THIS NEWSLETTER IS SPONSORED BY | Happy Saturday! New in the noise: China's crypto industry is going away, crypto company fundraising season is upon us, and El Salvador says it has a "volcanode." Signal below. Mike Orcutt here. | | | China is rapidly erasing its crypto industry. If you've been paying attention to crypto news for a few years, it would be understandable if you are desensitized to headlines claiming that China is "banning" crypto. But as Wolfie Zhao reports, the pace at which crypto companies that serve Chinese users are now cutting off access or shutting down completely suggests that the latest crackdown is the most severe ever. The headlines tell the story: China-based Ethereum mining pool Sparkpool, the second-largest ETH pool by hash rate, is shutting down all services. China-based Ethereum mining pool BeePool, the fourth-largest by hash rate, will shut down on October 15. Alibaba will begin blocking crypto mining equipment sales next month. Huobi will suspend all China-based user accounts later this year. And China's Great Firewall is now blocking crypto market data sites CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap and TradingView. | Some of the largest crypto trading firms are becoming venture capitalists as well. Crypto market-making firms GSR and Wintermute participated in 30 venture funding rounds during the third quarter of this year. Jump Capital, a venture firm affiliated with Jump Trading, took part in 10. Why? Frank Chaparro explains. | It's fundraising season in the crypto industry. Gemini and BinanceUS lead the list of big names in the crypto industry that are in the process of raising money at a time when, as Frank Chaparro reports, "capital is popuring into crypto companies." | ICYMI: A Solana NFT sold for a record $2.1 million. A Twitter exec posted a video showing the company's work on NFT profile pictures. R3 is developing a DeFi network with a native token. Coinbase Pro will add support for Avalanche's AVAX token. Coinbase is planning to launch a new feature that lets US customers directly deposit their paychecks into their Coinbase accounts. NFT game Axie Infinity is launching a decentralized exchange. Binance hired two former IRS cyber investigators. Binance will restrict crypto offerings to Singapore users on its main platform. TikTok is launching an NFT collection. Dapper Labs and the National Football League are planning to launch a football-focused NFT marketplace. Ripple launched a $250 million fund to support NFT projects on XRP Ledger. | Visa unveiled a concept platform aimed at central bank digital currency interoperability. MassMutual-owned fintech Flourish launched a service to connect financial advisory clients with bitcoin. Miami mayor Francis Suarez says a cryptocurrency called MiamiCoin has raised $7 million for the city since August. The San Jose, California Mayor's office partnered with crypto-based networking startup Helium to install Helium miners throughout the city. | Outgoing CFTC commissioner Dan Berkovitz will be the SEC's new general counsel. The Biden administration plans to convene 30 nations to talk about ransomware and international cybercrime. The CFTC charged 12 crypto options merchants with failing to register. Kraken will pay a $1.25 million civil penalty to settle charges from the CFTC that it failed to register as a futures commission merchant. A new bill in the US Senate calls on the Treasury Department to study the global crypto mining industry. Ethereum researcher Virgil Griffith pled guilty to charges that he violated sanctions against North Korea while attending a conference in Pyongyang in 2019. | | | Mapping out Arweave's ecosystem. The Block's resident industry cartographer is back at it. This time John Dantoni has mapped out the landscape around decentralized data storage platform Arweave ( The Block Research subscription required). In total, The Block Research has identified 105 projects and companies across 20 different verticals building on top of Arweave, which was founded in 2017.
How Axie Infinity is bridging the divide between blockchain gaming and DeFi. The massively popular "play-to-earn" game has spent extended time in the spotlight this year. On the most recent episode of The Scoop, Frank Chaparro sat down with Jeff "Jiho" Zirlin, cofounder and growth lead for the company behind Axie, to talk about the game's popularity — and what comes next. | | | THIS NEWSLETTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY | Yup, you saw that right — NO maker fees when you trade spot with us! Our competitive taker fees also help you optimize your spot trades every single time.
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More than 2 million users have kickstarted their Bybit journey. You can, too, by signing up here. | | | The Biden administration apparetnly wants to regulate stablecoin issuers like banks. That's according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal that says that the administration is "considering ways to impose bank-like regulations" on stablecoin firms, and that it is also "expected to urge Congress to consider legislation to create a special-purpose charter for such firms that would be tailored to their business models." | | | "We're still testing and installing, but this is officially the first Bitcoin mining from the volcanode. " —El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, claiming on Twitter that his government has started mining bitcoin using geothermal energy derived from a volcano. | | | You are receiving this e-mail because you are subscribed to The Block's free newsletter. If someone shared this newsletter with you, you can easily subscribe to receive it in your inbox here. If you're looking for even more content, we have a separate newsletter for The Block Research, which you can sign-up for here. | | | | |
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