Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Regulation news
- A “comprehensive” bipartisan bill has been introduced in the United States House of Representatives to “fix EVERYTHING wrong with the infrastructure bill’s crypto tax provision–including the unconstitutional §6050I individual reporting mandate,” per Jerry Brito, the head of the Coin Center pressure group and a key figure in the campaign to amend the bill. The new bill would:
- replace the broad definition of “broker” with one limited to exchanges that buy and sell crypto for customers;
- limit the new requirement that brokers report transfers of cryptocurrency by making sure that only information that’s voluntarily provided by customers and held for a legitimate business purposes can be shared;
- strike the expanded §6050I reporting requirement for digital assets and instead require a study of the effects of such an expansion made in consultation with the “the digital asset industry” and “organizations focused on individual privacy and civil liberties,” among others.
Metaverse news
- Major media organization TIME has announced a partnership with digital asset company Galaxy Digital Holdings in order to “provide education on the rapidly expanding and evolving metaverse.” The transaction was completed in ethereum (ETH), and represents the first time that TIME will hold ETH on its balance sheet.
Exchanges news
- Crypto exchange Gate.io has announced it has experienced a 185% user growth in 2021, with total registered users crossing 8m. Since August 2021 alone, Gate.io said it has added 2m new users, with “considerable spikes” in trading activity in Turkey, Brazil, India, and Western Europe.
Gaming news
- Ronen Kirsh from Forte Labs and Jon Allen from Magnus Ventures, in association with multiple gaming industry and technology veterans, successfully proposed the creation of Game7, an initiative led by community partners including BitDAO, Forte, Alameda Research, and Mirana Ventures. Game7’s goal is to accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology within the gaming industry through a USD 100m grants program, and by investing in blockchain gaming initiatives.
Investments news
- Digital Currency Group (DCG) announced the completion of a debt capital raise providing a credit facility up to USD 600m. The debt financing will help DCG’s strategic, operational, and financial capabilities by reducing its cost of capital and fueling the growth of its investment portfolio and wholly-owned subsidiaries, the company said.
- Solana (SOL)-based sports betting protocol BetDEX has announced it has raised a USD 21m seed round. Set for launch in the first half of 2022, BetDEX combines blockchain technology with sports betting, with the aim of transforming the consumer sports betting experience.
- Private bartering blockchain Anoma Network has raised USD 26m in a funding round led by Polychain Capital. The project aims to use the proceeds to advance its proof-of-stake blockchain, which has been designed to facilitate private transactions using “asset-agnostic bartering.”
- Cover protocol FairSide Network announced it has raised USD 4.2m in an early staking round to the protocol’s capital pool. FairSide aims to offer crypto holders insurance coverage.
- Fidelity Clearing Canada ULC (FCC) has become Canada’s first regulated entity to offer bitcoin (BTC) custody and trading services for institutional investors. In addition, Fidelity Investments Canada ULC filed preliminary prospectuses for Fidelity Advantage Bitcoin ETF and Fidelity Advantage Bitcoin ETF Fund.
- Node management and staking infrastructure company Blockdaemon has announced adding two strategic investors, Tiger Global Management and JPMorgan Chase Strategic Investments. The company has increased its valuation by 70x; its revenues by 20x; and its headcount by 5x over the past year, and launched more than 25,000 nodes, averaging more than USD 10bn in staked assets monthly.
- In the US, North Dakota’s City of Williston has installed a crypto ATM in its international airport. The city’s administration announced the installation of the “government-hosted cryptocurrency kiosk” or the “Digital Currency Machine (DCM)” at the Williston Basin International Airport, in partnership with DCM company Coin Cloud.
- The Oasis Foundation has announced a USD 160m ecosystem fund in collaboration with a host of major venture capital firms. The fund will be used to seed early-stage projects building on Oasis, including decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), metaverse, data tokenization, data decentralized autonomous organization, data governance, and other projects.
- IOTA (MIOTA) said it is introducing staking as they are transforming into a “fully decentralized, programmable multi-asset ledger.”
- DeFinity, an institutional digital asset electronic communication network (ECN) and DeFi marketplace, has partnered with crypto copy-trading platform Alpha Impact to distribute AI-powered market anomaly signals covering a dozen digital assets, said the press release. Alpha Impact is a DeFi-enabled social trading platform that lets users find and copy a top trader while keeping funds in their own wallets.
CBDCs news
- The Bank of Russia is reportedly planning to take commissions for the digital ruble transactions. The fees for Russia’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) transactions will be lower than those of wire transfers, Bank of Russia’s director of financial technologies department Kirill Pronin said, according to the local publication Prime.
Adoption news
- Avalanche (AVAX) is partnering with Deloitte in order to build more efficient disaster-relief platforms using the Avalanche blockchain, the project’s founder and CEO, Emin Gün Sirer, said.
DeFi news
- E-commerce engagement solutions provider Project Venkman has announced a partnership with Acala, an Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform optimized for DeFi and scaling DApps to Polkadot (DOT). The two will launch a portfolio of brand engagement solutions using on-chain loyalty points and NFTs.
Source: Cryptonews
