Author: The Block

Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, made good on a previous pledge by receiving via automatic conversion his first paycheck in the form of cryptocurrency. According to a Thursday morning statement from the mayor’s office, Adams’ paycheck was converted into BTC and ETH. “New York is the center of the world, and we want it to be the center of cryptocurrency and other financial innovations,” Adams said in a statement. “Being on the forefront of such innovation will help us create jobs, improve our economy, and continue to be a magnet for talent from all over the globe.” Per the mayor’s office,…

Crypto staking infrastructure firm Stader Labs has raised $12.5 million in a new funding round. The round was led by Three Arrows Capital, with participation from Accel, Blockchain.com, Accomplice, GoldenTree Asset Management, Amber, Figment, and others. Angel investors, including FalconX co-founder Prabhakar Reddy and Anchor Protocol general manager Matt Cantieri, also backed the round. This is Stader Labs’ second fundraise after its $4 million seed round in February. The new round, like its previous round, is also realized via a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT) sale, Stader’s co-founder and CEO Amitej Gajjala told The Block. The fresh funding will help Stader…

Non-fungible token (NFT) sales on the Solana blockchain surpassed $1 billion in total volume in January of 2022, according to the NFT sales tracker CryptoSlam! Solana’s NFTs gained in popularity in the latter part of 2021 as Ethereum, the most popular blockchain for NFTs, experienced prohibitively high transaction fees. The first Solana NFT to break $1 million occurred on September 11, for a Degenerate Ape Academy NFT — part of a collection of 10,000 algorithmically generated 3D primates. The most expensive Solana NFT sold for $2.1 million nearly a month later. Solana’s highest weekly trade volumes reached $160.39 million on August 29, 2021, according to…

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has signed an executive order consolidating the leadership of offices of technology and innovation. Previously, the areas and offices focused on technology and innovation reported to various deputy mayors. Now, that oversight is consolidated under the existing Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT), which has also been re-designated the “Office of Technology and Innovation.” Adams has committed to revamping tech in New York City, both from a city services perspective and mitigating the challenges of doing business in the city. It’s unclear how those goals will come to fruition, and if crypto will…

iTrustCapital, a platform that allows users to buy cryptocurrencies through their individual retirement accounts (IRAs), has raised $125 million in a Series A funding round. Left Lane Capital led the round. iTrustCapital capital did not disclose participating investors, but its senior vice president of investor relations, Kevin Maloney, told The Block that the firm had initially closed on $100 million from Left Lane Capital, but it had additional demand and ended up raising $25 million more from Left Lane and other investors. As part of the deal, Left Lane principal Matthew Miller has also joined iTrustCapital’s board of directors. This is the first time iTrustCapital…

Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek has confirmed that the crypto exchange did suffer a security breach, as reported this week. Appearing on Bloomberg TV on Wednesday, Marszalek stated that about 400 accounts were affected in the hack. Marszalek stated that the attackers carried out unauthorized withdrawals from the affected accounts but that the company was able to swiftly stem the tide. “We very quickly stopped it, we paused withdrawals, we fixed it [and] we were back online in about 13/14 hours and during the same day, all the accounts that were affected very fully reimbursed, so there was no loss of customer funds,” Marszalek stated,…

The Crypto.com security breach that allegedly led to the theft of 4,830 ETH ($15 million) as previously reported might be closer to $33 million, according to the pseudonymous ErgoBTC, an on-chain analyst at bitcoin (BTC) research outfit OXT Research. Per ErgoBTC’s tweet on Tuesday, an additional 444 BTC ($18.5 million) was siphoned from Crypto.com’s payout wallet. Detailing the suspicious transactions, ErgoBTC said OXT Research first flagged a suspicious payout from the exchange’s custodial wallet to the tune of 52.55 BTC ($2.18 million). This transaction was followed by “several hundred withdrawals” as noted by ErgoBTC that were later batched into four outputs of 67.75 BTC ($2.81 million)…

Grayscale Investments, the world’s largest crypto asset manager, and Bloomberg have partnered to launch a new digital assets-based index. Dubbed the Bloomberg Grayscale Future of Finance Index (BGFOF), it tracks 22 companies associated with several crypto-linked equities as well other firms in the broader fintech space, according to a press statement released Wednesday. The index will, however, not directly invest in digital assets or their derivatives but will offer indirect exposure to crypto-linked equities. These crypto-linked equities will be rebalanced on a quarterly basis and cover market segments like exchanges, asset management, mining, and blockchain technology, among others. According to…

The ongoing exploitation of the cross-chain protocol Multichain has now totaled $1.5 million, according to ZenGo co-founder Tal Be’ery. A bug in the protocol is being exploited by multiple blockchain wallets, with either one hacker or many behind the attacks. One of the hackers, who has stolen $200,000 through this bug, has offered some remorse. They claim to be a whitehat hacker and have offered to return 80% of the funds that they took. This hacker said in a blockchain transaction, “whitehat here, send me the tx you lost your weth, I give 80% back. The rest is the tips for me…

African gaming platform Carry1st has announced a $20 million Series A extension led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Avenir and Google. A wide range of additional investors also took part in the round, including the founders of Axie Infinity and rapper Nas. The valuation was not disclosed.  Carry1st, a16z’s first investment into the African region, is a gaming marketplace that is also building its own payments stack. Carry1st founder Cordel Robbin-Coker says that the payments environment on the African continent is fragmented and fewer than 10% own an internationally accepted credit card, locking the majority out of participating in…