Issue #47

Magnet in the Media

• Egor Sidelska was featured in the Financial Standard discussing the implications of BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF for institutional adoption of BTC. 
• Benjamin Celermajer appeared on New Zealand Media & Entertainment (NZME) also discussing the implications of the BlackRock ETF filing on crypto markets with Madison Reidy.

Market Overview

As of the time of writing (Monday 5pm), the total market cap of the crypto asset market is $US1.22T, up (9.4%) from last week.

Below is the weekly performance of the top crypto and NFT assets. 

News Headline Highlights

• There was a flurry of institutional service provision for Bitcoin from some of the world’s largest banks/asset managers, including:
  • Deutsche Bank applied for a digital asset licence to operate as a custody service.
  • Credit Agricole's CACEIS registered in France as crypto custody services provider.
  • EDX, an exchange backed by Citadel, Fidelity and Charles Schwab, launched bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash and litecoin spot markets.  
  • Invesco and WisdomTree both follow BlackRock in filing for a spot Bitcoin ETF.
• The Volatility Shares 2x Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITX) is the first leveraged bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund to list in the US after not being rejected by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
• Belgium’s Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) has ordered Binance to cease operations immediately, stating the world’s largest crypto exchange offered certain services from countries that are not members of the European Economic Area.
• A report from Coinbase finds that 50% of Fortune 100 companies have had crypto initiatives underway since the beginning of 2020. 

 Crypto Asset Project Updates

• Polygon Labs proposes upgrade of flagship side chain to “zkEVM Validium”. The upgrade aims to align the current Polygon PoS chain with the vision for Polygon 2.0, a future version of Polygon that leverages a specific type of zero-knowledge scaling technology called validium.
• After being approved through a governance vote, Curve has added both WETH and WBTC as collateral for their crvUSD stablecoin, each with $200m  debt ceiling.
• US Dollar Stablecoin, TrueUSD (TUSD), has thus far maintained its peg despite being shorted by traders following speculation around the solvency of issuer Prime Trust. Magnet Quick Take: If you own any TUSD there is no sense in risking solvency. Trade it for another stablecoin whilst this plays out.

Regulation Station

• In a testimony in front of the House Financial Services Committee, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell argued for a robust federal role in the regulation of the stablecoins. In the testimony, he commented “we do see payment stablecoins as money”, and also noted his beliefs that the central bank should play a role in approving stablecoin issuance.
• Stablecoins and cryptocurrency regulation are set to become UK law as the Financial Services and Markets Bill enters its final stages of the UK Parliamentary Process.
• The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) published a whitepaper proposing a common protocol to specify conditions for the use of digital money such as central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), tokenised bank deposits, and stablecoins on a distributed ledger. 
• In a keynote at an American Bankers Association event, the acting head of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), commented that tokenization of assets is a serious advance into the future of finance, but decentralised blockchains may be too problematic (i.e. scalability and security concerns) to handle that movement.

The Weekly Deal Room

• Neutron, a Cosmos ecosystem smart contract infrastructure company, raised $10m in a Seed Round led by Binance Labs.
• Maverick Protocol, a project focussed on improving DeFi infrastructure, raised $9m in a Venture Round led by Founders Fund.
• Kaito, an AI search engine focussed on crypto related data, raised $5.5m at an $87.5m valuation in a Series A funding round led by Superscrypt.
• Waterfall, an NFT trading, pricing and lending protocol, raised $4m in a Seed Round led by Electric Capital and Pantera.
• Northstake, an institutional crypto staking platform, raised $3m in a round from Preseed Ventures, Morph Capital, Funfair Ventures and Delta Blockchain Fund.
• Earn Network, a community driven marketplace for liquid investments, raised $2.7m in a Seed Round led by Shima Capital.