sale of the company to Elon Musk, according to Axios. However, at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha, Musk said that there are still a few “unresolved matters” about the deal.
- Digital asset investment firm CoinShares added two physically-backed exchange-traded products (ETPs), CoinShares Physical Staked Matic and CoinShares Physical Staked Cosmos, to their range of staked ETPs, listed on Germany’s main market Xetra.
- NFT marketplace Magic Eden announced that it closed a USD 190m Series B funding round co-led by Electric Capital and Greylock, valuing the company at USD 1.6bn. The funds will be used to expand the company’s marketplaces and invest in new tools, they said.
Adoption news
- Professional services organization Deloitte and Bitcoin (BTC)-focused financial services firm NYDIG announced a strategic alliance to help companies implement digital asset capabilities in their businesses. The alliance creates a centralized approach for clients seeking advice on implementing Bitcoin products and services, they added.
- IBEX, a company facilitating the onboarding of banks and businesses to Bitcoin’s Lightning Network protocol, has signed 85 new customers in Miami, USA, to allow them to accept BTC payments online and on point-of-sale systems.
Blockchain news
- The engineering team of Input Output Global (IOG), the company behind the Cardano (ADA) blockchain network, said that they are “extremely close to finalizing the core work, with just seven bugs still outstanding to complete the hard fork work, with none currently ranked as ‘severe’” before they can launch their new hard fork. However, after some consideration, the team has decided not to send the hard fork update proposal to the testnet today to allow more time for testing.
- Ethereum (ETH) scaling platform Polygon (MATIC) announced that its network has reached carbon neutrality on its road to becoming carbon negative by permanently retiring USD 400,000 in carbon credits to offset 90,000 tonnes of greenhouse gasses emitted since the inception of its blockchain.
Regulation news
- The UK government announced it will not implement its proposed version of a rule requiring all senders of funds to “private” crypto wallets to collect the identification details of recipients. Based on the feedback received, the Treasury does not think it would make sense to create a data collection rule for “unhosted,” or “private,” wallets, it said.
Exchanges news
- Crypto market data provider Kaiko announced a partnership with the Deutsche Börse Group to provide them with tick-level trade data from all covered centralized (CeFi) and decentralized (DeFi) cryptoasset exchanges.
- FTX.US said it has acquired clearing firm Embed Clearing for an undisclosed amount. The platform intends to expand the financial services it offers to US customers, while the acquisition will enable it to route, execute, clear, and custody all customer equities and options accounts and trades through the use of Embed’s infrastructure and licensure, they said.
- Bitpanda announced that it is now officially registered with the Bank of Spain as a provider of virtual currency exchange services for fiat currencies and the custody of electronic wallets.
- OKX announced that it is introducing new sub-accounts for Custody Trading to offer its institutional customers more control over granting different levels of access within their accounts. The new options will include trade freezes, notifications, real-time monitoring, and a kill switch for account owners, among other things.
- The CEO of Hong Kong-based crypto exchange Hoo.com tweeted that his company will open withdrawals for some tokens soon after announcing a day earlier in a blog post that it would be delaying withdrawals for 24-72 hours. At the time of writing, there were still no updates about the withdrawals.
- Heavily-backed crypto exchange Vauld laid off 30% of its workforce amidst the crash in crypto prices, taxation fears, and drastic fall in volumes, Money Control reported, citing undisclosed people aware of the matter. The exchange is backed by Valar Ventures, which is a firm co-founded by PayPal founder Peter Thiel, Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and others.
NFTs news
- Web3 infrastructure provider MoonPay launched HyperMint, a self-service, developer-focused platform that enables users to create, manage, and mint utility NFTs.
Mining news
- Bitcoin self-mining company Bitfarms announced that over the past week, it sold a total of BTC 3,000 for approximately USD 62m and closed on its previously announced USD 37m in new equipment financing with NYDIG, improving corporate liquidity by approximately USD 100m. This brings total BTC holdings to 3,349, inclusive of month-to-date production, which is currently averaging about BTC 14 per day, they said.
Legal news
- Further details have emerged on the travel ban placed on Terraform Labs employees and associates – both former and current. Dong-A Ilbo reported that 10 individuals (mainly developers) from Terraform or its affiliate firms have been told not to leave South Korea until prosecutors have completed their probe into the company following last month’s Terra crash. Prosecutors are reportedly looking into allegations that the Terra co-founder Do Kwon “knew there was a possibility” that Terra coins might lose value before the events of early May. The prosecution service has also obtained a warrant to search the company’s tax-related documents.
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