EY Embraces Polygon, Paxful’s Bitcoin Lightning, GameFi Investments + More News

Adoption Bitcoin Career CBDC DeFi Ethereum

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Fredrik Vold

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Fredrik Vold

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June 26, 2023 06:54 EDT

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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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Adoption news

• EY, a “Big Four” accounting firm, announced it will use the Polygon (MATIC) protocol to deploy EY blockchain solutions on Ethereum (ETH). EY has connected the Polygon public, permissionless commit chain into EY flagship blockchain services including EY OpsChain and EY Blockchain Analyzer, they said.
• Arcane Crypto’s associated company Puremarkets Limited has executed the first live test trade on its wholesale crypto trading platform, a press release said. The platform, built for institutional participants, is “a fully automated, high throughput [over-the-counter] marketplace for digital currencies with physical delivery routed to bank-grade custodians,” Arcane said.
• The government of Laos has authorized six companies to trade and mine cryptocurrencies while relevant ministries are to draft regulations governing their use, The Laotian Times reported, citing a notice issued by the Prime Minister’s Office.
• Digital asset security and asset transfer platform Fireblocks said it will be dedicating “significant resources” toward expanding its presence and growth in the DACH market (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) with the opening of a new office headquartered in Switzerland. Over the last six months, Fireblocks has doubled the size of its European team to support the increasing number of institutional customers in the region with close to 200 customers in the DACH market, they added.
• Paxful, a peer-to-peer fintech platform, announced its global integration on the Lightning Network, claiming that “over seven million Paxful users will now be able to leverage the power of the Lightning Network, a system built on top of the Bitcoin (BTC) network.”
• Magnum Real Estate Group, the company behind a luxury property project in New York City, said it will accept BTC as payment for three retail spaces on the ground floor of the property.
   

NFTs news

• Immutable, a Layer-2 scalability protocol for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum, has raised USD 60m in a Series B funding round, according to a press release. The round was co-led by BITKRAFT Ventures and King River Capital, with participation from Prosus Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, Fabric Ventures, Alameda Research, AirTree Ventures, Reinventure, Apex Capital, and VaynerFund.
• New York Mets owner Steve Cohen is leading a Series A funding round for NFT platform RECUR, and has joined the company’s board of directors. The round raised a total of USD 50m for the platform, after a seed round in March raised USD 5m from decentralized finance (DeFi) accelerator Defi Alliance, venture capital firm Courtside VC, crypto investment fund Volt Capital, as well as Joe Lubin, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Tyler & Cameron Winkelvoss, Forbes reported.

CBDCs news

• German Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann said during a conference on fintech and global payments that a future digital euro should have a limited role initially, given its potential to disrupt the banking sector and extend the role of central banking. “A gradual approach might make sense given the risks involved – that means a digital euro with a specific set of features and the option to add further functionalities later,” Weidmann said.

Investments news

• Huobi Ventures, the global investment arm of Huobi Group, today announced the launch of a new USD 10m fund to invest in emerging GameFi projects around the world. GameFi stands for “Game+DeFi”, which refers to blockchain gaming integrated with DeFi mechanisms.
• The blockchain technology-focused company BTCS Inc. announced that it has been approved for listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the US, with its first day of trading being September 14. The company, which describes itself as “the first “Pure Play” US public company focused on digital assets and blockchain technologies,” said that its common stock will be trading under the ‘BTCS’ symbol.
• Bitcoin mining company Greenidge is expected to go public on Nasdaq through a merger with the customer support provider Support.com, according to a press release. The merger is expected to be completed by market close on September 14, with trading commencing in the newly merged company the next day.
• Eden Block, a European blockchain-focused venture capital firm, and the Solana Foundation, said they have launched a funding effort of up to USD 16m to advance the Solana (SOL) ecosystem in Israel. The fund will invest in pre-seed and seed-stage companies building the new Open Internet out of Israel, they added.

Career news

• Morgan Stanley said Sheena Shah will lead a new team that researches cryptocurrencies, Bloomberg reported, citing a memo to staff. Shah will be lead analyst and her team will research cryptocurrencies’ impact on both equities and fixed income worldwide, it added.
• The wallet provider, exchange, and blockchain explorer company Blockchain.com announced that it has hired Ian Mair as its Head of US Policy. Mair was previously Vice President at The Smith-Free Group, a Washington, DC-based consulting firm, where he advised fintech and crypto clients on regulatory matters, as well as helped “lobby multiple bills from legislative draft to public law.”
• SatoshiLabs Group, the holding company behind the Trezor hardware wallet, said it has appointed Tomáš Sušánka, formerly Head of Engineering, as Trezor’s new Chief Technology Officer.