Autor Cointelegraph By Helen Partz

Alameda Research leads $35M fund raise for crypto trading app Stacked

Alameda Research leads $35M fund raise for crypto trading app Stacked

Uverejnil používateľ | dec 6, 2021 |

Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency trading firm founded by crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, has led a $35 million investment in the automated crypto trading app Stacked.On Dec. 9, the startup officially announced the successful completion of a Series A funding round co-led by Alameda and Mirana Ventures, a venture partner of Bybit exchange and BitDAO.The new funding will reportedly help Stacked grow its 40-person team to over 100 employees in 2022 and continue scaling its suite crypto portfolios and automated lending products.According to Alameda Research Ventures’ partner Brian Lee, Alameda started investing in Stacked over a year ago and is now sure about their ability to provide a “unique and simple investment experience for retail investors.”“The ability to give users some guardrails when building a portfolio, while also allowing that user to custody funds on their preferred exchange is something investors really need,” Lee noted. Launched in April 2020, Stacked is a web-based application allowing users to access vetted trading strategies and investment portfolios via pre-built stacks, which are modeled after popular crypto indexes, hedge funds and other investor portfolios. The platform plans to go fully mobile within six months.According to Stacked co-founder and CEO Joel Birch, stacks including decentralized finance (DeFi) coins are among the most popular on the platform. According to Stacked’s data at the time of writing, nonfungible token (NFT)-based stacks are the top-performing stacks, including a mixture of large- and small-cap coins providing exposure to NFT markets.Stacked’s chief revenue officer Alan Eschweiler stressed the importance of major companies backing the firm. “It’s no accident that two of the largest exchanges in the crypto space co-lead this investment round. These exchanges, and others, have been key partners of ours since day one, introducing their users to more automated tools for investing,” he said.Related: FTX releases crypto regulation proposals before US congressional hearingThe news comes as Bankman-Fried’s exchange FTX is reportedly looking to raise $1.5 billion for its global cryptocurrency derivatives exchange and U.S. affiliate FTX.US. Tech-focused publication The Information reported Dec. 3 that the new fundraise would value FTX and FTX.US at $32 billion and $8 billion, respectively.

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Binance Smart Chain and Animoca Brands form $200M fund for GameFi projects

Binance Smart Chain and Animoca Brands form $200M fund for GameFi projects

Uverejnil používateľ | dec 6, 2021 |

Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Animoca Brands are launching a $200 million investment program to incubate early cryptocurrency-focused gaming projects building on BSC.BSC and Animonica announced Dec. 6 that they are co-investing up to $100 million each to support game projects in the GameFi sector.One of the largest blockchain ecosystems, BSC will be investing from its $1 billion accelerator arm for decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFT) and GameFi. The fund was set up earlier this year to extend BSC ecosystem services and drive mainstream adoption across the fintech sector.Animoca Brands is a major player in blockchain gaming and the open metaverse, working on providing property rights via NFTs and gaming. The firm has invested in major NFT-related projects including Axie Infinity, OpenSea, Bitski, Harmony and others.“With this co-investment, projects building on BSC will get the opportunity to gain insights and expertise from leading gaming giants such as Animoca Brands, along with collaboration opportunities with blockchain experts from the BSC Community,” BSC investment director Gwendolyn Regina said.Related: Animoca Brands raises $5M for NFT marketplace, QuiddGameFi, a mix of gaming and DeFi, has been one of the biggest buzzwords in the cryptocurrency industry recently alongside the concept of the metaverse. GameFi refers to the financialization of video gaming and operates under a play-to-earn model instead of play-to-win. A number of major crypto companies and investment firms have been investing in GameFi over the past couple of months, including Huobi crypto exchange, Solana Ventures, FTX, Sanctor Capital, and others.

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Crypto lending firm Celsius reportedly affected in BadgerDAO exploit

Crypto lending firm Celsius reportedly affected in BadgerDAO exploit

Uverejnil používateľ | dec 3, 2021 |

Cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius has reportedly lost over $50 million in the exploit of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol BadgerDAO.As reported by Cointelegraph on Dec. 2, the attack targeted the protocol on the Ethereum network, reaping an unconfirmed $120 million in assets.According to one Redditor, the biggest alleged victim of the hack was an address that lost 896 Wrapped Bitcoin ($51 million). The address is supposed to be owned by Celsius “since it has interacted with other addresses known to be owned by them.”The address regularly transacts with an address that has a $67 million balance, $40 million of which is Celsius’ eponymous native token CEL.The address is also alleged to be owned by Celsius as it is related to at least one address that is tagged as Celsius Network Wallet 5 on Etherscan as they share several major transactions.“All this means that there’s a high chance that the address who lost 900 BTC was owned by Celsius. Celsius has not confirmed anything yet, so this is all speculation for now, so we don’t know for sure if Celsius was affected or not,” the user suggested.Celsius did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.The first reports on BadgerDAO’s security breach surfaced in early December, with the protocol officially announcing that it received multiple exports of unauthorized withdrawals of user funds on Dec. 1. The Badger team continued investigating the issue and paused all smart contracts on the protocol to avoid any further losses.The Celsius token experienced a notable drop in late November. After reaching $4.5 on Nov. 25, CEL dropped to as low as $3.9 the next day, slightly recovering since then. At the time of writing, CEL is trading at $4.00, which is down around 9% over the past seven days but up around 1% over the past 14 days.14-day CEL token price. Source: CoinGeckoRelated: DeFi disasters: $31M drained from MonoX and BadgerDAO losses top $120MCelsius Network is a major crypto lending platform, allowing users to earn interest on holding digital assets like Bitcoin (BTC). The company has emerged as one of the biggest players in DeFi, smashing a valuation between $3.5 billion after expanding its $400-million Series B funding round from October to $750 million in late November.

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Crypto community responds to Charlie Munger yelling at Bitcoin again

Crypto community responds to Charlie Munger yelling at Bitcoin again

Uverejnil používateľ | dec 3, 2021 |

As 97-year-old investment veteran Charlie Munger continues scolding cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), the crypto community quickly responded to his latest comments.On Friday, the vice-chairman of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway spoke of crypto at Australia’s investor event, the Sohn Hearts & Minds Conference, reiterating his extreme skepticism to the industry, local news agency The Sydney Morning Herald reported.A known cryptocurrency naysayer, Munger has provided some fresh remarks on the crypto industry, arguing that the current crypto ecosystem is even crazier than the dot-com era overall. “I think the dot com boom was crazier in terms of valuations than even what we have now,” he noted.Munger also stressed that he supported China’s latest attempt to ban cryptocurrency and crackdown on “some of the exuberances” of capitalism, stating:“Believe me, the people who are creating cryptocurrencies are not thinking about the customer, they are thinking about themselves […] ​​I want to make my money by selling people things that are good for them, not things that are bad for them.”Several people in the crypto community have subsequently reacted to Munger’s latest comments on Bitcoin. Many pointed out that the inability to understand new tech like Bitcoin at his age is not a surprise.“I’m never going to buy a cryptocurrency. I wish they’d never been invented,” Munger added.Imagine, he is 97 years old.He was alive when ford invented the Model T (almost).I guess holding stocks takes ages to make a profit. Leave the poor man alone, he is just shocked we are pumping 1300% weekly.Different times old man.— The Crypto Head (@TheCryptoHead) December 3, 2021Synthetix founder Kain Warwick also emphasized that despite Munger’s willingness to make money by selling good things, Berkshire Hathaway is the largest shareholder of Coca-Cola, which is supposed to be a “significant contributor to many health conditions.”Charlie munger: I want to make my money by selling people things that are good for them, not things that are bad for them.Also Charlie Munger: load up on some more of that high fructose corn syrup kiddies! Isn’t it just dandy! https://t.co/xnefgTmLho— kain.eth ⚔️ (@kaiynne) December 3, 2021

Jamil Hasan, program director of crypto and blockchain podcast series The Crypto Corner, noted that the industry should not be bothered by Munger not investing in crypto: “I’m ok if Charlie Munger doesn’t buy crypto. I’m certain there are some things that Charlie buys that I don’t need.”Some crypto industry players also emphasized that China attempted to ban Bitcoin multiple times over the past eight years, but it did not prevent the cryptocurrency from surging over 5,000%.Charlie Munger: I’m glad China banned #BitcoinBitcoin: Up 5585% since China’s first ban in 2013 pic.twitter.com/Pu6MdsBJxZ— Blockworks (@Blockworks_) December 3, 2021

Related: Institutional managers bought the dip as crypto funds see $154M in weekly inflowsWhile some investment legends like Munger keep maintaining a hard stance on crypto, other investment giants such as SkyBridge Capital are getting increasingly bullish on Bitcoin. As such, Anthony Scaramucci’s platform for investing in hedge funds grew its exposure to crypto-related assets by nearly 150% in Q3.

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NFT music platforms to disrupt Spotify in 2022, Saxo Bank predicts

NFT music platforms to disrupt Spotify in 2022, Saxo Bank predicts

Uverejnil používateľ | dec 3, 2021 |

As popular music streaming services like Spotify cut much of musicians’ revenues, new technologies like nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are likely to help artists grab back their fair share, Saxo Bank predicted.According to one of Saxo Bank’s Outrageous Predictions 2022: Revolution, music creators would benefit from NFT-based streaming platforms as they allow distributing music directly to listeners without centralized middlemen charging a fee. Saxo Bank’s cryptocurrency analyst Mads Eberhardt argued that mainstream music streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music take a substantial cut, which together with the cut paid to labels is some 75% or more of the total revenue.“These models don’t guide individual subscribers’ fees to the actual music an individual subscriber listens to,” Eberhardt stated, adding:“The use case for NFTs could prove particularly compelling in the next step for the technology for content generators in the music industry as musicians feel unfairly treated by the revenue sharing models of the current streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.”The analyst noted that NFT-based music streaming projects are likely to start kicking off in 2022, including initiatives like Audius, a blockchain music platform backed by Katy Perry, The Chainsmokers and Jason Derulo. Based on blockchain, the Audius platform is a decentralized music-sharing and streaming protocol designed to cut out the middleman from the music industry and allow fans and creators to interact with each other directly.In contrast, the future of traditional streaming platforms like Spotify is “bleak,” according to Saxo Bank. The company predicted that Spotify shares would tumble 33% in 2022. SPOT has already been dropping in 2021: starting the year around $300, Spotify shares dropped to as low as $204 in August, according to data from TradingView. At the time of writing, SPOT is trading at $229.In the meantime, Spotify’s revenues have been steadily growing over time, reflecting much potential for NFT-based music platforms to disrupt. According to Spotify’s official 2020 financial results, the company generated 7.85 billion euro ($9.5 billion) revenue last year, a 16% increase from 2019. Spotify’s financials continued growing in 2021, with the total amount of monthly active users surging 19% year-on-year to 381 million in Q3 2021.Source: Business of AppsRelated: NFT music marketplace Royal raises $55M in Series A roundAs previously reported, Spotify has been paying attention to the cryptocurrency industry, looking for talent with a crypto background in late 2020. The firm is also well aware of the rise of NFTs as it mentioned NFTs in its Spotify Wrapped 2021 compiled for users on Dec. 1, 2021.I will say I was not expecting to see an NFT reference in my Spotify Wrapped today but here we are pic.twitter.com/KnpwrR90Y4— Meghan Bobrowsky (@MeghanBobrowsky) December 1, 2021Spotify did not immediately respond to Cointelegraph’s request for comment.

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