CoinDesk Crypto

Messaging app Telegram is close to fully repaying investors in its TON blockchain effort nearly a year after settling allegations it violated U.S. securities law in raising over $1 billion for the project. Its next step might be an initial public offering (IPO).

On Monday, Russian newspaper Vedomosti reported that Telegram is preparing to launch an IPO in 2023, aiming for a $30 million to $50 million valuation, according to a source close to the company’s team. The IPO will benefit the buyers of Telegram’s bonds, which the company sold in February to raise $1 billion.

The debt sale, in turn, came right in time for earlier Telegram investors’ pay day, as the company is closing the book on its $1.7 billion token sale three years ago. According to Russian publication The Bell, Telegram started to pay back the last investors who didn’t withdraw their investments right away in 2020.

Related: There’s Certified Fair Trade Coffee, so How About Certified & Persistent NFTs?

Two sources familiar with the token sale confirmed to CoinDesk that the process had started. According to one of them, non-American investors lent Telegram $500 million to $600 million back in 2019 following the news the company no longer planned to launch TON.

The ICO that went awry

Last May, Telegram announced it discontinued the work on its TON (Telegram Open Network) blockchain project. The project started in 2018 with much fanfare, secretly raising $1.7 billion from qualified investors and pledging to develop a proof-of-stake blockchain with a native token. Telegram planned to build TON into the messaging app, potentially exposing some 200 million (at the time) Telegram users to TON’s native crypto token, gram.

The project attracted prominent investors from all over the world, including funds Sequoia, Ribbit Capital and Lightspeed Ventures, plus Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and former Russian government member Mikhail Abyzov.

However, right before the planned launch in October 2019, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Telegram, saying the company had been struggling financially and was planning to issue unregistered securities disguised as utility tokens to fund its operations. The legal battle essentially lead to Telegram shutting down the project in May 2020 after striking a settlement with the SEC and agreeing to pay $18.5 million in penalties and return the money it raised.

Related: Canaan Plunges as Inventory Issues Slashed Q4 Bitcoin Mining Machine Sales

The project was open source and later launched independently without Telegram’s involvement, at least officially.

After shutting down TON, Telegram offered investors to either take 72% of their money back right away or lend the funds to Telegram for one year and get back 110% in 2021 – the latter, however, was not available to U.S. investors. Back in 2019, some investors hoped that at some point they could get paid back in Telegram’s equity (and invested in TON as a proxy for Telegram’s equity), they told CoinDesk, but Telegram quickly made clear that splitting ownership was not on the table.

“Telegram may need to sell some equity later to get the money to repay the loan, but repayment in equity was not offered as an option,” Telegram’s spokesperson told CoinDesk at that time in an email. Apparently, instead of the equity sale, Telegram ended up doing a bond sale to pay back gram token buyers.

The IPO will be a different situation compared to Telegram giving out equity to TON investors back in 2020, a source close to the project told CoinDesk. The difference is that the IPO, supposedly, will give shareholders less control over Telegram. Telegram founder Pavel Durov is said to be famously allergic to the idea of sharing Telegram ownership with anyone after the dramatic fallout with shareholders of its previous project, the social network Vk.com.

“If you let in investors with a big share and active attitude, they would obviously try to control the company,” the source said.

Related Stories

• Digital Asset Fund Inflows Declined Last Week as Bitcoin Prices Stagnated
• Bitcoin and Ether Hit New All-Time Highs as Tesla Invests $1.5B in BTC and CME Launches ETH Futures Trading

Bloomberg, the Manhattan-based titan of media and financial services, published a report this month claiming that bitcoin’s price will spike sharply by the end of the year.

BitRiver, a key player in the Russian cryptocurrency mining market, aims to raise up to $35 million by selling tokens that entitles holders to space in its data centers.

The company, which operates several mining farms in Siberia for 150 megawatts in total, would use the proceeds from the sale to open more such facilities. The token runs on the Ethereum blockchain, the main launchpad for fundraising tokens since the heady days of the 2017 initial coin offering (ICO) boom. 

While ICOs have largely faded, BitRiver’s token offering, announced Monday, is one of several to hit the market this year tied to the mining sector. 

Related: There’s Certified Fair Trade Coffee, so How About Certified & Persistent NFTs?

In late March, Blockstream launched a token representing the value of hash power at Blockstream’s mining facility and offered buyers an indirect exposure to bitcoin. Tau Protocol recently launched a token pegged to bitcoin hashrate and backed by Genesis Mining, Binance Pool, Atlas Mining and others.

BitRiver, however, takes a different approach. Instead of indirect exposure to bitcoin, it offers clients a form of tokenized contracts for mining services, with a bonus income in tokens.

“It’s a utility token and it ideally fits our goal: to raise funds from people who will be using our future infrastructure,” BitRiver CEO Igor Runets told CoinDesk.  

More farms in Siberia

BitRiver, registered in Gibraltar but with a home base in Siberia, operates so-called mining hotels, or data centers for miners who place their ASICs there. Clients pay for the units of power their equipment uses to mine crypto, with the price including other expenses like machine maintenance. 

Related: Canaan Plunges as Inventory Issues Slashed Q4 Bitcoin Mining Machine Sales

The demand for BitRiver’s services has been significantly exceeding the company’s capacity, Runets said. In addition to the main data center in Bratsk, the company has several smaller venues that together comprise 50 more megawatts, but that’s still much less than prospective clients want, Runets said.

“We now see demand for 400 megawatts of power,” he said. “It’s a huge amount of construction work. We’re now looking to buy more land, buildings [and] start to build more data centers.”

Investments for that, as Runets expects, will come from the token sale. BitRiver is aiming to sell 100 million tokens for more than $35 million. 

The demand for BitRiver’s services comes mostly from Asia, Runets said, especially from China, South Korea and Japan. BitRiver even opened an office in Seoul earlier in April to cater to that region, and the token sale will be on the Korean exchange Bithumb. 

Growing demand has been also coming from Persian Gulf countries, namely Qatar, Saudi Arabia and UAE, Runets said: “Over the recent months, the market there has been growing, people have a lot of money to invest, and the surging price of bitcoin drew attention [to mining].”

Some of the expansion has been ongoing. BitRiver recently founded a joint venture with a Russian hydropower giant En+ to build a new mining venue of 10 megawatts. According to Runets, that farm is now operational. 

Another venue, of 100 more megawatts, is currently under construction in the special economic zone of Buryatia, Russia’s East Siberian region on the border with Mongolia. In the neighboring Krasnoyarsk region, BitRiver will arrange another venue using the building of an electric boiler now rarely in use, with a ready-to-use capacity of about 82 megawatt, the token sale white paper said (read the white paper at the bottom of this story).     

Read also: Bitcoin Mining Farms Are Flourishing on the Ruins of Soviet Industry in Siberia                                                                                                                                                                                   

Mining tokenomics

The BTR token sale is set to go live on April 19 on Bithumb. BitRiver is planning to sell 100 million tokens with a price starting at 35 cents. Each token would provide a buyer with an allocation of 1 watt of power for a full year. Given that there is on average 720 hours in a month and 8,640 hours in a year, one kilowatt-hour would cost 4 cents to a token holder.

Token holders will be able to get their ASICs installed and serviced in BitRiver’s warehouse in three months upon purchase. Users will also be able to pay up to 10% of their bills to BitRiver in tokens, and have their ASICs repaired for free in that case. 

The company will also pay bonus tokens to the token holders, at a rate of 10% per year, using its own stash of 65 million tokens that won’t go into public circulation. In another step to make BTR attractive, BitRiver promises to buy back all the tokens by April 12, 2026, at the nominal value of 0.3504 USD per token.

BitRiver is not limiting the offer geographically, unlike many token issuers that would wall off American users to avoid running afoul of the U.S. regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Blockstream, for example, restricted its token sale to non-U.S. qualified investors. 

Runets explained that, as BitRiver isn’t selling the tokens directly, it’s up to Bithumb to run due-diligence on potential buyers. 

Crypto regulations in Russia have been in flux recently, with a crypto taxation bill currently awaiting passage in the national parliament. The uncertainty led many of BitRiver’s clients in Russia to establish foreign legal entities and operate through them, Runets said. 

However, when asked about potential regulatory risks for a large-scale mining farm construction, he sounded moderately optimistic: “We don’t see any prerequisites for an all-out ban,” he said. 

Read also: Over 50% of Binance’s Russian Customers Believe Crypto Can Replace Bank Deposits 

Related Stories

• Digital Asset Fund Inflows Declined Last Week as Bitcoin Prices Stagnated
• Bitcoin and Ether Hit New All-Time Highs as Tesla Invests $1.5B in BTC and CME Launches ETH Futures Trading

If you send out enough cease-and-desist orders, it’s likely you’ll get a lawsuit in return. That appears to be the case with nChain Chief Scientist Craig Wright and his legal crusade to block people within and without the cryptocurrency community from hosting the Bitcoin white paper. 

The Cryptocurrency Open Patent Alliance (COPA) is filing a lawsuit against Wright in the U.K. over his copyright claims to the Bitcoin white paper. The Alliance was formed in September 2020 and founded by Square to pool patents and preserve the industry’s open-source spirit.

Wright’s representatives sent Square a cease-and-desist notice dated Jan. 21, 2021, demanding that Square stop hosting the white paper on its site. At the time, COPA sent back a legal response on behalf of Square, which boiled down to this: Prove you’re Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of the white paper first. 

Related: There’s Certified Fair Trade Coffee, so How About Certified & Persistent NFTs?

It does not appear Wright responded with the requested proof by the Feb. 19 deadline COPA set. 

“COPA is about truly empowering the crypto community with innovation and removing blockers to innovation,” said a spokesperson on behalf of the COPA board. “This is not the last thing we’re going to take up on behalf of the community.”

The complaint asks the court to resolve the question as to whether Craig Wright has copyright ownership rights over the Bitcoin white paper.

Pursuing a legal case on behalf of the cryptocurrency community is the first instance of COPA throwing its money and weight behind a cause that has plagued the space for years, and it could have widespread ramifications. If a court rules that Wright does not have ownership rights over the Bitcoin white paper, it would be a serious blow to his legal argument that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. 

Wright’s long legal trail

Related: Canaan Plunges as Inventory Issues Slashed Q4 Bitcoin Mining Machine Sales

Wright, notorious for having an itchy legal finger, had sent his latest round of cease-and-desist orders to Bitcoin core developers, causing the Bitcoin white paper to be taken down from Bitcoincore.org, a “canonical repository for the Bitcoin software and educational resources like Satoshi’s 10-page thesis,” CoinDesk wrote at the time. 

Regardless of whether they’re accurate or not, legal claims take time, energy and, importantly, finances to contest. 

COPA is stepping in on behalf of the community to protect those small parties, particularly Bitcoin developers, who are essential to the community but don’t have a ton of resources, according to a spokesperson for the COPA board familiar with the matter. 

Beyond that, in late February Wright also filed a lawsuit demanding Bitcoin developers give him access to stolen Mt. Gox funds. As CoinDesk reported at the time “even though Bitcoin Core contributors have no control over the network’s wallets, Wright wants Bitcoin’s developers to hand him the keys.”

Following Wright’s initial filings against Bitcoin core developers, but prior to the paper being removed, a number of companies, including Square Crypto, crypto venture fund Paradigm, policy think-tank Coin Center and Facebook stablecoin subsidiary Novi, among others, decided to host it themselves. The action was meant to be a sign of solidarity.

The letter accompanying COPA’s response laid out a number of simple questions for Wright’s representatives to answer regarding his claims. These included the general basis of the claim, where he was when he wrote the white paper, what dates he wrote it and what copyright laws apply, among a number of others. 

Wright has a long legal paper trail of using the law to try and silence his critics and even filed a copyright claim in May 2019 with the U.S. Copyright Office over the original Bitcoin code and the Satoshi white paper. 

None of his legal attempts to assert he is Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto have been successful. 

The new COPA board

The board of COPA, which helps determine the organization’s actions and will guide the course of the lawsuit, is also being updated. 

Ultimately, COPA will have a nine-person board representative of the entire community, with three spots reserved for independent members. Thus far, two board members represent member organizations: Brittany Cuthbert, senior counsel at Coinbase, and most recently Kirupa Pushparaj, deputy general counsel at Square. 

Four more board members from COPA organizations will be added in the future.

Three additional independent members will round out the COPA board. These included Steve Lee, Square Crypto lead; Dan Robinson, research partner at Paradigm; and Jerry Brito, executive director of Coin Center.

CoinDesk can also report Pushparaj will also be appointed the board chairman.

Related Stories

• Digital Asset Fund Inflows Declined Last Week as Bitcoin Prices Stagnated
• Bitcoin and Ether Hit New All-Time Highs as Tesla Invests $1.5B in BTC and CME Launches ETH Futures Trading

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) confirmed Monday that Jack Ma’s giant Ant Group will restructure as a financial holdings company.

• Ant Group whose $37 billion initial public offering (IPO) was suspended by China’s regulators in November, will restructure as a financial holding company, according to a CNBC report. 
• The terms of the restructuring are expected to curb Ant Group’s profitability and valuation.
• Two days ago, Chinese regulators hit Alibaba with a $2.8 billion fine as part of its anti-monopoly investigation of the tech giant, claiming the company had abused its market dominance. The restructuring of Ant Group is part of the terms of the settlement of those claims, CNBC said.
• The PBoC said that under a “comprehensive and feasible restructuring plan” Ant Group would cut the “improper” linkage with payments services including AliPay, Jiebei, and Huabei, said the report.
• In February, it emerged Chinese regulators had agreed on a restructuring plan with Ant Group that would combine all its business segments, including its blockchain arm, into a financial holding company, according to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the matter.
• Ant Group is known for its major subsidiaries including Alipay and Kakao, but it also has a blockchain arm offering services based on its own AntChain technology.
• The outspoken billionaire Jack Ma is the founder of Alibaba and its affiliate Ant Group, and has been keeping a low profile since October when he publicly criticized China’s financial system and its state-dominated banking sector at a Shanghai event.
• Recently, PBoC Digital Currency Research Institute director Mu Changchun has been openly discussing the central bank’s own digital currency and the need to address privacy issues, stating “a completely anonymous central bank digital currency is not feasible” as it would violate anti-money laundering regulations.

Read more: Jack Ma’s Ant Group, 3 Other Digital Banks Get OK to Operate in Singapore

Related Stories

• There’s Certified Fair Trade Coffee, so How About Certified & Persistent NFTs?
• Canaan Plunges as Inventory Issues Slashed Q4 Bitcoin Mining Machine Sales
• Digital Asset Fund Inflows Declined Last Week as Bitcoin Prices Stagnated
• Bitcoin and Ether Hit New All-Time Highs as Tesla Invests $1.5B in BTC and CME Launches ETH Futures Trading

Electric Coin Company (ECC) has announced the next suite of upgrades to privacy coin Zcash – Halo Arc. 

Halo Arc includes updates to Zcashd (Zcash’s consensus node), an ECC wallet prototype and the ECC wallet software development kits (SDKs). The wallet will enable shielded-by-default transactions, something that is merely optional for Zcash right now. 

Previously planned for release this summer, Halo Arc will now launch on Oct. 1, 2021, in coordination with the activation of Zcash’s Network Upgrade 5 (NU5). NU5 will be the first mainnet activation of the Halo proving system, furthering the development of zero-knowledge-proof cryptography.

Related: There’s Certified Fair Trade Coffee, so How About Certified & Persistent NFTs?

The October protocol upgrade will also introduce unified addresses, a feature that creates a single Zcash address that is compatible across all Zcash value pools, including shielded and transparent ones, so that users no longer have to juggle multiple address types. At present, protocol upgrades at times required new address formats. 

Eliminating Zcash’s trusted setup

Halo is a “trustless recursive” version of zero-knowledge proofs that allows greater scalability and removes the controversial “trusted setups” involved. 

A trusted setup creates a secret number, and a derivative of that number is used by the Zcash protocol. This number is created in multiple parts by multiple actors. They all must then destroy what’s known as “cryptographic toxic waste” without revealing what it was. A trusted setup would have had to occur at each hard fork.

But if no one destroys that waste, possibly through intentional planning, or if the secret number is figured out, then it would provide a fundamental flaw in the protocol and even let the individual or individuals that discovered it to create zcash arbitrarily and without anyone’s knowledge. 

Related: Canaan Plunges as Inventory Issues Slashed Q4 Bitcoin Mining Machine Sales

“This is all built on top of Halo, which will usher in a new era of zero-knowledge cryptography and means, for this first release, increased confidence in the money supply by removing the trusted setup necessary for current zero-knowledge proving systems,” said Josh Swihart, ECC’s Vice President of Growth.

Halo Arc and wallets

Halo Arc includes a number of products, but the most tangible takeaway for users will be the ability to ensure that their transactions are private, right from the outset.

“With Halo Arc, we’re making it easy for wallets to support shielded Zcash by default,” said Swihart. “Users of supporting wallets will be able to give counterparties a single address and know that funds will be sent to their shielded address, regardless of whether the sender supports shielded addresses.”

In addition to the automatic shielding feature that’s part of the NU5-compatible wallet SDKs, Halo Arc also includes auto-migration. This allows wallets to move funds to the most modern shielded pool supported by the wallet. This feature will also make it easier to deprecate (or recommend against using) older pools.

Halo Arc also includes “improved note management” according to a blog post announcing the release. This will reduce the time users need to wait between sending transactions, so they’ll be able to send one transaction immediately after another.

Going forward, ECC will bundle upgrades, products and features into regular releases, rather than relying on intermittent or one-off instances.

Related Stories

• Digital Asset Fund Inflows Declined Last Week as Bitcoin Prices Stagnated
• Bitcoin and Ether Hit New All-Time Highs as Tesla Invests $1.5B in BTC and CME Launches ETH Futures Trading

London-based ETC Group announced Monday it will list a physical litecoin exchange-traded commodity (ETC) on Deutsche Boerse’s Xetra market, based in Frankfurt, on April 14. 

• The new “ETC Group Physical Litecoin ETC” product will be a central counterparty cleared exchange-traded product (ETP) and will track the price of the litecoin cryptocurrency.
• The litecoin ETC goes live on Wednesday and will trade under the ticker “ELTC” and have a management fee of 2%. The product is marketed and distributed by HANetf.
• “Litecoin has grown by 342% in the past 12 months and is the ninth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization at $14.6 billion with growing interest from institutional and retail investors,” said Bradley Duke, CEO of ETC Group.
• Earlier this month, asset manager CoinShares launched a new physically backed litecoin ETP on the Swiss SIX exchange.
• In March, the ETC Group listed a Physical Ethereum ETC on Deutsche Boerse’s Xetra market which tracks the price of ether.

Read more: CoinShares Launches Litecoin ETP

Related Stories

• There’s Certified Fair Trade Coffee, so How About Certified & Persistent NFTs?
• Canaan Plunges as Inventory Issues Slashed Q4 Bitcoin Mining Machine Sales
• Digital Asset Fund Inflows Declined Last Week as Bitcoin Prices Stagnated
• Bitcoin and Ether Hit New All-Time Highs as Tesla Invests $1.5B in BTC and CME Launches ETH Futures Trading

Decentralized gambling platform Virtue Poker has raised $5 million in a strategic investment round.

• Ethereum-based Virtue Poker plans to conduct an initial DEX offering (IDO) ahead of its mainnet launch in May, the startup announced Monday.
• The project was incubated by blockchain developer ConsenSys and counts Pantera Capital and DFG Group among its backers.
• Virtue Poker claims to be the only blockchain-based company to be licensed by the Malta’s gambling regulator.
• The platform aims to use smart contracts and sidechain infrastructure to bring greater transparency to online gambling with regard to withdrawals and other functions.
• According to ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin, Virtue Poker “legitimizes the use of this technology in the industry.”
• “I’ve been working with the Virtue Poker team for nearly three years, watching them build a next-generation poker platform,” poker pro Phil Ivey said in a press release.
• It’s among a crop of startups exploring gambling use cases on the blockchain, including a casino in Decentraland hiring real-life workers to staff virtual tables.

Related Stories

• Asian DeFi Picks Up Steam; Hong Kong Scammers Use Crypto as Bait
• Litecoin ETC to List on Deutsche Boerse
• Circle Brings on Former Libra Vice Chair Dante Disparte in Potential Blow to Facebook Stablecoin Effort
• Galaxy Digital Files for US Bitcoin ETF

Dante Disparte, the former vice chair of the Facebook-initiated Diem Association, has joined payments startup Circle as its new chief strategy officer and head of global policy.

It’s unclear when Disparte, who was a part of the diem stablecoin project since its origin in June 2019 (when it was referred to as libra) left the initiative, but his LinkedIn profile said he joined Circle in April 2021. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire announced the hire on Monday in a blog post.

“The standards that we’ve helped bring into the world are taking on a new life, as dollar stablecoins become one of the most critical new infrastructures of the internet and commerce. This technical innovation converges with heightened regulatory and policy maker focus,” Allaire wrote.

Related: Asian DeFi Picks Up Steam; Hong Kong Scammers Use Crypto as Bait

Disparte is only the latest high-profile Diem executive to leave the project, which has faced strong regulatory headwinds since it was first announced. Morgan Beller, one of the other Facebook employees who spearheaded Libra, joined venture capital firm NFX in September.

Meanwhile, David Marcus, the Facebook executive running its Novi wallet subsidiary, was placed in charge of the social media giant’s new “Facebook Financial” wing, which has been tasked with integrating payments into its different messaging applications.

Christine Smedley, who ran communications around Novi for Facebook, joined Robinhood last year as its chief marketing officer.

Allaire said in Monday’s blog post that Disparte would be part of Circle’s global expansion effort.

Related: Litecoin ETC to List on Deutsche Boerse

In an opinion piece submitted to the Diplomatic Courier, Disparte wrote, “Designing first principles into digital financial services and importing sound monetary policy and market conduct from independent central banks into stablecoins and trusted digital currencies, like USDC (now used by some of the most exacting and trusted financial institutions in the world), are adding crucial optionality, competition and reach to today’s financial services.”

Related Stories

• ConsenSys Project Virtue Poker Raises $5M Ahead of Mainnet Launch
• Galaxy Digital Files for US Bitcoin ETF

Mike Novogratz-led Galaxy Digital has filed with U.S. regulators for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).

• If greenlit, it’d be the first such investment vehicle to get U.S. approval; the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has swatted away dozens of applications in recent years.
• As of this month, the SEC is reviewing two applications, and companies have filed another six. These other six applications (including Galaxy’s) still need exchange partners to file their corresponding forms before the SEC can begin its review.
• In North America, Canada has taken the lead on bitcoin ETFs.
• Galaxy is the sub-adviser to the CI Galaxy Bitcoin ETF, which currently has $190 million in assets after launching last month.
• A Galaxy Digital spokeswoman declined to comment on the latest filing citing SEC rules.
• Galaxy is publically listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and is in the process of obtaining a U.S. listing.

Related Stories

• Asian DeFi Picks Up Steam; Hong Kong Scammers Use Crypto as Bait
• Litecoin ETC to List on Deutsche Boerse
• ConsenSys Project Virtue Poker Raises $5M Ahead of Mainnet Launch
• Circle Brings on Former Libra Vice Chair Dante Disparte in Potential Blow to Facebook Stablecoin Effort

MicroStrategy, the business intelligence firm that has made bitcoin its main treasury reserve, said its non-employee board members will now be compensated in bitcoin.

• In an 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, MicroStrategy said that from April 11 onward non-employee directors on its board will receive all fees for their service in bitcoin instead of cash.
• In making the announcement, the firm’s board cited its “commitment to bitcoin.”
• Under this new arrangement, at the time of payment, the fees will be converted from U.S. dollars into bitcoin and then deposited into the digital wallet of the director.
• On April 5 MicroStrategy, purchased about 253 more BTC for $15 million in cash, bringing its total holdings to about 91,579 BTC.

Read more: Forget Buying the Dip, MicroStrategy Buys $15M of Bitcoins as It Nears the All-Time High

Related Stories

• Asian DeFi Picks Up Steam; Hong Kong Scammers Use Crypto as Bait
• Litecoin ETC to List on Deutsche Boerse
• ConsenSys Project Virtue Poker Raises $5M Ahead of Mainnet Launch
• Circle Brings on Former Libra Vice Chair Dante Disparte in Potential Blow to Facebook Stablecoin Effort

Rally, an Ethereum-based platform that mints “social tokens” for online creators to flex their crypto clout, last week raised over $22 million through a token sale on distribution platform CoinList.

Initiated by community vote, the RLY token sale garnered more than 40,000 participants, a record for CoinList, organizers Mike Zajko and Alex Topchishvili told CoinDesk. They said it was the first time CoinList conducted a sale for a liquid token.

The big numbers highlight how social tokens, which are cryptocurrencies that support online communities, are growing in prominence as a means for influencers – especially Twitch streamers – to connect with their fans. The RLY rally comes weeks after a wallet hack sent social tokens on rival platform Roll spiraling. 

Related: Asian DeFi Picks Up Steam; Hong Kong Scammers Use Crypto as Bait

Rally lets influencers create fan engagement tokens that sometimes unlock loyalty perks, like behind-the-scenes access or limited edition swag. Most of Rally’s top “Creator Coins” are live-streaming gamers with the occasional musical act thrown in. The platform had 95 creators on board at press time.

It is unusual for a live protocol with a circulating supply to pursue a token sale; CoinList had never done it before. But Rally community members began debating the idea in late February and ultimately voted to hold the distribution event through CoinList.

Rally founder Kevin Chou told CoinDesk the project didn’t do the sale for the money. Rather, it was angling to raise its profile and boost the number of people personally involved.

“Really, very few people had heard about Rally” before the token sale, Chou said, pointing to Etherscan records that indicated just 1,500 prior token holders.

Related: Litecoin ETC to List on Deutsche Boerse

“The token sale has allowed us to add another 44,000 people to the project,” Chou said.

Related Stories

• ConsenSys Project Virtue Poker Raises $5M Ahead of Mainnet Launch
• Circle Brings on Former Libra Vice Chair Dante Disparte in Potential Blow to Facebook Stablecoin Effort

The Stellar Development Foundation has executed a protocol upgrade to its network after an issue was detected that caused several nodes to go dark.

According to a blog post Thursday, an outage on April 6 caused non-validating Horizon nodes and validating nodes, including those run by the Stellar Development Foundation, to go offline for a short while.

An upgrade was introduced April 10 after it was reported that certain organizations had difficulty recovering network access. The new Protocol 16 upgrade is said to have fixed the issue, which was affecting multiple nodes but did not affect the stability of the network; there were enough validators to process transactions.

Related: Asian DeFi Picks Up Steam; Hong Kong Scammers Use Crypto as Bait

A company FAQ explains that the Stellar Foundation’s validator nodes had ceased processing ledgers while the public Horizon instance stopped recording them. “For a brief period of time it was unable to serve requests or submit transactions to the network,” the FAQ reads.

To rectify the issue, the foundation said engineers worked on a fix and rolled out a patch later in the day. Two days later, Stellar Core v16.0.0 was released and voted on by network validators, resulting in the upgrade.

“All affected nodes should be able to upgrade to Protocol-16 compatible software and restore network access,” said the foundation.

See also: Stellar Development Foundation Invests $5M in Crypto Payments Firm Wyre

Related Stories

• Litecoin ETC to List on Deutsche Boerse
• ConsenSys Project Virtue Poker Raises $5M Ahead of Mainnet Launch
• Circle Brings on Former Libra Vice Chair Dante Disparte in Potential Blow to Facebook Stablecoin Effort

Bitcoin’s share of total cryptocurrency market value has fallen to its lowest level in two years after strong rallies from some of the industry’s biggest altcoins, including XRP and binance coin.

The market dominance of bitcoin, or the largest cryptocurrency’s value as a share of the overall market, has dropped to about 55%, the lowest since April 2019, according to cryptocurrency research firms Messari and CoinGecko. That’s down from about 70% at the start of the year.

The decline iwas driven in recent weeks by powerful rallies in the likes of binance coin (BNB) and XRP (XRP), since bitcoin’s market value has held steady at around $1 trillion or slightly above. The trend offers a reminder of just how much money is flowing these days into digital assets beyond bitcoin, even as the big exchange Coinbase prepares this week for a public stock listing aimed at traditional-market investors.

Related: Asian DeFi Picks Up Steam; Hong Kong Scammers Use Crypto as Bait

The largest cryptocurrency’s price has doubled this year to about $60,000, but other tokens have surged by many multiples. BNB, a utility token used on Binance’s platforms, has jumped 22% in the past 24 hours, leaving the price up 15-fold in 2021, for a market value of about $90 billion.

XRP, the digital token used in Ripple Labs’ payment network, doubled in the seven days through Sunday, its best weekly performance in more than three years. The market value is between $50 billion and $140 billion, depending on how one calculates it.

Meanwhile, ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain and the second-biggest overall, recently climbed to a new all-time near $2,200, according to CoinDesk 20 data. It has a market capitalization of about $250 billion, as prices nearly tripled this year.

Filecoin (FIL) has climbed seven-fold this year to a market cap around $11 billion, and theta token (THETA) has surged six-fold to about $12 billion. Even dogecoin (DOGE), which was launched in 2013 as little more than a joke, has seen its price increase 12-fold this year, for a market value of about $9 billion.

Related: Litecoin ETC to List on Deutsche Boerse

See also: Bitcoin Price Shoots Past $60K, Ether Hits New All-Time High in Early Saturday Trading

Related Stories

• ConsenSys Project Virtue Poker Raises $5M Ahead of Mainnet Launch
• Circle Brings on Former Libra Vice Chair Dante Disparte in Potential Blow to Facebook Stablecoin Effort

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance is allowing its users to buy fractions of companies’ shares with a new tokenized stock trading service starting with Tesla.

• The crypto exchange announced Monday the launch of Binance Stock Tokens, zero-commission digital tokens which qualify holders for returns including dividends.
• From 1.35 p.m. UTC April 12, users will be able to buy fractions of actual Tesla shares, which trade at $677 a share at the time of writing.
• Users will be able to purchase as little as one-hundredth of a Tesla share, with prices settled in Binance USD (BUSD).
• The exchange’s native crypto Binance Coin (BNB) has surged more than 25% in the last 24 hours, reaching an all-time high of $637.44. It is priced at $590.51 at press time. It’s not immediately clear what is driving the price of the coin.
• It’s not the first tokenized stock play in crypto land: Terra Labs’ Mirror Protocol went live last December.
• But where Mirror uses synthetic stocks (or tokenized representations of actual equities), the Binance product is “backed by a depository portfolio of underlying securities” managed by an investment firm in Germany.

See also: Binance Faces CFTC Probe Over US Customers Trading Derivatives: Report

Related Stories

• Asian DeFi Picks Up Steam; Hong Kong Scammers Use Crypto as Bait
• Litecoin ETC to List on Deutsche Boerse
• ConsenSys Project Virtue Poker Raises $5M Ahead of Mainnet Launch
• Circle Brings on Former Libra Vice Chair Dante Disparte in Potential Blow to Facebook Stablecoin Effort

Over the weekend, bitcoin (BTC) tested resistance around $61,000 twice before sellers gained control. Bitcoin’s struggle near its all-time high has been a consistent theme since February as the uptrend consolidates. Initial support is around $58,000 on the four-hour chart.

• BTC held support around $50,000 on March 25 after retracing nearly 50% of its rally from the February 28 price low.
• Since then, BTC’s near 19% rally has stabilized, breaking above a series of lower price highs from April 1 and holding support from the 200-period moving average.
• The cryptocurrency is now overbought, defined by its relative strength index (RSI) on the four-hour chart.
• Previous overbought signals have preceded 5%-10% declines over the past month and have all occurred near $58,000-$60,000 resistance areas.
• A decisive break above $60,000 is needed to reignite the broader uptrend. For now, short-term buyers remain active at higher support levels since February.

Related Stories

• Asian DeFi Picks Up Steam; Hong Kong Scammers Use Crypto as Bait
• Litecoin ETC to List on Deutsche Boerse
• ConsenSys Project Virtue Poker Raises $5M Ahead of Mainnet Launch
• Circle Brings on Former Libra Vice Chair Dante Disparte in Potential Blow to Facebook Stablecoin Effort

Topps wants to do for Major League Baseball (MLB) what Dapper Labs did with NBA Top Shot.

The 83-year-old card company, which announced plans to go public last week, revealed Monday it will issue its flagship baseball cards as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in partnership with the MLB and MLB Players Association (MLBPA).

Although a handful of ballplayers have issued their own digital collectibles in recent weeks (albeit without team logos), the new project, set to debut on the Wax blockchain on April 20, marks MLB’s official entrance into the NFT space.

Related: Asian DeFi Picks Up Steam; Hong Kong Scammers Use Crypto as Bait

Topps’ baseball NFTs are positioned to capitalize on two booming markets at once. NBA Top Shot has seen hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions in 2021 for its basketball equivalent. Meanwhile, baseball cards, an industry Topps is all but synonymous with, have rocketed in value during the pandemic as collectors park their stimulus checks in cardboard nostalgia.

Topps’ pivot from cardboard to blockchain was a long time coming, Topps Digital Vice President Tobin Lent told CoinDesk in an interview.

“This was absolutely the plan all along,” he said. “We knew we were going to do [baseball NFTs] at some point, and we just needed to get that experience and wanted to make sure that we did it right.”

(Topps began selling lower-profile NFTs last year in what company executives called a test run for the main event.)

Related: Litecoin ETC to List on Deutsche Boerse

The buy, sell and trade platform will give Topps an easy route to capitalize on the lucrative secondary market for NFTs. If NBA Top Shot is any indication, however, the market for blockchain-based trading cards isn’t as robust as it once was.

According to data site Evaluate.market, the Top Shot market peaked in late February but has still clocked multiple millions in daily sales in subsequent weeks.

Topps hopes its licensed MLB play will also be able to capture collector interest.

“This is the first step with our longest-term partner into this new space and it’s just the beginning,” Lent said.

And – should Topps’ late-April NFT launch also suffer from the overwhelming demand that intermittently ground NBA Top Shot to halt in March – Lent says his team is poised to deliver.

“We try to learn from our competitors in the space like Dapper,” he said.

Unlike Dapper’s highlight-reel-esque NBA player moments, Topps’ initial offering appears to be just digitized versions of the firm’s physical baseball cards. The border designs move but the players stay put.

WAXP, the native token of the Wax blockchain, is the 165th-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, according to CoinGecko. Wax runs on a fork of EOSIO, the software behind the EOS blockchain.

Topps, which was bought for $385 million and taken private by former Disney CEO Michael Eisner in 2007, is going public in a SPAC deal that values the company at $1.3 billion. Dapper Labs is reportedly valued at $2.6 billion.

Related Stories

• ConsenSys Project Virtue Poker Raises $5M Ahead of Mainnet Launch
• Circle Brings on Former Libra Vice Chair Dante Disparte in Potential Blow to Facebook Stablecoin Effort

JPMorgan announced Monday the launch of a blockchain solution that aims to reduce the number of rejected or returned payments.

• The U.S. banking giant is testing the solution “Confirm” with 12 banks in Taiwan including CTBC Bank, Taiwan Cooperative Bank and First Commercial Bank for money transfers to Indonesia using JPMorgan’s clearing solution “PayDirect.”
• The banks will be able to request and receive confirmation of beneficiaries’ account information in near-real time, according to JPMorgan’s announcement.
• This latest move shows JPMorgan bucking the trend among enterprise blockchain builders, where concrete evidence of progress has tended to be thin on the ground.
• This is also positive for Ethereum hub Consensys which incorporated the bank-grade Quorum blockchain that JPMorgan engineers built back in 2017.

See also: India’s Largest Bank Joins JPMorgan’s Blockchain Payments Network

Related Stories

• Asian DeFi Picks Up Steam; Hong Kong Scammers Use Crypto as Bait
• Litecoin ETC to List on Deutsche Boerse
• ConsenSys Project Virtue Poker Raises $5M Ahead of Mainnet Launch
• Circle Brings on Former Libra Vice Chair Dante Disparte in Potential Blow to Facebook Stablecoin Effort

President Joe Biden’s administration is reportedly troubled by the long-term effects a digital yuan may have on the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.

According to a Sunday report by Bloomberg citing unnamed sources, officials at multiple government departments are increasing efforts to better understand possible threats posed by China’s initiative.

Officials at the U.S. Treasury, State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council are reportedly unfazed by the short-term impacts a digital yuan, or China’s digital currency electronic payment (DCEP) system, may have on the dollar.

Related: XRP Doubles in 7 Days, Heads for Biggest Weekly Gain Since December 2017

Challenges to the U.S. global reserve currency status over the long-term, however, are a major concern. Officials have begun ramping up their efforts to understand how the digital yuan will be distributed and whether it works around trade sanctions, according to the report.

China began developing its DCEP system with the involvement of the country’s largest state-owned banks as well as payments giants Tencent and Ant Financial in 2019, as CoinDesk reported at the time.

The project has since gone through multiple test runs including gifting digital red packets of money to citizens via a lottery that was then spent at participating stores in select cities across China.

Because of these moves, China’s central bank is positioned to be the first major central bank to issue a digital currency, giving the DCEP a headstart, an advantage that U.S. officials are starting to worry about as well, the report said.

Related: Crypto Long & Short: Peter Thiel Defines Bitcoin’s Accidental Role in Global Politics

See also: China Proposes Global Rules for Monitoring CBDCs

Related Stories

• How Bitcoin Can Help Break Cycles of Poverty
• Traders Opting for Cash and Carry Strategy as Bitcoin’s ‘Contango’ Widens

XRP, the digital token used in Ripple Labs’ payment network, headed for its best weekly performance in more than three years, after doubling in the past seven days.

Prices for XRP (XRP) are up 118% in the seven days through April 11, according to TradingView, using pricing from the Bitstamp exchange. That’s the biggest weekly gain since December 2017, when the token jumped 215% in a seven-day period.

XRP struggled toward the end of 2020 as Ripple faced allegations from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that executives raised more than $1.3 billion through an unregistered, ongoing digital-asset securities offering.

Related: Biden Administration Concerned Over Long-Term Effects of Digital Yuan: Report

But prices for the token have climbed six-fold this year as some traders looked through the SEC case and analysts saw bullish patterns in price charts.

Peter Brandt, an analyst with over four decades of experience tracking commodity markets, predicted last week that new all-time highs could be seen for the cryptocurrency in the coming months. Brandt identified a pattern in XRP’s weekly price chart that he described as a “possible inverted head-and-shoulders with a stunted right shoulder.”

The pattern “would indicate prices a boatload higher” to new all-time highs, Brandt, CEO of Factor LLC, tweeted Friday. 

There’s a wide range of views on how to calculate XRP’s market value, due to questions about the outstanding supply of tokens.

Related: Crypto Long & Short: Peter Thiel Defines Bitcoin’s Accidental Role in Global Politics

According to the CoinDesk pricing page for XRP, the token has a market capitalization of about $140 billion. CoinMarketCap.com puts the “fully diluted market cap” at $140 billion, but the actual market cap at about $64 billion. Messari, the cryptocurrency analysis firm, puts the “reported market cap” at $52 billion.

Also read: XRP Rises Above $1 for First Time Since March 2018, Despite SEC Shadow

Related Stories

• How Bitcoin Can Help Break Cycles of Poverty
• Traders Opting for Cash and Carry Strategy as Bitcoin’s ‘Contango’ Widens