Author: The Block
NFT marketplace OpenSea is trying to fix an issue that has led to the loss of multiple expensive NFTs, at rock bottom prices. Only one of its attempts to solve the problem has somehow made things worse. The issue in question is that some NFTs are getting sold at old offer prices that were made when the NFTs were much less valuable. A typical example is that someone offered a Bored Ape for only a few thousand dollars, but instead of cancelling the offer, they move it to a different wallet. This appears to cancel it on the OpenSea website. However, if…
A number of tokens linked to the DeFi protocol Wonderland sold off on Thursday, following allegations that the project was co-founded by Michael Patryn, the surviving co-founder of the now-defunct Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX. Wonderland was launched in September 2021 by Daniele Sestagalli and 0xSifu as a fork of the Olympus protocol on the Avalanche blockchain. Participants in the Wonderland community refer to themselves as “frogs” or as a “frog nation.” Frog Nation also encompasses Abracadabra, Popsicle Finance and now Sushi (the community behind the SushiSwap decentralized exchange). Wonderland’s token (TIME) has seen its market cap drop from $511.8 million to…
On January 24, a Belarusian hacktivist group called “Cyber Partisans” announced that it had captured elements of Belarusian Railways’ IT system via ransomware. Earlier activities by Cyber Partisans included modding Telegram to circumvent government restrictions. They are also associated with dissident media, including Nexta. The ransom the group demanded was, consequently, unusual: The release of 50 high-risk political prisoners and the refusal to allow Russian soldiers to continue to use Belarusian rails in a widescale buildup around the Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian border has been at the center of geopolitical tensions as the Russian military continues to amass forces, seemingly in preparation…
Coin Tracker, a crypto startup that helps users report and file taxes, has raised $100 million in a Series A funding round. Venture capital firm Accel led the round, with Coinbase Ventures, Kraken Ventures, Intuit Ventures, General Catalyst, Initialized Capital, Y Combinator Continuity, and Seven Seven Six Ventures also participating. Angel investors, including Coinbase board member Gokul Rajaram, former Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson, Affirm and Snapchat investor Jeremy Liew, and Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz, also backed the round. As part of the deal, Sagar Sanghvi, partner at Accel, has joined the board of CoinTracker. With fresh capital in hand,…
MoonPay, the crypto unicorn fueling NFT mania, is now offering a service that will allow punters to buy digital art and collectibles with cash. MoonPay’s clients — which span big brands to NFT marketplaces — can now use a new checkout tool to give users the option of buying NFTs using debit and credit cards, as well as payments made through Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, SEPA, Faster Payments, wire transfers, open banking payments and ACH transfers. Announced this morning, MoonPay’s launch comes shortly after Coinbase, the leading crypto exchange, signed a partnership with Mastercard that will allow users of its…
Blockchain analytics provider HAL has secured $3 million in seed funding led by CoinFund, Eden Block, and Animoca Brands. Other investors in the capital raise include Hashkey Capital, Wintermute, SkyVision, imToken Ventures, Bitcoin.com, as well as Alan Howard’s Piquet Ventures, among others. The company plans to utilize the funds to increase its workforce while also launching new products geared towards servicing the broader gaming and fintech industries. HAL providers individual and corporate users with a suite of monitoring and position tracking services designed to provide actionable insights from blockchain data streams. Apart from the seed funding, Aave users also recently…
Valkyrie has filed for an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that will invest the majority of its net assets in companies focused on bitcoin mining. The issuer filed a post-effective amendment for the Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF today. The fund plans to invest 80% of its assets in securities related to companies that derive at least 50% of their revenue from activities related to bitcoin mining, like providing specialized chips, hardware or software. The fund won’t hold any bitcoin, directly or indirectly, although it may invest up to 20% of its net assets in firms that hold bitcoin on their balance sheets. The risk…
Fireblocks, an institutional crypto custody provider, has raised $550 million in a mega Series E round and is now valued at $8 billion. D1 Capital Partners and Spark Capital co-led the round, with General Atlantic, Index Ventures, Mammoth, CapitalG (Alphabet’s independent growth fund), Altimeter, and ParaFi Capital also participating. Existing investors such as Sequoia Capital, Coatue, Ribbit, Bank of New York Mellon, Paradigm, and SCB10x, also joined the round. The Series E round comes just five months after Fireblocks raised $310 million in Series D funding at a $2.2 billion valuation. The company’s valuation has soared over ten times in the last…
Superdao, which is developing a services suite for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), just raised a $10.5 million seed round at a $160 million valuation led by SignalFire. “The vision for the company is essentially Shopify for DAOS,” said Yury Lifshits, CEO and founder of Superdao to The Block. “It’s kind of an all-in-one DAO formation and operating tool, where in one-click you can start a DAO and grow it over time and explore.” The 25-person team is building a member directory with tools for NFT and token airdrops, treasury dashboard, open ecosystem for third-party DAO apps, one-click DAO creation, and…
UBS will buy the robo-advisory firm Wealthfront for $1.4 billion, the two companies announced Wednesday. The announcement characterized the deal as an “all-cash transaction valued at $1.4 billion.” According to the press statement, “Wealthfront’s existing clients will see no immediate change to their experience and can look forward to benefiting from UBS’s breadth of products, services, and intellectual capital.” “The transaction is currently expected to close in the second half of 2022, subject to closing conditions including regulatory approvals,” per the release. The announcement is notable in the crypto context given that last summer, Wealthfront began offering crypto-related access to its clients in the…