Banking Behemoth’s Crypto Wallet, Ethereum Outflows, Bitcoin’s Milestone, Cheap NFT Ape + More News

Linas Kmieliauskas

Last updated: October 23, 2023 09:22 EDT | 5 min read

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

• Germany’s savings banks, a conservative bastion that holds more than EUR 1trn euros for roughly 50 million Germans, is examining offering a wallet to trade cryptocurrency, Reuters reported. The new product still must be approved and might be offered in 2022, Capital said, adding that the clients would be able to trade directly from their accounts.
• Digital asset investment products saw inflows totaling USD 88m last week, compared with USD 184m a week earlier, per Coinshares data. There is “extremely polarised opinion amongst investors, with some panic selling during this most recent price decline, while others seeing it as a buying opportunity. This divergence in views is broadly regional too, with providers in North America seeing flows, while those in Europe seeing outflows,” the firm said. Bitcoin (BTC) saw inflows totaling USD 51m (65% less than a week earlier), while ethereum (ETH) saw outflows totaling USD 17m last week (compared with USD 25m inflows a week earlier), the first time following 6 weeks of inflows, although it reflects only 0.09% of assets under management and is therefore likely not meaningful, Coinshares said.

• Blockchain infrastructure company Alchemy is launching an investment arm for the development of Web 3.0 called Alchemy Ventures. Aside from funding, the company aims offer access to the fund’s strategic partners and Alchemy itself, founder dinners for networking, Alchemy’s recruiting network, access to Alchemy’s suite of products, and personal access to its team.
• Financial non-fungible token (NFT) project Solv Protocol said it will take the fundraising concept one step further through an Initial Voucher Offering, or IVO, which mints financial NFTs called Vouchers containing ecosystem tokens, which are issued to early investors. Solv will issue 1m SOLV tokens through the IVO, which kicks off on December 13 on the Binance NFT platform and Solv marketplace, they said.
• Blockchain gaming launchpad ENJINSTARTER announced that they are slated to complete a total of 20 initial decentralized exchange (DEX) offerings (IDOs) before the end of 2021, for a total of USD 2.8m worth of allocations.

Mining news

• 90% of all bitcoins, making up 18.9m bitcoins of the maximum 21m should be mined on Monday. Reaching the milestone took nearly 13 years since the first bitcoins were mined in January, 2009, but the remaining supply is not expected to be mined till February 2140, based on network activity estimates and Bitcoin’s halving schedules.

Today at block height 714,000 we reach the point at which only 2,100,000 BTC (10%) remain to be mined.

However, it won't be until block 714,032 that there will be 18,900,000 BTC in existence. This is due to some early miners not claiming the entire block subsidy.

— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) December 13, 2021

NFTs news

• The owner of Bored Ape number 3,547, an in-demand non-fungible token (NFT), accidentally sold it for USD 3,000 instead of USD 300,000 this past weekend, CNet reported, adding that it was a “fat-finger error.” The buyer paid an extra USD 34,000 to speed up the transaction, ensuring no one could snap it up before them, the report said, noting that the Bored Ape was then promptly listed for USD 248,000. (Learn more: CryptoPunk Mistakenly Sells at Over 99% Discount, NFT Sales Plunge Again)
   

Metaverse news

• Thea-Mae Baumann, an Australian artist and technologist, said she started an Instagram account with the handle ‘metaverse‘ back in 2012 – but that following the platform’s parent company’s October announcement that it was changing its name from ‘Facebook‘ to ‘Meta‘ her account has been blocked for a month, The New York Times reported. A message on the screen allegedly notified her that the account has been blocked for pretending to be someone else. An Instagram spokesman reportedly said that the account had been “incorrectly removed for impersonation”.
• SK Square Co., the investment arm of the South Korean giant SK Group, wants every portfolio company to have a metaverse presence, Bloomberg reported, citing Managing Director Huh Seok-Joon. Their customers should be able to use cryptocurrencies for shopping, streaming media, and other transactions with the metaverse community, Huh said, adding: “Our new interface between customers will be shifting from mobile phones to metaverse and coins will be used as new currencies on our platforms.”
• Technology company DeFi Technologies said that its wholly-owned subsidiary Valour received approval from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (SFSA) to launch a Metaverse and Gaming Index exchange-traded product (ETP). Per the press release, the ETP will consist of an index of the top five digital assets related to the metaverse, and it will allow investors to gain direct exposure across multiple metaverse related and protocol-based projects, via a single investment. It has regulatory approval for distribution across EU markets.
• Metaverse infrastructure platform InfiniteWorld has announced it has entered into a definitive agreement for a business combination with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Aries I Acquisition Corporation to make InfiniteWorld a publicly traded company with a pro forma equity value of approximately USD 700m. Upon closing of the transaction, the combined company is expected to be listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol “JPG”.

Adoption news

• Major financial services company Wells Fargo and HSBC Bank announced an agreement to use a blockchain-based solution for the netting and settlement of matched foreign exchange (FX) transactions. The two companies will jointly use a shared settlement ledger to process USD, CAD, GBP, and EUR, with plans to add additional currencies in the near future.
• Miami mayor Francis Suarez has announced plans to take a part of his 401(k) payout in bitcoin just a month after he started receiving salary in BTC, per Real Vision. The mayor also shared that the city government accepts fee payments in bitcoin from Miami residents, and he promises to establish a relevant system for bitcoin payments for retirement savings by 2022.

Gaming news

• Gala Games, a blockchain gaming platform, announced the launch of a USD 100m blockchain gaming fund in partnership with C² Ventures, a new crypto investment firm founded by Ciara Sun, the former Head of Listings and Blockchain Investments at Huobi Global. The joint fund will invest in game developers and emerging projects building with blockchain technology, including but not limited to play-to-earn, GameFi, metaverses, and other decentralized gaming solutions, they said.

DeFi news

• Decentralized finance (DeFi) platform BadgerDAO has provided details of how it was exploited for USD 120m earlier this month, stating that the incident was caused by “a maliciously injected snippet” from Cloudflare, an application platform that runs on Badger’s cloud network. The hacker used a compromised API key that was created without the knowledge or authorization of Badger engineers to periodically inject the malicious code that affected a subset of its customers, the organization said.

Security news

• The Twitter account of India Prime Minister Narendra Modi was briefly hacked by a scammer early Sunday morning local time, and the hacker tweeted that India had adopted bitcoin as legal tender, that the government had bought BTC 500, and that it would distribute them to all Indians. The tweet was soon deleted and another tweet was sent announcing the account had been secured.