CoinDesk Crypto

The Associated Press (AP) is auctioning off a non-fungible token (NFT) artwork commemorating the first U.S. election recorded on a blockchain.

According to data from NFT Marketplace OpenSea, the artwork titled “The Associated Press calls the 2020 Presidential Election on Blockchain – A View from Outer Space” will be sold in the next eight days. As of press time, the top bid was for $928 in wrapped ether.

The artwork depicts a visual of the electoral college map from space using election data AP published on-chain at the time. The piece of digital art is considered one-of-a-kind and a 1/1 edition.

Related: Banksy Work Physically Burned and Digitized as NFT in Art-World First

AP used an Ethereum address to declare the winner of the U.S. 2020 Presidential Election via Everipedia’s OraQle software. This marked the first time a U.S. election was called on a blockchain, according to the news agency.

AP’s address acted as a cryptographic signature providing authenticity via metadata that AP included of the “exact date and time that AP called the election,” according to a press release shared with CoinDesk on Thursday.

See also: What Are NFTs and How Do They Work?

AP Director of Data Licensing Dwayne Desaulniers confirmed to CoinDesk that the auction is ongoing.

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“As we continue to test blockchain for revenue models and journalistic use cases, we thought an original and creative NFT would be interesting to test on many levels,” he said via email.

Desaulniers added that the map in the image is based on the election data the AP published on chain in November. “We thought we would use the NFT to mark that milestone,” he said.

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A piece by famous street artist Banksy is to be sold as a non-fungible token (NFT) – after the original was physically burned in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Wednesday.

It’s a first for the art industry as NFTs jump into the mainstream consciousness.

The piece, “Morons,” which pokes fun at art collectors, has been burned by a team of crypto enthusiasts at a discreet Brooklyn location.

Related: Associated Press Auctions NFT in Spirit of 2020 US Election

To be clear, Banksy was not involved. The piece was bought for roughly $100,000, an unnamed source told CoinDesk.

The burning was live-streamed through the Twitter account @BurntBanksy, after which the team created an NFT to represent the artwork on the Ethereum-based OpenSea marketplace.

An auction for the NFT will commence on OpenSea on March 4 with proceeds from the sale going to charity. The winning bidder will receive the official proof of authenticity from Banksy’s authentication agency, Pest Control.

Banksy has destroyed his own artwork in the past, shredding his painting “Girl With Balloon” immediately after its $1.4 million sale at Sotheby’s.

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“I think [Banksy] would appreciate what we are doing since he also promotes creativity and iconoclastic ideas,” the team behind the burn told CoinDesk in a statement.

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Anonymous developers have built two controversial decentralized applications (dapps) on Binance Smart Chain (BSC), a smart contract-based blockchain backed by exchange giant Binance, daring the platform to censor the dapps.  

The developers apparently hope the offensive and sensitive nature of the dapps would force Binance to get rid of them, proving BSC, unlike Ethereum, is not decentralized and can be controlled by a centralized institution, said Jason Wu, CEO and founder of decentralized crypto lending platform DeFiner. He noted that BSC has far fewer nodes than Ethereum.

One dapp with a token is called Tanks of Tiananmen. It appeared on Binance’s blockchain on Thursday. The name refers to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in China, which the Chinese government considers a very sensitive topic. The other dapp, Slavery, showed up on BSC on Saturday. It seems to liken the yield farming mechanism to slavery. 

Related: Associated Press Auctions NFT in Spirit of 2020 US Election

The two dapps are still on BSC as of press time. 

Some in the Ethereum community have reason to resent BSC. “Binance Smart Blockchain is very similar to Ethereum in a lot of ways,” Wu said. “Some devs might feel [it’s] unfair that an Ethereum copycat is doing so well.” 

The move comes at a time when BSC is gaining traction in hosting decentralized exchanges (DEX), some of which have migrated their business from Ethereum to BSC due to the latter’s lower trading cost. 1inch, one of the most popular DEX aggregators, expanded its businesses to BSC on Feb. 25, citing Ethereum’s high “gas” transaction fees. 

“Transactions per second for Ethereum have reached their peak for a long time and the excessive demand will flow to other blockchains,” said Hongfei Da, founder of decentralized blockchain platform Neo. “BSC’s technical infrastructure and community are well positioned to take in the demand.”  

Related: Banksy Work Physically Burned and Digitized as NFT in Art-World First

High gas fees and transaction speed on Ethereum are not the only reasons why dapps are moving to BSC. The blockchain is backed by crypto exchange giant Binance, so automated market makers (AMMs) could get more liquidity from the exchange while getting more publicity from Binance promoting the DEX’s products, said Aries Wang, co-founder of crypto exchange Bibox. 

“Many dapps, ranging from AMMs to lending platforms, could have a jump-start if they run on BSC with the preferential yield farming models offered by the platform to increase their native tokens to a high level even in these projects’ early stage,” Wang said.   

PancakeSwap, a DEX native to BSC, has been closing in on Ethereum-based UniSwap in terms of total value locked (TVL). On Feb.19, Binance Coin (BNB) saw a 45% increase when PancakeSwap “flippened” Uniswap in 24 hours. 

In a recent tweet, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhou said Ethereum could be its own killer and compared the network to some now-defunct social media companies. 

“Perhaps social media is the best example,” Zhao said in his tweet on Saturday. Friendster and MySpace were hugely popular but couldn’t keep up with the user/demand growth, he said.  

“Demand is growing exponentially, performance of ETH [isn’t],” he said. The Ethereum 2.0 update would take years, while the other solution to Ethereum’s scalability problem, rollups, which are off-chain aggregation of transactions inside an Ethereum smart, is not user friendly, Zhao said.

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Kraken’s co-founder and CEO Jesse Powell says his exchange may seek a public listing “sometime next year” but that there are “no guarantees.”

Appearing on Bloomberg TV on Wednesday, Powell was asked whether he would take his company public at a $10 billion valuation.

“We are certainly on track though $10 billion dollars is a low valuation,” said Powell. “I wouldn’t be interested in issuing shares at that price.” Powell’s statement comes as rival exchange Coinbase is being valued as high as $100 billion.

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Kraken is in talks to raise new capital in a move that could see the company’s valuation soar to above $10 billion, as CoinDesk previously reported.

However, Powell added there was “no reason” to raise new capital except to accelerate company acquisitions.

Asked where bitcoin was headed and how investors should be looking at its current price, Kraken’s CEO said there was “no reason to sell bitcoin”

“I think a lot of people are just waiting to buy the dip,” said Powell. “I do think if you’re buying into bitcoin based on speculation you should be looking to hold over a five-year period.”

Related: Banksy Work Physically Burned and Digitized as NFT in Art-World First

CoinDesk attempted to contact Powell for additional comment but did not receive a response by press time.

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A decentralized newcomer to non-fungible token (NFT) investments has raised $1.3 million from a smattering of well-heeled veterans of crypto venture capital.

Yield Guild Games (YGG), the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) with a penchant for NFTs, raised the funds from Delphi Digital, Scalar Capital, BlockTower Capital, gumi Cryptos Capital, Ascensive Assets and Youbi Capital.

YGG will use the funds to improve its protocol for distributed investing in the burgeoning NFT scene, the startup said. As a DAO, YGG pools investor assets for the purpose of betting and then profiting on NFTs, sharing the proceeds with backers. Its focus is on NFTs that intersect with the gaming space.

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“Just like real estate, virtual economic activities of games will occur in virtual lands,” a spokesperson for the project told CoinDesk via email. “As virtual land is scarce, demand for it within blockchain games will increase in value over time.”

DAOs have begun speculating on NFTs as the token type explodes in prominence. FlamingoDAO, a competitor in the space, recently spent 605 ETH ($761,889 at purchase) on a CryptoPunk NFT.

“Scalar invested in YGG because we believe they will bring in a wave of new people from all over the world to crypto through play-to-earn gaming,” Scalar Capital Managing Director Linda Xie said in a statement. “YGG will enable gamers to become investors with the guild purchasing land and tokens in games that they actively participate in.”

The YGG team recently spent $100,000 on virtual land in Axie Infinity.

Related: Banksy Work Physically Burned and Digitized as NFT in Art-World First

“Our mission here at YGG is to bring players into the Metaverse,” the team wrote in a blog post. “Part of that mission involves investing in the economic future of these virtual worlds while helping our guild members earn a living.”

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The National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) could be the next federal regulator to dip its feet into crypto-related rules.

Credit unions will want to look at digital assets and blockchain technology, said NCUA Vice Chairman Kyle Hauptman in a speech Wednesday. Speaking to the Credit Union National Association Governmental Affairs Conference, Hauptman said his regulatory agency may consider providing guidance around the treatment of digital assets.

Credit unions are non-profit, member-owned financial institutions that provide similar services to banks in the U.S. While national banks are regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), credit unions are overseen by the NCUA. 

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“NCUA may want to look at the actions taken by another regulator, the OCC. That agency recently provided guidance around custody of digital assets and the use of stablecoins for payments,” Hauptman said during his speech. “Stablecoins, as you may know, are cryptocurrencies designed to minimize price volatility, and the OCC’s guidance moves the U.S. closer to the real-time payment systems already used in other countries.”

The NCUA may not want to recreate every piece of guidance the OCC published, but Hauptman said he looks forward to working with NCUA Chairman Tood Harper to see what can help credit unions innovate. 

Hauptman told CoinDesk prior to his speech that the NCUA is the federal regulator and insurer for the more than 5,000 credit unions in the U.S., which collectively hold some $1.5 trillion in deposits. 

“At some point, we’ll speak with NCUA staff about doing a side-by-side with what the OCC did and see what we do or don’t want to adapt for credit unions. NCUA benefits a bit from ‘somebody else went first,’ so we can, where appropriate, build on the OCC’s experience,” he told CoinDesk. 

Related: Banksy Work Physically Burned and Digitized as NFT in Art-World First

He pointed to ATMs and remote deposits as examples of past innovative tools that credit unions implemented. 

He likened decentralized finance (DeFi) and stablecoins to the introduction of smart phones and mobile banking. 

“Smart phones didn’t exist 20 years ago and thus there weren’t regulations around mobile banking,” he said. “Policymakers then obviously had to provide clarity or risk seeing regulated institutions slowly lose business to new technologies.”

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Decentralized exchange (DEX) SushiSwap is now live on Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Fantom, Polygon, xDai Chain and Moonbeam Network, according to the project’s CTO Joseph Delong, in one of the knockoff project’s most notable divergences from Uniswap to date.

SushiSwap, which has some $3.3 billion in liquidity and $300 million in 24 hour volume, was formerly only hosted on the Ethereum blockchain, which is currently suffering under increasingly high transaction fees. Many Ethereum-based projects have been scrambling for scaling solutions, such as Rollups or moving to another blockchain that supports ERC-20 styled digital assets.

The exchange first garnered attention after copying Uniswap’s open source code, adding a token and then diverting liquidity away from Uniswap towards itself with the novel “vampire mining” program. Since then, the project has professionalized, particularly with the addition of Delong.

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Delong said SushiSwap is eyeing an integration with Optimism’s Layer 2 solution, Optimistic Rollups. Optimism – closed a $25 million Series B with Andreessen Horowitz in February – is expected to go live on mainnet later this month.

Not all those blockhains are ready for handling ERC-20 assets, Delong said. BSC and Fantom have “good support,” but the others “will need some work for the end user experience.”

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A recent survey conducted by Blind, an anonymous professional network for tech professionals, found that 50% of professionals trust cryptocurrency and 57% currently own some. 

The data was gathered from a survey of 1,800 respondents over the course of the last couple of days. Respondents included employees of Twitter, Amazon, JPMorgan and a variety of other companies. 

The survey asked respondents whether they trust cryptocurrency, whether they own any and whether they would accept cryptocurrency as payment as part of their total compensation. 

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“The most surprising takeaway from this survey is that only half of survey respondents trust cryptocurrency,” said Fiorella Riccobono, who ran the survey and collected the data. “Given companies like Tesla, PayPal, Square, and Twitter have all shown their exposure to bitcoin, I expected their confidence to trickle into the tech industry and their respective employees more.” 

Interestingly, employees of big banks seemed to trust crypto more than those in tech jobs. 

For example, 90% of professionals at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and 70% of Goldman Sachs professionals say they trust cryptocurrency. This seemingly is in line with a renewed interest in cryptocurrencies by institutional investors during the currency bull run, including Goldman Sachs re-launching of its crypto trading desk on March 1 after a three-year hiatus. Comparably, only 52% of professionals at Amazon and 50% of Apple professionals trust cryptocurrency. 

Read more: Amazon Managed Blockchain at Last Supports Ethereum, Ending a Two-Year Tease

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Meanwhile, 39% of respondents said they would accept crypto as part of their total compensation, led by 80% of employees at Credit Karma, the credit monitoring company. Just 38% of employees at PayPal, a company that recently entered the crypto fray, said they would accept compensation in crypto. 

While Riccobono was surprisedtrust in crypto wasn’t higher, other respondents employed by companies that have shown familiarity with crypto held bags. For example, 75% of Twitter professionals who responded to the survey own cryptocurrency, and 64% of the Bloomberg respondents said they did. 

Read more: Tesla Invests $1.5B in Bitcoin, Plans to Accept Crypto Payments

Users of Blind can also share posts, or ask questions. A Facebook professional on Blind wrote, “Half my wealth in crypto[.] It’s the future of money, and you’ll probably do it too someday. Is it risky? Yes. But I am highly confident it will pay off.” 

Meanwhile, an Amazon professional posted that one of his or her concerns is that people who don’t understand blockchains generally don’t mentally separate blockchain utilization (e.g., cryptocurrency) from the underlying technology that makes everything possible (the blockchain itself). 

“It’s concerning because if people don’t make that distinction, then the failure of one or more trending cryptos will cause people to mentally write off the benefits or the potential benefits of the underlying technology,” the anonymous professional wrote. “That’s why I’ve been looking at investing in currencies that exist on underlying systems that I think are scalable beyond simple payment ledgers.”

And as one professional at LinkedIn put it:

Just bought around 100K worth of bitcoin. YOLO. Bitcoin to the .

According to Riccobono, Blind decided to run this survey because it is apparent that decentralized finance is likely to impact significantly how banks operate in the future. 

“Users on Blind have begun to recognize the potential to shift the whole financial system at a macroeconomic level,” she said.  

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Privacy-oriented browser Brave has announced the acquisition of Tailcat, an open search engine. The move is the basis of forthcoming product Brave Search, which Brave is pitching as a non-tracking alternative to Google Search on Chrome and mobile.

• “The Tailcat search engine is built on top of a completely independent index, capable of delivering the quality people expect, but without compromising their privacy,” read a blog post announcing the acquisition. “Tailcat does not collect IP addresses or use personally identifiable information to improve search results.”
• Brave Search is a new addition to the suite of Brave’s privacy products. In 2021, Brave has reached over 25 million active monthly users according to the company, and sees this growth in line with consumers moving towards privacy-focused products like Signal and others.
• Brave Search is being developed with similar protections to the Brave Browser, including not tracking or profiling users, using open ranking models to “prevent algorithmic biases and outright censorship” and offering Brave Search to other search engines, among a number of other areas.
• The blog post also noted that Brave will be exploring “blockchain-based options and new developments, including for e-commerce uses.”
• “The only way to counter Big Tech with its bad habit of collecting personal data is to develop a robust, independent, and privacy-preserving search engine that delivers the quality users have come to expect. People should not be forced to choose between privacy and quality,” said Dr. Josep M. Pujol, head of the Tailcat project in a statement accompanying the announcement.
• The move comes as privacy continues to grow in profile to a real market advantage. Google announced today that it plans to phase out third-party cookies that allow advertisers to track you and will not develop alternatives to doing so.

Read more: Brave Browser Was Exposing Addresses in Tor Mode for Months

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Arthur Hayes, the founder and former CEO of crypto trading platform BitMEX, could surrender to U.S. authorities next month, according to a federal prosecutor. 

Jessica Greenwood, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, told a federal judge in a court transcript dated Feb. 16 that her team had been in talks with Hayes’ lawyers about surrendering to U.S. law enforcement officials. Greenwood also said she’d been in touch with BitMEX co-founder Ben Delo and its first employee Gregory Dwyer.

The three were charged in October 2020 with violating the Bank Secrecy Act and conspiracy to violate the act. A fourth defendant, Samuel Reed, was arrested last year and subsequently released on bond. A Vanity Fair profile on Hayes and the BitMEX saga was published on Feb. 4.

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Hayes is currently in Singapore, Greenwood told District Judge John Koeltl, of the Southern District of New York, according to the transcript.

“We have discussed with counsel how to arrange for a voluntary surrender, and he has proposed appearing within the United States in Hawaii and having his initial appearance there and then,” she said in the transcript. 

Greenwood said Hayes could continue to reside abroad, traveling to Hawaii for virtual appearances during the initial stages of the legal process. He would travel to New York if and when the case proceeds to the trial phase.

“That is the proposed bail package that we would be presenting for your Honor,” she said, according to the transcript. “It would include agreement by the government that he be permitted to continue to reside abroad and that he would be traveling to the United States, if necessary, for court appearances and meetings with counsel.”

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Delo is planning to surrender in New York, Greenwood said in the court transcript, though he needs assistance entering the U.S. due to an ongoing travel ban for travelers from the United Kingdom, where he resides.

Read more: BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes Leaves Role After US Charges

Dwyer is currently in Bermuda and has no plans to voluntarily surrender, but federal prosecutors have begun extradition proceedings, according to Greenwood, though she noted that Dwyer’s legal team does not plan to oppose these proceedings.

“We are trying to achieve compensation for victims of various nefarious acts that took place on that exchange for years. We are confident that justice will prevail,” said Pavel Pogodin, an attorney representing former BitMEX users suing the platform. Pogodin was the first to surface the potential surrender dates on Twitter on Wednesday.

100x Group, the parent firm to BitMEX, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York did not immediately return requests for comment. 

UPDATE (March 3, 2021, 23:40 UTC): Updated with additional context; corrects that Gregory Dwyer is not a cofounder of BitMEX but was its first employee.

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• Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $50,500 as of 21:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET), gaining 6.4% over the previous 24 hours.
• Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $52,636.22 to $47,332.82.
• Continuing a strong start to the month, bitcoin finally reclaimed $50,000 as bullish investors hope for a revival of the uptrend from early February.

Bitcoin rose 5% on Wednesday to just above $50,000, and traders are speculating whether the move represents a resumption of this year’s powerful bull market or simply a rebound following last week’s steep plunge to around $43,000.     

The largest cryptocurrency is now up 10% so far in March, and a gain this month would mark the sixth straight monthly increase, the first time that’s happened in seven years.

Read more: Why Cisco Should Buy Bitcoin 

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As of 21:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET), bitcoin was changing hands just above $51,000 on Coinbase. The largest cryptocurrency is still well off its all-time-high price above $58,000 reached late last month. 

“A week is a long time in crypto: A $43,000 print and the retracement seen last week may as well have happened 6 months ago,” Matt Blom, head of sales and trading for the digital-asset exchange firm EQUOS, wrote on Wednesday. “If the market can hold above support at $47,850, then a continued push at higher prices is the likely outcome.”

Market analyst Joseph Young tweeted the latest breach of $50,000 has come with signs the market is rejuvenated, with derivative-funding costs returning to normal from last week’s elevated levels, few signs of overcrowding in the futures market and blockchain data showing that institutional investors are preparing to hold for the long term. 

In other words, the market now appears to have fully reset after last week’s comedown, which might make a fresh rally more sustainable.

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Ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, rose along with bitcoin on Wednesday. It reached around $1,650, climbing 7% in 24 hours as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET).

One potentially troubling sign: Despite the asset’s strong performance to start the month, shareholders of Grayscale’s ether trust don’t appear so bullish. The difference between the price of ether, as implied in prices for the Grayscale vehicle, and spot cryptocurrency prices turned negative on Tuesday after briefly flipping positive earlier this week. 

Read more: ETH: Technology Play or Store of Value? A CoinDesk Research Report

According to data from Skew, the Grayscale ether trust had a premium of -4.62%, possibly a sign that investors are cashing out of their shares even as ether buyers accumulate via spot markets or other investment vehicles. (Grayscale is a unit of Digital Currency Group, which owns CoinDesk.)   

Another explanation could be that the negative premium represents increased competition among providers of publicly traded ether products. An application was recently filed in Canada for what would be North America’s second ether ETF, CoinDesk reported Tuesday. 

Along with ether, decentralized finance assets were in the green on Wednesday. The sector gained an aggregate 9.5%, according to data from Messari.

Digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are up on Wednesday. Notable winners as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):

• cardano (ADA) + 2.57%
• ethereum classic (ETC) + 3.67%
• bitcoin cash (BCH) + 3.69%

Equities:

• Asia’s Nikkei 225 closed the day down 255 points at 29,408.
• The FTSE 100 in Europe gained less than half a percent, reaching 6,636.
• The S&P 500 in the United States dipped 1.3% to 3,819.

Read more: Enjin to Tackle Soaring Gas Fees, Scaling With New Blockchain Products

Commodities:

• Oil gained 3%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $61.24.
• Gold was in the red by 1.31% at $1,715 as of press time.

Treasurys:

• The 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield rose eight basis points, or 0.08 percentage point, to 1.47%.

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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has announced a pilot program to test IBM’s blockchain-based digital health app for proving COVID-19 vaccination and test results.

• According to an announcement made Tuesday, the health app built with IBM has been named the Excelsior Pass and will be tested at Barclays Center and Madison Square Garden in New York City.
• The health app uses blockchain technology and will allow individuals to voluntarily share their health status through an encrypted digital wallet stored on their smartphones.
• The Excelsior Pass will show the verification of health records such as vaccination certificates or COVID-19 test results. It is designed similar to a mobile airline boarding pass.

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Bitwise’s recently launched decentralized finance (DeFi) index fund has brought in $32.5 million in sales from 262 investors, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published Wednesday.

Just two weeks after launch, the fund has become Bitwise’s fastest-growing private placement ever, Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan told CoinDesk.

Despite the roadblocks inherent to private securities investment – satisfying accreditation requirements, filings reams of paperwork, wiring money – Hougan said investors are pouring into the DeFi fund at record speed, and “the pace shows no signs of slowing.”

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“It’s rare to attract hundreds of new investors in the first few weeks that a fund is on the market,” he said.

That a DeFi product would capture traditional finance dollars faster than headline-grabbing bitcoin funds might seem counterintuitive. After all, DeFi protocols attempt to improve and innovate upon classic financial services like lending and trading with a permissionless backend.

But Hougan stressed DeFi’s promise readily clicks with the investment mindset:

“In many cases, it took months of education and discussion for our clients – mostly financial advisors, family offices and hedge funds – to wrap their heads around the core ideas of public blockchains and large-cap crypto assets like bitcoin and ether. But you talk to them about the idea behind DeFi and using software-based dapps to disrupt traditional finance and they get it instantly.”

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Through that lens, DeFi’s status as a “very early and still very risky” software investment opportunity is a plus, he said.

Besides, the index fund is focused on DeFi assets and not their underlying protocols.

Bitwise’s DeFi fund invests in 10 tokens weighted to favor market leaders like AAVE and UNI. Lending, derivatives and exchange tokens are all in the mix. They’re all currently Ethereum-based, a testament to the world computer’s dominance in the DeFi space.

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Former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Heath Tarbert announced in a Wednesday tweet that he will officially depart the federal regulatory agency Friday.

• His tenure as chairman included the classification of ether as a commodity, the launch of ether futures contracts and an expansion of regulated crypto derivative products.
• Tarbert had previously said his 18-month term would end once President Joe Biden took office. He stepped down from the chairmanship in January and was replaced acting chairman Rostin Behnam.
• Biden has not yet nominated a permanent replacement but crypto-savvy academic Chris Brummer is said to be in the lead for the position.

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Compass, a bitcoin mining startup, raised $1.7 million in seed funding led by Galaxy Digital, joined by CoinShares, CoinFund, CoinGecko and other cryptocurrency companies, according to a press release on Wednesday.

• Locations of the mining facilities working with Compass per its website include Iceland, Canada, Kazakhstan, Russia, China and the U.S.
• One of Compass’ businesses is to serve as an intermediary between hosting facilities with excess capacity and institutional or retail customers interested in mining bitcoin.
• In its first two months, the company sold $11.4 million worth of mining machines to customers.
• “Without mining, there is no bitcoin,” CEO Whit Gibbs said in the press release. He said Compass was launched to “ensure that everyone has the access and ability to grow their exposure” to bitcoin through participating in the infrastructure-level work of mining.
• Last month, bitcoin miners saw all-time high monthly revenue of $1.36 billion industrywide, per CoinDesk prior reporting.
• In a statement, the company said it plans to use the proceeds from the capital raise to quickly scale its team and mining technology.

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Israel-based blockchain analysis firm Whitestream has released a report uncovering four recent crypto scams originating in Lagos, Nigeria, going on to claim that “it seems that Lagos is a central focal point in Africa for investor scams of this kind.” 

Bitcoin and crypto use has been booming in Nigeria, but the dark side is the rise of scams. Whitestream’s report speculates that Nigeria’s Central Bank recently doubled down on cryptocurrency restrictions partly due to the rise of such scams.

Whitestream, which serves large institutions such as Israeli Ministry of Defense and global cybersecurity firm VERINT, discovered the scams on the social media platform Instagram. The Instagram accounts are designed to look like they’re from America or Europe, but Whitestream was able to track down that they actually originated from Nigeria. 

Related: IRS Says Buying Crypto With Fiat Does Not Trigger Tax Reporting Rules

The scams, which target new crypto users, look very close to other widespread cryptocurrency scams. The scammers ask users to send bitcoin directly to them, promising profits, but instead run away with the money.  

The Whitestream report highlights Instagram photos featuring a fake broker living a luxurious lifestyle from her lavish crypto earnings. 

The scammers draw in victims over chat, convincing them to send bitcoin, which the scammers will supposedly invest, promising high returns. But instead of investing the bitcoin as promised, they cash out. 

They then typically transfer the bitcoin to the Binance exchange to convert it into fiat currency, Whitestream’s analysis determined. 

Related: The Decoder: ‘Have Fun Staying Poor’

The scammer used a virtual private network (VPN), which allows people to pick an IP address, to make it look like they were from the U.S. But through deeper investigation, including analyzing the Bitcoin blockchain for transactions and detecting the mobile device that was used, Whitestream found the scam originated in Nigeria.

Whitestream tracked down four similar Instagram scams in the fourth quarter of 2020. “It may be the same entity that is running all of these scams at the same time,” the report adds.

Altogether these scams are raking in tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of crypto a month, Whitestream determined. 

“The Instagram platform creates fake reality for young investors who are bored during the COVID-19 situation, and they are losing their savings because of these fake, imaginary accounts,” Levy told CoinDesk.

Whitestream CEO Itsik Levy argues that Instagram and its parent company, Facebook, have a duty to stop these scams. The accounts have already been flagged as scams – but there’s nowhere to turn to get them taken down. 

“The accounts are still active, and the scam is still attracting new people. It makes no sense,” Levy said.

Scams can’t easily be controlled, but nor can crypto. Cryptocurrency will stick around, the report argues, despite efforts, such as by the Nigeria Central Bank, to stamp it out: “It is not possible to block people or financial institutions from using digital currencies, as this is a natural global economical evolution.”

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A cryptocurrency mining firm is taking its landlord to federal court in order to retrieve its equipment, submitting a legal complaint in the Northern District of New York on Tuesday.

Aurum Capital Ventures U.S.A. (ACVU) claims it had previously agreed with Markus Schneider, landlord of its premises in Calgary, N.Y., to let him use its 600 Bitmain S9 mining machines in May 2020 at a time when it was planning to power some of them down.

The landlord allegedly agreed to waiving certain fees pertaining to surplus electricity usage in the premises in return.

Related: IRS Says Buying Crypto With Fiat Does Not Trigger Tax Reporting Rules

According to Aurum, Schneider expressed an interest in purchasing the mining equipment, negotiations for which carried on after the lease agreement came to an end the following November.

Into the New Year, negotiations for a renewal had not come to fruition, resulting in Aurum giving notice of its intention to collect the equipment from the premises.

See also: Class Action Filed Against Listed Bitcoin Miner Bit Digital Over Fraud Allegations

Schneider allegedly refused the request, claiming that the two parties had an agreement for the purchase of the equipment and that the waiving of up to $75,000 worth of electricity usage was contingent on the sale’s completion. Aurum says both of these claims are untrue.

Related: The Decoder: ‘Have Fun Staying Poor’

In addition to seeking an order for the repossession of the equipment, the mining company is seeking a restraining order preventing Schneider moving, selling or disposing of the miners while the order is pending.

• All About Bitcoin – Mar 4, 2021
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Iris Energy, a bitcoin miner and data center provider, has doubled its fundraising target ahead of an expected initial public offering (IPO).

• The Australian company, which emphasizes its use of renewable energy, now aims to raise investment of AUS$40 million (US$31 million), up from AUS$20 million (US$15.5 million), according to a Bloomberg report Wednesday.
• In a letter to investors seen by the publication, Iris said it has received an AUS$13 million (US$10 million) commitment from Platinum Asset Management.
• Iris Energy has also informed investors about changes in management, with Jason Conroy, currently chief financial officer of energy utility Transgrid, to become the firm’s new CEO.

Read more: Bitfarms Plans Massive Bitcoin Mining Expansion With Purchase of 48,000 MicroBT Devices

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• All About Bitcoin – Mar 4, 2021
• Blockchain Sleuthing Firm Calls Nigeria ‘Focal Point’ for Africa’s Crypto Scams

Against the backdrop of soaring “gas” fees on the Ethereum network, blockchain platform Enjin is looking to tackle issues of scaling and interoperability.

According to a press release shared with CoinDesk on Wednesday, the platform will be releasing two new offerings it claims will redefine the non-fungible token (NFT) market.

Dubbed JumpNet and Efinity, the company says its two blockchain solutions will increase support for NFTs while removing Ethereum’s expensive gas fees from the equation altogether.

Related: IRS Says Buying Crypto With Fiat Does Not Trigger Tax Reporting Rules

Gas refers to the Ethereum’s fee required to execute transactions on the network. The rising costs have prompted other networks to seek alternatives or create their own solutions. According to data from Glassnode, the average price of gas paid per transaction on the Ethereum network has risen roughly 16.5 times over a year from 10.6 in March 3, 2020, to around 175 today.

This has the potential to cause major headaches for a company like Enjin with developers building apps and games under a “freemium” monetization model.

JumpNet is an interoperable bridging network that will operate under a proof-of-authority (PoA) consensus mechanism. A PoA mechanism refers to a solely permissioned setting on a private blockchain where only invited parties can participate as nodes.

The bridging network will be rolled out in two phases, with the first enabling users to move their Enjin Coins (ENJ) from the Ethereum network to JumpNet. By transferring the tokens onto JumpNet’s bridging smart contracts, users will be able to lock up their tokens on Ethereum and then unlock a corresponding amount of tokens on the other side.

Related: The Decoder: ‘Have Fun Staying Poor’

From there, users will be able to mint NFTs using the Enjin-developed ERC-1155 standard without the gas usually required. Users can then send and receive those tokens via Enjin’s native wallet or trade them on its NFT marketplace.

“Under phase two, we will enable seamless bridging between Ethereum and JumpNet for ENJ and all ERC-1155 tokens,” said Simon Kertonegoro, vice-president of Developer Success via Telegram. “This will allow our users to choose if they want free transactions on JumpNet or trustlessness on Ethereum and Efinity.”

Meanwhile, Efinity, which is still currently in development, is expected to become Enjin’s public blockchain. 

Enjin says the move provides an opportunity for creators on Efinity to mint multi-chain tokens and move them to other compatible blockchains.

The project also aims to enable users of different blockchains to move their tokens on to Efinity using trustless bridging smart contracts.

See also: Enjin Coin Becomes First Gaming Cryptocurrency Whitelisted for Use in Japan

“These technologies will enable developers to reach mainstream users and provide modern experiences without worrying about unpredictable business overhead caused by gas fees,” said Enjin CTO Witek Radomski. 

JumpNet will be rolled out on April 6, with Efinity expected sometime later this year, according to Enjin. 

• All About Bitcoin – Mar 4, 2021
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Bitcoin’s (BTC) role in portfolios as a store of value is by now relatively well known. Its hard supply limit in the face of unprecedented money supply increase is encouraging traditional fund managers to allocate funds to a bitcoin portfolio position, and corporations to hold it as a reserve asset.

But what about ether? Could the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain hold a similar position?

We know that institutional investor interest in ETH is increasing. The Grayscale ETHE trust had growth of over 40% of its almost $800 million 2020 inflows come in the fourth quarter alone. (Grayscale is a CoinDesk sister company.) A number of ETH investment products have come to market over the past few months, including several exchange-traded funds in Canada. And on Feb. 8, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which caters primarily to institutional investors, listened to increasing client demand and launched ETH futures.

Related: IRS Says Buying Crypto With Fiat Does Not Trigger Tax Reporting Rules

See also: Crypto Long & Short: How Coinbase Going Public Is Reshaping Trust in Markets

This growing interest can be seen in ETH’s recent performance. Whether looked at for the year to date or over 12 months, ETH has significantly outperformed BTC.

Is that why are investors are becoming increasingly interested in ETH? Or are they seeing it as a cheaper store of value than bitcoin?

A new report from CoinDesk Research looks into the value propositions of bitcoin and ether, as well as the different market structures and on-chain data.

Related: The Decoder: ‘Have Fun Staying Poor’

Our report found that while bitcoin is increasingly seen as an emergent store of value, ether is more of a technology play. For this reason, it is a riskier bet, which explains its outperformance.

However, the full story is not quite that simple. Bitcoin is also a technology play, and ether is also a potential store of value asset.

Both assets have considerable potential upside for this reason. Ether and bitcoin could end up being considered one, the other or both. Success does not depend on just one outcome.

See also: Crypto Long & Short: What Does Dogecoin Have to Do With Government Bans?

Meanwhile, the prevailing narratives of each – emergent store of value for bitcoin, technology play for ether – continue to evolve. Ethereum’s technological development is at an inflection point, with the progress towards migration to a proof-of-stake blockchain. Bitcoin’s disinflationary monetary policy is becoming more obvious as fiat monetary stimulus shows no signs of abating and a growing amount of bitcoin gets moved to long-term storage.

Download our free report to dive into the different value drivers for BTC and ETH, why institutions are interested and what risks lie ahead.

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