2024-04-02 18:42

Most capital went into infrastructure and decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, data by RootData shows. Venture capitalists invested over 52% into crypto projects in March versus prior month. Crypto projects, specifically in the United States, received more than $1.16 billion last month, the second-highest amount in the past 12 months. The majority of capital went into projects related to crypto infrastructure and decentralized finance (DeFi). Venture capitalists increased their investments into crypto projects by over 52% in March, spurred by a new all-time high for bitcoin and continued success from the spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Investors allocated more than $1.16 billion into the industry in March, the second-highest amount in the past 12 months, according to data released by RootData. The majority of the capital went into projects working on crypto infrastructure and decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, especially those built on the Ethereum blockchain, the data shows. Other popular blockchains included Polygon and BNB Chain. The surge in fundraising comes as bitcoin reached a new all-time high of $73,798 on March 14, which experts say was accelerated by the better-than-expected inflows into the newly launched spot bitcoin ETFs. The ten ETFs, which include issuers like BlackRock and Fidelity, spurred renewed faith in the industry as TradFi leaders once again voiced their interest in digital assets. More than half of the investments in March were between $1 million and $5 million and were used as seed capital, while allocations of over $20 million made up roughly 10% of all investments. Roughly a third of the capital was allocated to projects located in the United States, according to RootData. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/04/02/crypto-venture-capital-fundraising-jumped-over-50-in-march-amid-rally/

2024-04-02 18:27

Even after the recent surge in prices and involvement from other TradFi giants, the bank maintains its belief that crypto is worthless. Goldman Sachs stands firm on its belief that cryptocurrencies have no value. The chief investment officer of the banks Wealth Management unit, Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, says clients have not voiced interest in exposure to the asset class, even after the latest surge in prices. Goldman Sachs, nowadays one of the few Wall Street banks to do so, isn’t backing away from its negative stance against crypto, as it doesn’t see any value in the asset. Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, chief investment officer of the bank's Wealth Management unit, has long been known for her skepticism of bitcoin and other digital assets, and her opinion hasn’t changed, according to a recent interview. “We do not think it is an investment asset class,” she told the Wall Street Journal, “We’re not believers in crypto.” Even after TradFi competitors such as BlackRock and Fidelity earlier this year decided to double down on their efforts in the crypto industry after clients expressed their interest in getting exposure specifically to bitcoin, Goldman’s clients want nothing to do with it, according to Mossavar-Rahmani. One of the reasons she sees no value in the asset is because it’s not possible to really evaluate its worth. “If you cannot assign a value, then how can you be bullish or bearish?” she said. She even criticized the industry for being hypocritical, saying that crypto enthusiasts “all proclaim democratization of finance, yet the main decisions end up being driven by a few controlling people.” Unlike Goldman Sachs, many of its competitors have taken steps to participate in the crypto space. J.P. Morgan Chase, for example, in 2020 launched its own blockchain platform, which now employs over 100 people. Meanwhile, Citigroup Inc. is exploring private fund tokenization. Updated 4/2/2024 19:35 to specify that Mossavar-Rahmani is the CIO of the bank's Wealth Management unit. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/04/02/goldman-sachs-clients-not-interested-in-crypto-says-chief-investment-officer-wsj/

2024-04-02 17:23

The nation unveiled a mandatory registration process for cryptocurrency platforms. Argentina last week moved forward with implementing a Registry of Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP), drawing some outcry from those who hoped the nation might be heading in the direction of El Salvador's welcoming of Bitcoin. The new law means platforms and individuals who purchase, sell, send or trade cryptocurrencies must adhere to a registration process. While the regulation appears to have been left over by the previous government, the fact that it's moved forward and has now become law under President Javier Milei is disappointing to those who imagined Latin America was going to get another bitcoin-friendly leader. “Javier Milei makes his first major mistake,” tweeted Max Kieser, a longtime Bitcoin maxi and an advisor to El Salvador President Nayib Bukele. “He never took the time to understand #Bitcoin, now he’ll suffer the consequences.” El Salvador under Bukele in 2021 became the first nation on the globe to make bitcoin legal tender. The new regulation looks to be having immediate effect, with users of payment app Strike reporting that the platform informed them that the Send Globally function between Argentina and the U.S. will no longer be supported. CoinDesk has reached out to Strike for comment. The libertarian Milei, who had previously lauded Bitcoin as a safe haven against central banking and inflation, came to power in December 2023 amid triple digit annual inflation. To this point, he's had some success trimming the size and scope of the government, with Argentina this year posting its first monthly budget surplus since 2011. The monthly inflation rate fell to 13.2% in February from 20.6% in January and 25.5% the month before that. To be sure, not everyone views the new VASP law as negative. “If Argentina wants more access to foreign investment, this [the new regulation] is one of the things that needed to be implemented,” said an Argentina resident on X. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/04/02/argentina-president-milei-disappoints-some-bitcoiners-as-crypto-registration-rule-begins/

2024-04-02 16:13

The last confirmed government sale was just more than a year ago. A wallet tagged as belonging to the U.S. government moved 30,175 bitcoins to what's reported to be a Coinbase wallet late Tuesday morning. At bitcoin's (BTC) current price around the $65,000 level, that would be roughly $2 billion worth of the token. The last confirmed sale by the government – which in late 2022 seized roughly 50,000 bitcoins related to the Silk Road website – was in March 2023 when it unloaded 9,861 coins for $216 million. This morning's movement of bitcoins was to an unidentified wallet, but Arkham Intelligence has tagged the wallet as belonging to crypto exchange Coinbase. Already sharply lower on the day, bitcoin slipped a bit further following the news, dipping under $65,000. It's since bounced a bit, now trading at $65,200, down 4.7% over the past 24 hours. The broader CoinDesk 20 Index is lower by the same amount. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/04/02/silk-road-bitcoin-worth-2b-moved-by-us-government-on-chain-data/

2024-04-02 15:58

What appears to be another post-FTX trading-and-custody play with institutions in mind, is really all about visionary disruption. Figure Markets combines alternative trading system capabilities with cross-collateralization of crypto and traditional assets. MPC wallets matched with a goal of delivering a fully on-chain order book meet CEO Mike Cagney’s definition of a decentralized exchange. Figure is using about $100 million from its balance sheet as a catalyst to drive borrowing and lending. At first glance, Figure Markets, the cryptocurrency exchange recently unveiled by serial entrepreneur Mike Cagney, looks like another post-FTX trading-and-custody play aimed at institutions. But dig deeper, and a spectrum of value propositions appears, from cost-saving practicalities to visionary disruption. Key components include: an alternative trading system (ATS), a broker-dealer license, the ability to cross-collateralize crypto and real-world assets, and borrowing and lending using Figure Technologies’ balance sheet as a catalyst to get things flowing. All this is underpinned by multiparty computation (MPC) wallets, a largely decentralized order book and the backing of market maker Jump Trading. It’s definitely true that the billions of dollars of assets marooned on FTX prompted a rethink of crypto exchanges. For Figure Markets, the need to build an exchange evolved out of sister company Figure Technologies’ history of tokenizing non-crypto assets (over $30 billion since 2018) using the Cosmos-based Provenance Blockchain built by the firm. By Cagney’s own admission, experimental efforts such as creating an on-chain market in private company shares and trading Figure stock on the ATS, failed to gain traction. Likewise, onboarding heavy hitters such as Apollo to trade on-chain fund interests didn’t work either. Focus on market structure Cagney remains chirpy about this learning curve. “These are two very popular business models that people are pitching right now for blockchain. We've done them both and I can tell you neither work,” he said in an interview with CoinDesk. “So, we decided to take a step back and look at market structure. The thing that stuck out was Binance and Coinbase function the same way as FTX did, even after what happened there. They act as custodian and clearing agent.” The right direction was to use MPC, based on Jump Crypto's Silo offering, which represents a security-perfected interest that’s analogous to self-custody, and effectively delivers Cagney’s concept of a “decentralized exchange.” Cagney's version differs from a DEX in the sense of decentralized finance (DeFi), where anonymous parties trade using an automated market maker (AMM). It instead features a limit order book, but one that’s as close to being on-chain as is technologically possible to deploy at scale. “We can't scale that to a level to be competitive with Binance and Coinbase,” he said. “So you end up having to bring some order matching construct off chain, where you write back to the chain every five seconds. For five seconds, you're using some centralized construct of orders, but you're still not taking possession of the collateral which is important.” In any case, Cagney’s view is that AMMs are not good for consumers. “Everyone pounds their chests about AMMs, but the reality is AMMs get exploited constantly by market makers sandwich-attacking retail clients that trade on them. The real panacea is when we get suitable blockchain computation. But until then, we have to run episodic off chain matching to just meet the throughput that we need. That isn't disingenuous to the thesis of decentralization, or at least is in line with it.” Market makers like Jump saw huge value, both in Figure Markets’ decentralization, as well as the possibilities of cross-collateralization. But they flagged another issue, the problem around liquidity for lend/borrow, and the ability to access capital from a lend/borrow standpoint, Cagney said. “Look at the prime brokers in crypto, there's really only somewhere in the hundreds of millions of dollars of capital available to lend in an industry that could easily consume billions of dollars of capital a day.” To deal with that, Cagney has apportioned about $100 million from Figure’s balance sheet to get the lending flywheel turning. “What’s really interesting is the way you can democratize prime finance, so you don't need an introducing broker,” Cagney said. “You just attach your wallet to the exchange and trade. I don't need Robinhood, I don't need Schwab, I don't need TD [Ameritrade], and the whole prime system. What you ultimately end up with is a total reshaping of the way that financial markets work in a massively disruptive but extremely creative way to everyone in the ecosystem.” https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/04/02/crypto-exchange-figure-markets-has-a-plan-to-democratize-finance/

2024-04-02 09:22

Ethena has invited holders of USDe to claim their share of the airdrop of 750 million ENA tokens, equating to 5% of the total supply Ethena Labs, the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that offers the $1.3 billion yield-earning USDe, has opened claims for its new governance token (ENA). In a post on X on Tuesday, Ethena invited holders of USDe to claim their share of the airdrop of 750 million ENA tokens, equating to 5% of the total supply, which is set to list on centralized exchanges. Following the commencement of the airdrop, ENA rose over 8% to trade at around 64 cents, with a market cap of close to $500 million, according to data by CoinGecko. Ethena plans to start a campaign with new incentives for the next phase of the airdrop, according to a blog post last week. The USDe token, which is referred to as a “synthetic dollar,” offers yields to investors by pairing ether liquid staking tokens with short ether (ETH) perpetual futures position in the derivatives market to maintain a “rough target” of $1 price. Read More: Crypto Custodian Taurus Enlists Lido to Bring Liquid Ethereum Staking to Swiss Banks https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/04/02/ethena-labs-ena-token-goes-live-start-trading-at-64-cents/