Kategorie: Crypto Business

Near Protocol is looking to attract institutional investors to its ecosystem thanks to this latest development.

Digital asset company BitGo announced on Tuesday, July 19th, that it will support the NEAR Foundation protocol and its assets with qualified custody services. This latest development will make the NEAR token available to thousands of institutional investors globally. 

Thanks to this latest development, institutional investors holding the NEAR token can enjoy custody services and also stake their assets via the qualified custody wallets on BitGo. 

As part of the agreement, the NEAR Foundation, a Switzerland-based non-profit that oversees sustainable development on the protocol, will also custody its own treasury with BitGo. 

The foundation will also stake part of this treasury using BitGo wallets. While commenting on this latest development, BitGo’s vice president of product Nuri Chang stated that the new partnership would enable developers working on projects such as exchanges and protocols to add support for the NEAR token using BitGo’s programmatic wallets. He said;

“We’re also building BitGo staking support for NEAR in and of itself. What that means is clients can stake NEAR directly from a BitGo wallet with literally a few clicks.”

NEAR Protocol has been around since 2018 and is one of the leading cryptocurrency projects in the industry. 

Marieke Flament, CEO of the NEAR Foundation, commented that the partnership with BitGo indicates NEAR’s commitment to widening its ecosystem. She said;

“This is a significant step for NEAR and its foray into the world of institutional investments.”

Near Protocol has recently focused on cross-chain interoperability. Last year, the team launched Rainbow Bridge, allowing its users to transfer ERC-20 tokens between the Ethereum and NEAR blockchains. 

NEAR currently occupies 25th place in the cryptocurrency market in terms of total market cap. At press time, NEAR is trading at $4.46, up by more than 2% in the last 24 hours.

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Crypto.com, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms, has received regulatory approval to offer its services in Italy.

The platform said in an announcement on Tuesday that it had secured the nod from the Organismo Agenti e Mediatori (OAM).

Regulatory approval is ‘a major step forward’

The approval allows Crypto.com, which has seen aggressive expansion over the past several months, to offer its suite of crypto products and digital wallet services in the country. The milestone means the exchange’s activities will comply with local regulations.

“We are excited to receive this registration in Italy and view it as a major step forward for Crypto.com,” said Kris Marszalek, the exchange’s co-founder and CEO.

Marszalek, commenting on his company’s move to get registered, added:

“We are committed to building lasting growth in the region and will continue working with regulators to deliver a wide range of products and services to our valued customers.”

Crypto.com, founded in 2016 and currently counting over 50 million users globally, has added the Italian registration to the one recently received from Greek authorities.

The platform also has an in-principle approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and a provisional Virtual Asset License from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA).

The regulatory greenlight sees Crypto.com join other top cryptocurrency firms Binance and Coinbase in seeking registration and getting approval in Italy.

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Crypto exchange Bybit is partnering with Actant, a trading solutions provider that provides services to clients such as investment banks and hedge funds, to offer the best first-in-class trading tools to both institutional and retail traders.

The collaboration, which targets professional traders, sees Bybit fully integrated with the Actant platform. It means Actant can now provide its full range of trading tools to Bybit, including risk management, automation, and quoting.

“I’m confident this partnership will benefit both our institutional and retail clients,” Ben Zhou, a co-founder and CEO of Bybit said in a press release.

Following the partnership, Actant users can now also trade and clear on the Bybit exchange..

“Actant, as an industry leader, is a natural fit for Bybit, and we are excited to combine their institutional-grade tools with our deep liquidity and ultra-fast 100K TPS matching engine. This partnership will allow users of both our platforms to benefit from the exponential growth of the crypto derivatives market, and strengthen both parties’ positions as market leaders,” he added.

Bybit, one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, was established in March 2018. The company’s growth over the last few two years has seen it strike major partnerships, including Formula One team Oracle Red Bull Racing, and German soccer giants Borussia Dortmund.

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The Ripple co-founder has regularly sold off his XRP holdings for eight years, starting in 2014.

Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb, who left the company in 2014 with a huge 9 billion XRP package as part of the settlement for severing ties, has sold the last of that haul.

On Sunday, McCaleb finally sold the remaining 1.1 million XRP to bring to an end an eight-year sell-off, data on the XRP Scan shows.

Per the blockchain explorer, the former Ripple execs’ wallet address dubbed “tacostand” made the last of the regular transfers at 6:31 UTC. The sale netted the Stellar (XLM) co-founder $394,742 based on the XRP/USD price at the time.

The tacostand wallet has a balance of 47.69 XRP.

XRP price

McCaleb’s last XRP dump comes as the crypto market sees some relief bounce, although overall sentiment remains largely negative after a debilitating crypto winter. This past weekend however saw a positive bounce for crypto, with hitting weekly gains of nearly 12%.

At the time of writing, XRP/USD is poised at 0.36, up 3% in the past 24 hours.

However, while XRP is trading nearly 13% up in the past one month, it’s down by more than 37% over the past year. The bear market has also seen the cryptocurrency’s value fall almost 90% since its all-time high of $3.40 reached in January 2018.

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Voyager Digital filed for bankruptcy earlier this month and is now looking to settle its clients soon.

Struggling cryptocurrency broker Voyager Digital has asked the federal bankruptcy court to honour withdrawal requests from its clients.

According to the company’s filings, there are customer withdrawals worth over $350 million currently held by Metropolitan Commercial Bank. 

Voyager Digital pointed out that it has around $1.3 billion worth of cryptocurrencies on its platform. However, it also held more than $350 million in a For Benefit of Customers (FBO) account at Metropolitan Commercial Bank.

The cryptocurrency broker added that it has claims against Three Arrows Capital exceeding $650 million.

Voyager Digital’s July 14 filing with the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York said;

“The debtors have determined, in their business judgment, that failure by the debtors to honor withdrawals any longer could materially harm customer morale during these Chapter 11 cases. Reinstating access to withdrawals will alleviate customer concerns that access to their cash held in the [Metropolitan Commercial Bank] accounts, and the integrity of the platform, is restored.”

In its court filing, the cryptocurrency broker asked the bankruptcy court to allow it to conduct other financial actions. 

Some of these actions include liquidating assets from customer accounts with negative balances, “sweep cash” held in third-party platforms and exchanges, conducting “ordinary course reconciliation” of the customer accounts, continuing cryptocurrency staking and “granting related relief.”

The bankruptcy court has scheduled a hearing for August 4 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time. 

Voyager Digital was one of the leading cryptocurrency brokerage platforms prior to its bankruptcy. The bear market has affected the performance of numerous cryptocurrency companies, including the likes of Celsius and Babel Finance.

The total cryptocurrency market cap stands below $1 trillion, down from the all-time high of $3 trillion recorded in November 2021. 

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