CoinDesk Crypto

Cardano (ADA), the native cryptocurrency powering Charles Hoskinson’s public blockchain, has hit a fresh all-time high and has surpassed Binance’s native token in total market capitalization.

As of press time, ADA’s market capitalization stands at $80.7 billion compared to Binance coin’s (BNB) $72.1 billion, data from provider Messari shows.

ADA’s price is up a staggering 19% on the day and is continuing its drive from Thursday’s run where it came close to setting fresh price highs. The crypto has been on a tear in recent weeks and is up 150% from July 21 lows of $1.

Related: Bitcoin Jumps 6% Edging Above $47K on Strong Buyer Demand

ADA is currently changing hands for around $2.49 after reaching its record high of $2.55 during the Asia trading hours.

Strong levels of daily buyer volume – the most since the end of May – are matching price action on the way up signaling demand in the strength and conviction of ADA’s trend.

It would appear the Alonzo upgrade is having a significant impact on investor sentiment. The upgrade seeks to usher in smart-contract functionality and address what critics have described as one of the network’s most glaring deficiencies.

The upgrade is slated for Oct. 1, though some are betting it will overshoot and release sometime later.

Related: Cardano Nears All-Time High as Investors Await Smart Contracts

Cardano has been through multiple developmental phases including the foundational phase Byron and decentralized phase Shelley which saw the introduction of delegated staking. According to the Cardano roadmap, smart contracts will go live when the project enters its third era, Goguen.

Cardano was founded by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson in 2017 and aims to directly compete with Ethereum and other decentralized application platforms as a more scalable, secure and efficient alternative.

Related Stories

• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Expected to Hold Support Above $45K
• Bitcoin Little Changed Above $44K Despite Hack of Japan’s Liquid Exchange

Cardano (ADA), the native cryptocurrency powering Charles Hoskinson’s public blockchain, has hit fresh all-time highs and has surpassed Binance’s native token in total market capitalization.

As of press time, ADA’s market capitalization stands at $80.7 billion compared to binance coin’s (BNB) $72.1 billion, data from provider Messari shows.

ADA’s price is up a staggering 19% on the day and is continuing its drive from Thursday’s run where it came close to setting fresh price highs. The crypto has been on a tear in recent weeks and is up 150% from July 21 lows of $1.

Related: Bitcoin Jumps 6% Edging Above $47K on Strong Buyer Demand

ADA is currently changing hands for around $2.49 after reaching its record high of $2.55 during the Asia trading hours.

Strong levels of daily buyer volume – the most since the end of May – are matching price action on the way up signaling demand in the strength and conviction of ADA’s trend.

It would appear the “Alonzo” upgrade is having a significant impact on investor sentiment. The upgrade seeks to usher in smart-contract functionality and address what critics have described as one of the network’s most glaring deficiencies.

The upgrade is slated for Oct. 1, though some are betting it will overshoot and release sometime later.

Related: Cardano Nears All-Time High as Investors Await Smart Contracts

Cardano has been through multiple developmental phases including the foundational phase Byron and decentralized phase Shelly which saw the introduction of delegated staking. According to the Cardano roadmap, smart contracts will go live when the project enters its third era, Goguen.

Cardano was founded by Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson in 2017 and aims to directly compete with Ethereum and other decentralized application platforms as a more scalable, secure, and efficient alternative.

Related Stories

• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Expected to Hold Support Above $45K
• Bitcoin Little Changed Above $44K Despite Hack of Japan’s Liquid Exchange

China’s central bank digital currency is reaching increasingly more consumers, as 35 Chinese banks have embedded digital yuan wallets in their mobile apps, compared to the initial six, local media reported on Thursday.

• Small- and medium-size banks are gearing up to provide e-CNY services to their customers, state-owned Shanghai Securities Journal reported.
• The 35 include joint-stock companies, city banks, and some rural credit cooperatives. Initial testing for the digital yuan only included China’s big six state-owned banks.
• Another 94 banks, including three foreign ones, plan to access the digital yuan via a new clearing platform, the report said.
• The clearing platform is built by City Bank, a private Shanghai-based clearing house and technology provider.
• E-commerce giant JD.com, which has previously participated and even funded trials, has also successfully tested the CBDC for business customers on its platform, local media reported yesterday.
• Trials for the digital yuan have been expanding across the country. The People’s Bank of China has said it will also test it during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

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Bitcoin is up more than 6% on the day after breaching $47,000 on the back of strong buyer demand.

The world’s largest crypto has hit a 24-hour high of $47,359 and is now posting a 62.2% year-to-date return, CoinDesk data shows. Current prices are resting just above the $47,000 price tag with one BTC fetching roughly $47,100.

“What we’re seeing are market participants testing this level and reacting to the positive news from Coinbase,” said Daniel Kim, head of capital markets at Australia-based decentralized lending company Maple Finance.

Related: Eurex to Launch Bitcoin ETN Futures to Meet ‘Significant Demand’

Hourly spot volume across multiple exchanges also clocked the highest point in a week (Aug. 13), meanwhile, daily volume on Thursday registered higher volume than the day prior confirming the upward momentum.

“We’ve been hearing commentary that hedge funds were viewing $45,000-$50,000 as a key level for it to be a ‘bitcoin market,’ Kim said. “Over the past 2 weeks, we’ve seen our institutional USDC borrowing demand significantly grow.”

Other cryptos in the top 20 by market cap have also jumped considerably with cardano, ether, polkadot, uniswap, and polygon having clocked the largest gains over a 24-hour period.

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• Compass Mining Says Chase Shut Down Bank Accounts Without Warning

Decentralized finance protocol Luna Yield has gone offline.

Luna’s website and all of its social media accounts have been taken down, according to SolPad, an initial digital offering (IDO) platform for Solana.

Some are attributing the move offline to a rug pull. A rug pull occurs when the creators of a project take off with investors’ funds. While no official confirmation has yet been given, the move would mark the first rug pull of its kind on Solana.

Related: Cardano Nears All-Time High as Investors Await Smart Contracts

An anonymous source told CoinDesk over $6.7 million in assets had been taken. The amount has been verified by CoinDesk via the SOL scan block explorer. See below at the end of this article for a full list of the assets presumed stolen.

“The funds are already gone, and no way to get them back, the source said. “They moved all from sol to ether and then to the decentralized tornado cash service.”

Luna was SolPAD’s second IDO, which went live on Tuesday. A spokesperson for Solana declined to comment.

Solana has risen to prominence as of late and has been the blockchain of choice for billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded the FTX crypto exchange and who has invested heavily in Solana-based projects.

Related: VC Firm FinTech Collective Raises $250M to Support New DeFi Strategy

Solana Labs, the leading firm behind the network, raised $314 million in June.

In a SolPAD Telegram channel, the digital platform said it was “collecting proof” on Luna’s rug pull which could make an “enormous impact on investors” and its community.

SolPAD enables projects to raise capital on a decentralized platform, based on Solana.

It also said it was doing everything it could to provide proof for all related parties, particularly larger centralized exchanges so that the larger platforms can move to suspend and block funds.

“SolPAD Finance has no relation to the Luna Yield team,” the platform said. “We only host IDO for projects that submitted qualified documents. SolPAD assumes no responsibility or liability for any activity by the projects that held a public sale on SolPAD.

A reward is being provided for any information that would lead to the tracking down of the Luna team.

• SOL-USDC LP $382,648
• LUNY-USDC LP $22,139
• LUNY $89,504
• USDC $1,166,959
• RAY $463,100
• SOL $923,239
• ETH $1,483,732
• USDT $1,686,679
• YFI $490,834
• TOTAL: $6,709,834

UPDATE (August 20, 2021, 2:19 UTC): Adds additional info including amount hacked, unnamed source, and on-chain data.

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Coinbase will be purchasing more than $500 million in cryptocurrency to add to its holdings, the exchange giant’s CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong tweeted on Thursday.

• Armstrong wrote that the firm had “received board approval” to add these assets to its balance sheet.
• He also wrote that Coinbase would invest 10% “of all profit going forward in crypto.” He added that he expected “this percentage to keep growing over time as the cryptoeconomy matures,” and that he hoped to “operate more of our business in crypto.”
• The company started trading publicly in April via a direct listing, and earlier this month, reported a net income of $1.6 billion for its second quarter.
• According to a report Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, Coinbase has amassed a cash stockpile of $4.4 billion to ensure it can continue growing despite potential business risks such as regulatory crackdowns, cyberattacks and declines in trading volume.
• Coinbase’s CFO Alesia Haas noted in a blog posting that most of its “corporate financial transactions “remain heavily weighted in fiat,” and added that the company was “in a strong position to lead by example and double down on how we can enable crypto adoption and utility.”

UPDATE (August 20, 01:22 UTC): Adds bullet point quoting Coinbase blog posting.

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Bitcoin mining firm Compass Mining’s bank accounts with Chase Bank, the retail banking arm of financial services colossus JPMorgan, were terminated without warning earlier this week, according to Compass CEO Whit Gibbs. 

Gibbs took to Twitter on Wednesday to announce the shutdown, writing: “Shoutout to Chase for shutting down Compass Mining accounts for doing our part to replace the old guard with self-sovereign, future-focused supporters of hard money.”

According to Gibbs, Compass learned about the account closures when its COO, Jameson Nunney, visited a local branch in Ohio to make a transaction and was told by an employee that the company’s accounts had been frozen the day before, and that Chase would be holding the money until August 27. The accounts held approximately 7% of the company’s cash. 

Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Expected to Hold Support Above $45K

This is not the first time Chase has closed accounts belonging to crypto-related companies, or even to individuals making crypto transactions. Yet Chase has also expanded its crypto banking services, even taking on Coinbase and Gemini as customers in 2020. And earlier this year, Chase began allowing its retail wealth management clients access to crypto funds. 

But the closure of Compass Mining’s account signals that Chase may not have completely changed its view about crypto, after all. At the time of publication, a Chase spokesperson was looking into the matter and had not yet provided comment.

Gibbs told CoinDesk that although Compass was told that its account with Chase was undergoing a review approximately 90 days ago, it was not given warning about the closure. 

Compass believed that the review was to determine whether its account was eligible for an upgrade. Gibbs said Compass’ Chase relationship manager told executives they had nothing to worry about.

Related: The Flippening: Key Metrics Where Ethereum Is Outperforming Bitcoin

But Gibbs said Compass’ relationship manager then cut off communications. The accounts were closed without Compass receiving a letter or an email to inform them of the move, much less an explanation.

After Gibbs tweeted about the closure, he said he was flooded with messages of support and offers to provide services from a number of banks.

“The response from the community was fantastic,” Gibbs told CoinDesk.

Gibbs told CoinDesk that Compass was, however, able to get the funds from the frozen accounts and has now moved all its business to the crypto-friendly bank Signature. 

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The cardano (ADA) price neared an all-time high Thursday, rising to $2.44 in digital-asset markets, as investors await a September release for the planned “Alonzo” upgrade – a move that would usher in smart-contract functionality and thus address what critics have described as one of the network’s most glaring deficiencies.

• As of press time, ADA has been trading at $2.35, up 14% during the past 24 hours, based on CoinDesk pricing.
• ADA reached an all-time-high price of $2.47 in May.
• Lead Cardano developer Input Output recently announced a timeline for the “Alonzo” upgrade, targeting Sept. 12 for the final release date. 
• Smart-contract functionality would allow Cardano to incorporate more applications including so-called decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms that allow for automated cryptocurrency lending and trading.
• The improvement could put the network in a better position to challenge Ethereum, currently the leader among blockchains with smart-contract functionality.
• In a prediction market started in July that allows participants to bet on whether Cardano can release smart contract functionality by Oct. 1, the betting contract was trading at 79 cents as of press time.
• It is up from 30 cents on July 18 when the market was first launched but down from its all-time high of 85 cents on Aug 12 and Aug 15. The betting contract pays out $1 of the stablecoin USDC if Cardano succeeds in meeting the timeline. 

Correction (21:43 UTC, Aug. 19, 2021): An earlier version of this story erroneously stated that Cardano had hit an all-time price. This story has been corrected to show that the price rose close to an all-time high.

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• Gary Gensler Isn’t Buying Your Decentralization Theater

Bitcoin is holding above $45,000 at press time and is attempting to break out from a slight downtrend over the past week. Cryptocurrencies have been consolidating near highs as a slew of negative headlines have kept buyers on the sidelines. 

On Wednesday, minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) showed the Federal Reserve is considering slowing its pace of asset purchases later this year. Concerns about fading stimulus triggered a pullback in equities and commodities, and also weighed on cryptocurrencies.

News about a hack at Japan’s Liquid Global exchange on Thursday also weakened bullish sentiment in the crypto market. While the total amount stolen has yet to be determined, the value taken in bitcoin, ether, ripple, tron and other coins could be upward of $90 million, reports CoinDesk’s Eliza Gkritsi.

Latest prices

Related: Compass Mining Says Chase Shut Down Bank Accounts Without Warning

Cryptocurrencies:

• Bitcoin (BTC) $46582, +4.18%
• Ether (ETH) $3150.5, +4.12%

Traditional markets:

• S&P 500: 4405.8, +0.13%
• Gold: $1781.3, -0.3%
• 10-year Treasury yield closed at 1.248%, compared with 1.272% on Wednesday

For now, analysts are closely monitoring bitcoin’s 200-day moving average. 

“An ability for BTC to hold the 200-day moving average would be the first domino to fall in a move towards a rally through the end of this year,” FundStrat wrote in a newsletter Wednesday.

Related: Cardano Nears All-Time High as Investors Await Smart Contracts

FundStrat is bullish on crypto and expects near-term weakness to fade as macro conditions remain supportive for assets that are deemed to be risky.

“We notice a mid-cycle trend forming in which active market participants are moving from BTC and ETH and into other alternative coins,” FundStrat wrote.

Less heated rally

The cost to fund long positions in the market for bitcoin perpetual swaps, a type of derivative in cryptocurrency markets similar to futures contracts in traditional markets, remains relatively low compared with previous market rallies.

“When there are substantial increases in price, we often observe concurrent run-ups in the funding rate since investors start to chase long positions,” FundStrat wrote. “Based on the chart below, we can see that while funding rates are positive, things are not remotely overheated when juxtaposed to recent price action.”

Bitcoin underperforms

So far this month, “cryptocurrencies were flying once again as investors’ appetites for high risk pushed the prices higher,” Lukas Enzersdorfer-Konrad, chief product officer at crypto exchange Bitpanda, wrote in an email to CoinDesk.

But bitcoin has taken a back seat as altcoins outperformed over the past two weeks. Cardano, XRP and dogecoin locked in gains of more than 40%, compared with a nearly 7% gain for bitcoin over the same period, according to CoinDesk price data. 

The outperformance of altcoins could continue, especially given the recent technical breakout in ether relative to bitcoin.

Altcoins are considered to be riskier than BTC, and rising ETH/BTC pairs could reflect a greater appetite for risk in the crypto market, Enzersdorfer-Konrad wrote.

Cardano short-term overbought

Cardano (ADA), which is billed as a third-generation blockchain (following Bitcoin and Ethereum as the first and second generations, respectively), is approaching an all-time high of around $2.40, which was reached in May. 

ADA held support at its 200-day moving average, which attracted strong buying power as the crypto selloff stabilized in June. The nearly 60% price rally over the past month appears to be exhausted given extreme overbought signals on the charts. A pullback is expected in the near-term, although the price is expected to stay above the $1.80 to $2 support zone.

Ethereum staking

Ethereum miners could be out of business in six months as the Ethereum mainnet merges with the Beacon Chain proof-of-stake system, Tim Ogilvie, co-founder and CEO of crypto staking service provider Staked, told CoinDesk.

It’s in contrast with some crypto miners’ bets on the delay of Ethereum’s upgrade to a proof-of-stake system, as they increased investments in ethereum mining, CoinDesk’s David Pan reported earlier. 

“My gut is they probably are going to sort of run for six months,” Ogilvie said. “And then they’re going to shift that mining equipment to mine on other chains. And so there’s probably some ancillary work they can do.”

Staking on ETH 2.0 via Staked renders a nominal yield of 6.8%, and Ogilvie estimates the number will reach 8% to 9% upon completion of the Merge. Such return comes with risks, he noted. 

 “The risk of staking now is it’s illiquid, until such time as transactions are enabled on Ethereum 2.0, so you’ve got some indefinite period of time, call it 12 to 18 months, before you can actually spend or use your ETH,” Ogilvie said. He also warned about the slashing of penalties in the proof-of-stake mode when a validator node “tried to cheat the system or had a technical error.”

Altcoin roundup

• Polygon to Form Decentralized Autonomous Organization: Ethereum scaling platform Polygon said it will build a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector, CoinDesk’s Jamie Crawley reports. Polygon’s aim is for the DAO to attract 100 million users and invite this community to have a say in its DeFi development, according to an emailed announcement Thursday. Forming a DAO is “the next logical step” to aiding collaboration between blockchain-based systems, given that projects such as Aave, Curve and SushiSwap are already using Polygon as a scaling system.
• Poly Network Sends Bounty as Attacker Holds $141M Hostage: Poly Network, the China-based blockchain protocol that lost more than $6000 million when it was hacked earlier this month, said Thursday it had sent a bounty worth nearly $500,000 to the attacker and that most of the looted cryptocurrency has now been fully recovered. But the attacker apparently has yet to provide a key needed to unlock the remaining $141 million. “There are users who are panicking that they might lose control of their assets, and we want to minimize the impact on them, so restoring our network and our users’ assets in a secure manner as quickly as possible is our top priority,” Poly Network wrote early Thursday in an email. 
• Custody Firm Anchorage Launches Governance Voting With DeFi Giant Aave: Regulated cryptocurrency custody firm Anchorage is offering blockchain governance voting services, starting with DeFi platform Aave. Institutions and token holders can use Anchorage’s governance portal to participate in on-chain governance decisions critical to the Aave lending protocol. The system uses a separate voting key so that digital assets can remain safely in storage, the companies said Thursday.

Relevant news:

• Crypto Booster Brian Quintenz to Step Down as CFTC Commissioner
• Wells Fargo Launches Passive Bitcoin Fund for Wealthy Clients
• Former SEC Chair Jay Clayton Joins Crypto Firm Fireblocks
• DeFi Not Immune to SEC Oversight, Gensler Says: Report
• Japan’s Liquid Global Exchange Hacked; $90M in Crypto Siphoned Off
• Galaxy Digital Launches DeFi Index Tracker Fund

Other markets

Most digital assets on CoinDesk 20 ended up higher. In fact, everything was in the green except for dollar-linked stablecoins.

Notable winners of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):

cardano (ADA) +15.27%

the graph (GRT) +12.2%

algorand (ALGO) +12.11%

Related Stories

• Ethereum 2.0 Staking Contract Now Holds the Most Ether: $21.3B
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British retail bank Lloyds Banking Group is seeking to hire a “digital currency and innovation senior manager” to explore investment opportunities, according to a job description posted on the BYP network.

• The manager will develop payments use cases and initiate business or investments around digital currencies, according to the posting.
• The bank, which has more than 30 million customers, said it is in the middle of investing $4.09 billion into its people, platforms and data with a software engineering-led approach.
• The post highlights that technology is evolving rapidly with the “potential for it to be incorporated into traditional financial services.”
• Lloyds has been cautious about cryptocurrency investing. In 2018, the bank reportedly barred its customers from using credit cards to buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

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Joshua Sroge has become Binance.US’s interim CEO, replacing Brian Brooks, who resigned unexpectedly earlier this month from the U.S. arm of crypto exchange Binance.

• Sroge joined Binance.US in January 2020, serving as its CFO.
• Brooks’ exit after just four months and the similarly unexpected departure of the director of Binance Brazil have been among a series of challenges for the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume. Binance has faced intensifying regulatory scrutiny in several countries, including the U.K. and Japan.
• According to a report in the New York Times on Thursday, Brooks resigned after a venture capital investment he was trying to complete to diversify the company’s ownership fell through.
• The potential investors were concerned that U.S. authorities were investigating Binance over money laundering and tax issues, and also CEO Changpeng Zhao’s concentrated ownership of Binance.US. Zhao owns roughly 90% of Binance.US, according to the Times report.
• According to The Times, Sroge said in a statement that the company still intended to grow, including raising outside capital and “expanding its board of directors with experienced leaders, among other initiatives consistent with those pursued by fast-growing private companies.”

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The Ethereum 2.0 staking contract has become the largest holder of the cryptocurrency ether. 

According to the blockchain explorer website Etherscan, the top account by balance is Ethereum 2.0 with 6.9 million ETH ($21.3 billion worth). Wrapped ether (WETH) comes in second, holding 6.7 million ETH ($20.6 billion). 

“The fact of the deposit contract overtaking the wrapped ether contract as No. 1 doesn’t really mean anything in itself,” said Ben Edgington, lead product owner at ConsenSys. “It just shows that staking on Eth 2.0 is incredibly popular.”

Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Expected to Hold Support Above $45K

This shows growing confidence the Ethereum Foundation is going to successfully complete the transition to Ethereum 2.0, said Tim Ogilvie, CEO of Staked, a firm that helps investors stake digital assets on Ethereum as well as on other blockchains including Cardano, Polkadot and Solana.  

Wrapped ether is an ERC-20 compatible version of ether, allowing the token to be used in decentralized applications within the Ethereum ecosystem, according to Messari, a cryptocurrency data and analysis firm. 

The Ethereum 2.0 contract “is meant to move value into the Beacon Chain in order to secure it as a base layer on proof-of-stake, and then generate an interest rate on top algorithmically,” said Lex Sokolin, head economist at ConsenSys. The Beacon Chain will introduce proof-of-stake to Ethereum. The chain’s role will change over time but is considered a foundational component for the security, sustainability and scalability towards which Ethereum is working.

“That capital is currently a one-way street until more bridges are built, tech matures or through derivative liquidity,” he added.

Related: Poly Network Sends Bounty as Attacker Holds $141M Hostage

At press time, ether was trading at $3,082, based on CoinDesk 20 data. 

“The 32 ETH deposit minimum for Eth 2.0 presents a barrier to stakers who have less than 32 ETH or prefer to hold liquid assets,” Nansen, a blockchain analytics firm, wrote in a report emailed to CoinDesk on Aug. 17. In order to become a full validator, users need to deposit a minimum of 32 ETH. 

Therefore, some users might prefer to stake ETH through an exchange such as Binance or Kraken, or in liquid staking protocols like Lido or Ankr. 

The report said that while Kraken and Binance continue to account for a significant proportion of the Ethereum 2.0 stake, they are losing share to alternative staking solutions like Lido, which is a decentralized staking pool. 

In terms of tracked entities across multiple wallets, Kraken is the biggest depositor. 

“The rise of Lido marks a vast improvement in the distribution of network control. On 1st March 2021, Kraken (14%), Staked.us (8.2%), Binance (12.9%) collectively controlled over 34% of total stake,” according to the Nansen report.

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Decentralized gaming startup Yield Guild Games (YGG) has raised $4.6 million in a funding round led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), YGG announced Thursday.

• Other participating investors included venture capital firm Kingsway Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto, Atelier Ventures and the gaming entrepreneur Gabriel Leydon.
• YGG describes itself as a “play-to-earn gaming guild.” It allows gamers to earn tokens through blockchain-based economies.
• Funding will be used by YGG to invest in digital assets in the play-to-earn games virtual world and to expand its community of over 48,000 gamers, said the firm in a press release.
• “The intersection of crypto and gaming is one of the most exciting areas in tech today,” said Arianna Simpson, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
• Simpson added YGG is at the center of the growing play-to-earn sector, “where more of the value is retained by the players and community, rather than the gaming platforms.”
• In August, YGG and cryptocurrency exchange FTX signed a sponsorship deal in which Axie Infinity players from developing countries will receive scholarship funds. The deal with FTX involves YGG loaning non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to players who cannot afford to buy their own, under a revenue-sharing agreement.

Read more: Gone in 30 Seconds: Yield Guild Games’ $12.5M Token Sale Sells Out Fast

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Venture capital firm FinTech Collective has raised $250 million for its new strategy focused on decentralized finance (DeFi).

• Of the $250 million, $200 million will be used to focus on the firm’s early-stage investments, and $50 million will be used to support open-source, financial protocols and applications being built on Ethereum platforms, the firm said in a press release.
• FinTech Collective’s new DeFi strategy will invest across the decentralized finance space in both equity and liquid tokens.
• The funding round brings the firm’s total assets under management to over $500 million. 
• In FinTech Collective’s current portfolio, 20% of the investments are in blockchain and DeFi, including five fintech unicorns valued at more than a billion dollars. 
• The firm invests globally and has 53 companies operating in the United States, Latin America, the U.K./Europe, and Africa.

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Longtime crypto advocate Brian Quintenz plans to step down from his role as commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Aug. 31, Quintenz announced in a press release Wednesday.

• Quintenz said that he expects to announce a role in the private sector after his departure from the CFTC. He told the Wall Street Journal that he plans to “keep innovation, particularly related to cryptocurrency and DeFi (decentralized finance), relevant to my career.”
• If Quintenz moves into the crypto industry, it would follow a trend of former regulators taking leadership roles at crypto companies.
• Quintenz, who was first nominated by then-President Obama and formally appointed in 2017 by then-President Trump, is one of only two Republicans on the five-seat CFTC. His absence will leave two empty seats on the commission; the other has been empty since the January departure of former Chairman Heath Tarbert.
• President Biden reportedly plans to nominate acting Chairman Rostin Behnam, a Democrat, to officially lead the CFTC.
• Quintenz’s term expired in April 2020, and he had previously committed to stepping down by last October, although he is legally allowed to remain on the commission through the end of this year. In the press release, however, he said that he opted to stay on given that there had been no replacement appointed, and to “ensure my voice was heard as important derivatives market and financial innovation issues were raised during the administration’s transition.”
• As crypto regulation tightens, crypto-friendly regulators such as Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Hester Peirce and Quintenz have taken on an increasingly large burden of promoting crypto innovation and education at the government level.
• During his tenure as a CFTC commissioner, Quintenz revived the commission’s nearly dormant Technology Advisory Committee (TAC), which had met only two times in the past three years before Quintenz re-organized it.

UPDATE (August 19, 17:17 UTC): Updated with details from and a link to Quintenz’s press release.

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• CFTC Commissioner Says SEC Lacks Authority Over Commodities, Including ‘Crypto Assets’

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are novel inventions that do not fit neatly within financial regulatory frameworks, given its short history and unprecedented structure.

Facebook is on the verge of playing a key role in America's financial system through the launch of a digital wallet called Novi, which permits people to transfer and receive money around the world cheaply and in most cases, for free, according to David Marcus, the chief of Facebo

Blockchain-based payments firm Wyre has joined Visa’s Fintech Fast Track Program, allowing Wyre to integrate Visa’s technology and additional functionalities.

• Wyre said it will now be able to provide additional functionality to its users, allowing them to move money between crypto and fiat with two new offerings.
• Wyre’s push-to-debit program will now allow instant payouts of crypto holdings to users’ bank accounts using the Visa debit cards.
• Secondly, Wyre’s card issuance program will allow its users to convert and spend their balances in real-time using Visa debit cards.
• The Visa Fintech Fast Track Program was launched in the U.S. in July 2019 to enable fintech startups to leverage Visa’s network, resources and services to scale quickly.
• Visa’s program will also give Wyre direct access to its partner network as well as its experts who can help expand their business in the most efficient way possible, said the firm in a press release.

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Top NBA draft pick Cade Cunningham signed a sponsorship deal with crypto firm BlockFi Thursday that will see the up-and-coming Pistons point guard receive his signing bonus in bitcoin. 

BlockFi wouldn’t say how much Cunningham’s bitcoin signing bonus was worth. It intends to collaborate with the former Oklahoma State University star on educational and promotional videos through the “multi-year” deal.

The deal continues a trend of top-drafted athletes forging early-career pacts within the digital assets industry – and receiving at least part of their payout in crypto. Trevor Lawrence, the first overall draft pick in in the National Football League, received a mix of bitcoin, ether and solana when he signed an FTX sponsorship in April.

Related: Watford FC Sports Dogecoin Logo in Sponsorship Deal Worth Almost $1M

Crypto companies are racing to build brand recognition across global sports. Whether it’s a soccer team wearing a dogecoin logo, an umpire emblazoned with FTX or a UFC octagon brought to you by Crypto.com, the big players have mounted an advertising blitz with their bull market gains.

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Ethereum scaling solution Polygon said it will build a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector.

• Polygon’s aim is for the DAO to attract 100 million users and invite this community to have a say in its ongoing DeFi development, according to an emailed announcement Thursday.
• Forming a DAO is “the next logical step” to aiding collaboration between blockchain-based systems, given the presence of projects such as SushiSwap, Curve and Aave already using Polygon as a scaling solution.
• It will use some of its $100 million #DeFiforAll Fund for the process.
• Polygon recently acquired ZK-rollup platform, Hermez, in the first blockchain network and token merger. The acquisition combined with the DAO formation will facilitate Polygon’s further decentralization beyond its proof-of-stake model to become a cross-chain protocol.
• A recent DeFi report by ConsenSys found that the 20 largest DAOs hold a combined $20 billion worth of digital assets.

UPDATE (AUG. 19, 15:46 UTC): Adds move to cross-chain protocol, ConsenSys report.

UPDATE (AUG. 19, 17:25 UTC): Adds information about the acquisition of Hermez.

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