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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Investments news
- US-based financial giant State Street Corporation said that its digital division, State Street Digital, will leverage Copper.co’s technology to develop and launch an institutional-grade digital custody offering.
- Blockchain infrastructure company Blockdaemon announced it has acquired crypto application programming interface (API) company Gem for an undisclosed amount. Blockdaemon will be integrating Gem’s embeddable user interface flows and API, which should enable users to purchase over 40 cryptoassets from 125 countries through the company’s Onramp service.
- Blockchain protocol ZetaChain announced the deployment of their devnet and the close of an initial seed funding round of undisclosed value. The project is aiming to create “omnichain-dapps”, or “odapps”, capable of interacting with all blockchains at a native level, all while avoiding the need to wrap or bridge any assets.
- Wallet-to-dapp open protocol WalletConnect raised USD 11m in a Series A funding round co-led by USV and 1kx to scale wallet interoperability and develop a generalized messaging layer. The funds will be used to focus on becoming the decentralized Web3 messaging layer, they added.
- Multi-chain automated market maker (AMM) bridge Swim Protocol announced it has raised USD 4m in seed funding led by Pantera Capital. The seed funding will help Swim Protocol accelerate the company’s go-to-market strategy in areas such as marketing, community management, and branding, they said.
- Finance company Likvidi announced the launch of its carbon trading platform and carbon credits, which are equivalent to one tonne of carbon removed from the atmosphere. This gives the holder the ability to buy, trade, and offset carbon credits to achieve net-zero status, they said.
DeFi news
- DeFi project Cake DeFi launched a USD 100m venture arm called Cake DeFi Ventures (CDV) and committed to accelerating growth of tech firms, with a focus on investing in Web3, gaming, and fintech startups.
- COTI announced that within 2022 it will open up to the issuance of more tokens on top of their proprietary Trustchain service using the MultiDAG 2.0 layer, which offers it multi-currency capabilities. The layer will enable the project to launch multiple tokens such as a governance token for COTI’s treasury, the first enterprise token, a payment token on top of the Trustchain, and more, they added.
Exchanges news
- Binance said that it has fully reopened EUR and GBP deposits and withdrawals respectively via the SEPA payment network (SEPA) and Faster Payment Services (FPS) in partnership with provider Paysafe as of Monday, March 7. Binance retail users across Europe, with the exception of the Netherlands and Switzerland, will be able to make EUR transfers directly via SEPA.
- Also, Binance Holdings Ltd. is in talks over a license to operate in Dubai, Bloomberg reported, citing an undisclosed person familiar with the matter. The firm is in discussions with Dubai World Trade Centre free zone for a virtual asset service provider license, per the report.
- FTX launched FTX Access. It will initially offer advisory services, index products, trade execution, analytical tools, and capital introductions for institutional investors. FTX Access will then further explore offering custody, derivatives, structured products, and other asset management products, they added.
NFTs news
- Open protocol 0x (ZRX) announced its NFT swap standard has been implemented on a number of new chains following integration on the Ethereum (ETH) mainnet.
Web3 news
- Digital identity platform Unstoppable Domains announced it has joined forces with 70 Web2 and Web3 companies to form the “Unstoppable Women of Web3” initiative, which is a diversity and education group focusing on training the next generation of talent, with a mission to equalize the playing field early in the Web3 era, they said. In addition, Unstoppable Domains will distribute over USD 10m worth of NFT domains to support women in their Web3 journey.
Legal news
- The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced it has charged siblings John and JonAtina (Tina) Barksdale with defrauding thousands of retail investors out of more than USD 24m through two unregistered fraudulent offerings of securities involving a digital token called “Ormeus Coin” from June 2017 to the present. The watchdog added that it seeks injunctive relief, disgorgement plus interest, and civil penalties.
- The US Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted Dwayne Golden, Gregory Aggesen, and Marquis Demacking Egerton, the owners and operators of the virtual currency companies EmpowerCoin, ECoinPlus, and Jet-Coin, with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering, and related substantive counts. If convicted, the defendants face up to 20 years in prison.