THIS NEWSLETTER IS SPONSORED BY |  |  | - Celsius says 'employee' suspended amid rumors of CFO arrest in Israel. Crypto lending firm Celsius Network said Friday that it has suspended an "employee" amid rumors of its CFO Yaron Shalem's arrest in Israel. "We were recently made aware of a police investigation in Israel involving an employee," Celsius tweeted. "While this is in no way related to the employee's time or work at @CelsiusNetwork, the employee was immediately suspended. We have also verified that no assets were misplaced or mishandled." The tweet came after The Block reached out to Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky, confirming the arrest of Shalem. Mashinsky hasn't yet responded. While the tweet doesn't say the employee was Shalem, the suspension clearly involves him.
| - Crypto data firm DappRadar is set to launch its own token. DappRadar, a crypto startup that provides data to analyze decentralized applications (dapps), is set to launch its own native token called radar. Announcing the news on Thursday, Lithuania-based DappRadar said the token will help it decentralize its business in the future. The firm also announced that it is repositioning to a full-scale dapp store, similar to a centralized app store but for dapps. Founded in 2018 by Skirmantas Januškas, DappRadar provides data for dapps such as transaction activity, token volume, and active users.
| - China's crypto censorship reaches over news outlets and mining pools. China's internet censorship machine has expanded to include crypto media outlets and mining pools in a continued attempt to minimize Chinese users' exposure to the crypto market ecosystem. Chainnews, one of the major Chinese crypto media outlets established since 2017, is now shutting down all channels of content production and distribution. Meanwhile, Chinese internet service providers have taken further steps to detect and block domestic miner IPs from connecting to major mining pool services, based on a China Telecom document seen by The Block. These moves are signs that China is not loosening its grip over the crypto industry even if its most severe crackdown efforts ever since the summer has already dampened retail interests and forced businesses and executives to either cut ties with the Chinese market or physically move overseas.
| | | In September, TrueLayer became the latest addition to the ever-expanding stable of open banking unicorns in Europe.
Now, the firm's CEO and co-founder Francesco Simoneschi is focused on what he sees as the untapped potential of open banking to onboard to decentralized finance.
"My view is that open banking is probably one of the best possible payment methods you could use to move assets from outside of crypto to inside of crypto," he says.
In Europe, open banking refers to a three-year-old framework for regulating the customer-consented transfer of banking data to authorized third parties. The concept isn't limited to Europe, however. TrueLayer is currently expanding to Australia, another place where the fever has caught on. Most recently, the company poached Rob Hale from Regional Australia Bank, a pioneer of open banking down under.
Open Banking is seen as a challenger to the established card-based payment systems due to how it can facilitate account-to-account transactions. That helps explain the raft of open banking startup acquisitions by legacy card corporations. In June, Sweden's Tink was acquired by Visa and in September, the Danish open banking service Aiia was bought by Mastercard.
Use cases for open banking range from aggregating bank accounts into one app to authentication services and even payouts. According to Simoneschi, the growing popularity of DeFi has created another obvious one.
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From now until the end of the year, Ledn is giving a $50 USDC bonus* to The Block's readership when they fund a new Ledn account. Sign up below. | *Terms and conditions apply. | | | - Monthly data for decentralized exchanges (DEXs) indicates that the ecosystem has seen nearly $100 billion in volume for the month of November as of Sunday.
| - A virtual land plot in the Axie Infinity NFT game sold for a record price of 550 ether (about $2.4 million) on Wednesday.
| - Crypto exchange Coinbase has acquired the crypto wallet startup BRD, according to a notice from its leadership team. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
| - Avocado Guild, a blockchain gaming startup similar to a16z-backed Yield Guild Games, raised $18 million in a Series A funding round.
| - A mistake enabled someone to spend $50,000 to receive $1.43 million of olympus (OHM) tokens when they should have received far less, according to an update in the OlympusDAO Discord.
| - Automated expenses fintech Payhawk closed a $112 million Series B round, valuing the company at $570 million.
| - Royal, the startup building a marketplace for digital assets tied to music artists, secured $55 million funding through a Series A fundraise led by a16z.
| | | The Block Research - Weekly Insights | - Play-to-Earn gaming guilds. The play-to-earn (P2E) model reshapes the gaming industry by transforming the conventional one-way interaction between players and the game into a two-way relationship. Erina Azmi's subscriber-only deep-dive explores the formation of these economic forces within the blockchain gaming space, some of which have even secured venture funding.
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