New Millions For Crypto Projects, Booming Crypto Careers + More News
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
- Venture capital firm CMCC Global is targeting USD 300m of assets in its latest crypto fund, and attracting traditional investors like billionaire Richard Li to bet on blockchain technology and its applications, according to Bloomberg. Launched in April, its fourth crypto token fund now has assets under management of close to USD 90m, with a preliminary goal of reaching the USD 300m hard cap early next year, per the report.
- MicroStrategy said it bought almost BTC 9,000 in the third quarter and added that it will consider raising additional money to keep doing so. The company said it had BTC 114,042 (USD 7.1bn) as of the end of September.
- Over 40 crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are now awaiting listing in the United States, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart.
- Coinbase Ventures has announced that they made 49 investments in Q3 of 2021, up from 28 investments made in Q2, and 24 in Q1. They added that they saw heavy development across centralized finance (CeFi) in the United States, Layer-1/Layer-2, cross-chain protocols, as well as Web3 tooling.
- Decentralized applications (dapps) platform Moralis announced it has raised EUR 11.5m (USD 13.37m) in a funding round led by EQT Ventures. They claim they will use this seed funding for hiring and continued product development.
Career news
- LinkedIn said that demand for employees with experience in crypto or blockchain is on the rise across many companies, as job postings in the United States that included terms like “blockchain” or “crypto” grew 615% compared to those in August 2020. The LinkedIn team added that financial services firms were expected to hire more than three times as many staff with experience in digital assets than in 2015.
Regulation news
- The US Department of Justice is looking for someone to head its newly announced National Cryptocurrency Enforcement team, according to a job posting. The director will lead “a team of experienced prosecutors investigating and prosecuting cryptocurrency cases as a central part of a nationwide enforcement effort to combat the use of cryptocurrency as an illicit tool,” the job posting said.
- India might get a legal framework to regulate and govern the crypto investment market by next February, Business Today reported. The government is likely to opt for regulating cryptoassets as an asset class, somewhat on the lines of commodities, with appropriate taxation of transactions and gains, instead of banning it as previously speculated, it added.
- The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a key role in policing cryptocurrency payments and doesn’t need to wait for other agencies to act before taking steps to crack down on abuses in the market, Senator Elizabeth Warren told Bloomberg.
Adoption news
- Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach said in the third-quarter earnings call that their recent acquisition of crypto analytics firm CipherTrace is a “massive services opportunity.” “We can’t run fast enough right now to get into the [crypto transactions compliance checks] space, because a lot of other people are deep into crypto, and these questions are not resolved,” he added.
- The University of Pennsylvania will accept cryptocurrency as tuition payment for a new online program at the Wharton School, making Penn the first Ivy League institution and Wharton the first US business school to allow students to pay their tuition using the digital currency, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported. The option is limited to the Economics of Blockchain and Digital Assets course, a six-week certificate program developed in partnership with blockchain consulting firm Prysm Group, where crypto payments in bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), and USD Coin (USDC) will be accepted.
Mining news
- Bitcoin mining difficulty, or the measure of how hard it is to compete for mining rewards, is expected to go up by around 7% in two days, possibly reaching 21.55 T, per BTC.com estimations. This would be the eighth rise in a row as the measure is heading towards its all-time high of 25.05 T, seen in mid-May.
- Computing solutions provider Canaan announced a follow-on purchase order from HIVE Blockchain Technologies for 6,500 units of its Avalon Bitcoin mining machines. HIVE currently has approximately 1.2 EH/s of Bitcoin mining capacity, and with this new purchase, HIVE’s bitcoin ASIC pipeline will be at 2 EH/s by December 2021, and 3 EH/s by March 2022, they added.
Legal news
- The New Jersey Attorney General and the New Jersey Bureau of Securities have announced cease and desist orders against five websites running crypto-related frauds that have cost three victims almost USD 900,000. Bulk Investments, Forte Trade, Dilna Investments d/b/a Fidelity Revenue, RealBitcore Mining, and FilefxOption all, according to authorities, advertise to investors using some combination of hazy promises of returns, false claims of registration or licensing, and fake testimonials.
