Author: The Block

Personal finance company SoFi has won conditional approval in its bid to create a nationally chartered bank. SoFi Bank’s conditional approval was announced late Tuesday by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). In a statement, the OCC said that it “conditionally approved applications from Social Finance Inc. (SoFi) to create SoFi Bank, National Association (SoFi Bank, N.A.), as a full service national bank headquartered in Cottonwood Heights, Utah.” “As part of the transaction, SoFi Bank, N.A. will acquire Golden Pacific Bank, National Association, a national bank insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation,” the OCC continued. As S&P Global Intelligence noted…

A hearing before Congress on Thursday seems set to be less hostile to proof-of-work crypto mining, especially Bitcoin, than has been the case traditionally.  On January 17, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations released its memorandum and witness list for the hearing, entitled “Cleaning Up Cryptocurrency: The Energy Impacts of Blockchains.” The Block initially broke the news of the coming hearing at the beginning of January. It follows on the emergence over 2021 of the US as the number one source of Bitcoin’s hashrate in the world after a nation-wide crackdown in China. The memorandum itself references controversial figures of the energy use of…

Pantera, a crypto investment firm, is preparing to raise more than $1 billion for a new venture fund, according to an email distributed on Tuesday. The firm — which has backed crypto projects and companies ranging from the likes of Bakkt and 1inch — is one of the longest operating funds in the digital asset space, investing in crypto tokens and equity since 2013. Originally, the firm was planning to raise $600 million, as reported by The Information in November. The firm’s total commitments for the fund now exceed $1 billion. As per the memo, the new fund will invest in the…

Byte Trading, a crypto market maker specialized in derivatives, has raised $7 million in a seed funding round. Sharing the news exclusively with The Block on Tuesday, Byte Trading said Switzerland-based venture capital firm Redalpine, which is an investor in popular startups such as Robinhood and N26, led the round. Other investors in the round included Possible Ventures, L1 Digital, and D4 Ventures. As part of the deal, Redalpine general partner Harald Nieder and Possible Ventures partner Simon Leicht have also joined Byte Trading’s board of directors, Byte Trading co-founder Dominik Vacikar told The Block. This was an equity funding round and…

Representatives from tech giant Intel will debut what they’ve called an “Ultra-Low-Voltage Energy-Efficient Bitcoin Mining ASIC”, dubbed “Bonanza Mine”, during a technology event next month. The few available details were included in a presentation guide for the 2022 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, which is set to take place between February 19 and 26. Intel’s presentation, the existence of which was first reported by Tom’s Hardware, will take place on February 23. Despite the scant information at this time about the upcoming presentation, past events and information releases have long pointed to Intel’s interest in developing bitcoin-related hardware. Years ago, Intel…

NFT marketplace OpenSea confirmed its acquisition of Dharma Labs on Tuesday, a deal that could help the $13 billion crypto firm expand its technological prowess. The announcement comes just weeks after Axios’s Kia Kokalitcheva reported OpenSea was in talks to buy Dharma, a startup in the decentralized finance space. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, although a source close to the firm confirmed that the value of Dharma fell into Axios’s estimated range of $110 million and $130 million. “Our teams share a vision that NFTs will be the cultural focal point of crypto’s adoption for years to come —…

Metaplex Foundation, the developer of the Solana-based NFT protocol Metaplex, has raised $46 million in a funding round. Multicoin Capital and Jump Crypto co-led the round, with Solana Ventures, Alameda Research, and Animoca Brands participating. The round also saw particularly high interest from former and current professional basketball players, including Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, Joel Embiid, Kevin Love, and Obadiah Toppin. In all, more than 90 individual investors joined the round, including Italian banker Cozomo de’ Medici. This was Metaplex Foundation’s first fundraise and realized via a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT) sale, its director Stephen Hess told The…

Cross-chain protocol Multichain (previously known as Anyswap) has been exploited for $1.34 million — according to security researchers PeckShield. This occurred through a bug that the platform had recently disclosed. On January 17, Multichain revealed that it had found a critical vulnerability and had fixed it. It said that the bug affected six tokens, including wrapped ether (WETH). But the problem is that the protocol couldn’t fix the bug from affecting past users who had interacted with the protocol. Instead, this required users to manually go to their wallets and revoke permissions that they had previously given to the protocol.…

Crypto firm BitMEX Group announced Tuesday its plan to acquire Bankhaus von der Heydt, a 268-year-old private bank based in Germany. The group’s BXM Operations AG — a company founded by BitMEX CEO Alexander Höptner and its CFO Stephan Lutz — has signed a purchase agreement with Dietrich von Boetticher, the bank’s current owner. The deal is subject to the approval of German financial regulator BaFin. Bankhaus von der Heydt was founded in 1754. In October, it partnered with Fireblocks to offer crypto services to its clients. BitMEX Group said it expects the transaction to complete in the middle of this year.…

Crypto exchange Coinbase and payments giant Mastercard have teamed up to simplify the buying experience of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Today people have to use crypto for buying NFTs on platforms like OpenSea. Coinbase and Mastercard are working on letting users buy NFTs via Mastercard cards on Coinbase’s upcoming NFT platform. Mastercard said buying NFTs should be as simple as buying a t-shirt online. But today users first need to open a crypto wallet, buy crypto, then use it to purchase an NFT in an online marketplace, it said. “As an important step in this mission, we’re excited to announce today that we’re…