Issue #67

Market Overview

As of the time of writing (Monday 5pm), the total market cap of the crypto asset market is $US1.46T, up (7.2%) from last week.

Below is the weekly performance of the top crypto assets. 

News Headline Highlights

• BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, filed for an ether (ETH) spot ETF with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
• Open interest of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s (CME) cash-settled bitcoin (BTC) futures contracts recently surpassed the 100,000 BTC mark for the first time on record. Last week, CME also took the top spot on the list of world's biggest bitcoin (BTC) futures exchanges, replacing Binance for the first time in two years.
• Coinbase added four national security experts to its Global Advisory Council. New members include 
  • Dr. Mark T. Esper - former U.S. Secretary of Defence
  • Stephanie Murphy - former congresswoman from Florida and former national security specialist at the Defense Department
  • Frances Townsend - former Counterterrorism and Homeland Security Advisor to President George W. Bush
  • David Urban - senior advisor to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign
• Standard Chartered and SBI Holdings have partnered to create a $100m fund to invest in crypto infrastructure startups. The fund plans to invest in crypto across areas such as decentralised finance, tokenization, infrastructure, payments and the metaverse, covering seed to Series C funding rounds.
• The top 13 public crypto-mining companies sold the equivalent of all the Bitcoin they minted, plus a little more, during October. Miners took advantage of the BTC’s yearly highs, with a liquidation-to-production ratio of 105%.
• Deutsche Börse, one of Europe’s largest stock exchange groups, plans to launch a regulated cryptocurrency exchange in 2024. Additionally, it plans to deploy stablecoins.
• HSBC Holdings announced plans to launch custody services for blockchain-based tokens representing traditional financial assets (e.g. tokenised shares, commodities, real estate, etc), which excludes cryptocurrency. The custody service is being developed in partnership with Swiss digital asset service provider Metaco and is expected to go live in 2024.

 Crypto Asset Project Updates

• Circle, the issuer of the second largest stablecoin (USDC, with a market cap >$24B), is rumoured to be considering an initial public offering in 2024. While there is no indication of how much Circle would seek to be valued in an IPO, they last tried to go public in 2022 at a $9B valuation.

Regulation Station

• The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Bank of England are seeking public feedback on their proposed approach to regulating stablecoins. The proposal covers any payment systems in the future that use stablecoins in the UK at systemic scale.
• Michael Barr, vice chair of the Federal Reserve for supervision, appeared at a DC Fintech Week, calling for a strong federal framework for stablecoins amid concerns that private entities are essentially creating private money.

The Weekly Deal Room

• Lightspeed Faction raised $285m for a new crypto fund.
• Ritual, a company building a decentralised AI compute platform, raised $25m in a round led by Archetype.
• Stackr Labs, an Ethereum scaling project, raised $5.5m in a Seed Round led by Archetype.
• Pimlico, an Ethereum infrastructure company focused on account abstraction, raised $4.2m in a Seed Round led by a16z Crypto.
• Definitive, a platform focused on bringing DeFi to Wallstreet, raised $4.1m in a Seed Round led by BlockTower.
• Authentik, an NFT authentication platform, raised $4m in a Seed Round led by Menyala.
• Stablr, a euro-backed stablecoin business, raised $3.5m in a Seed Round from Deribit, Maven 11, Theta Capital and others.
• Due, a global payments company leveraging blockchain and stablecoin technology, raised $3.3m in a Seed Round co-led by Semantic and Fabric Ventures.