Kategorie: Crypto Business

Gavin Wood, the founder of the blockchain platform and cryptocurrency Polkadot (DOT), has just donated $5.8 million worth of DOT to Ukraine.

According to a DOT transaction the Polkadot founder just shared, the total donation is 298,367 DOT tokens.

Given DOT/USD is trading around $19.33, Wood’s donation stands at around $5.8 million.

Wood had this week promised to donate $5 million to the Ukrainian government if they posted a Polkadot address in addition to the Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Tether (USDT) addresses opened after last week’s Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Wood pledged $5 million if Ukraine added a DOT address

Earlier on Tuesday, 1 March 1, 2022, Ukraine announced that it was now accepting crypto donations in Polkadot.

In a tweet posted from the official government account, Ukraine authorities thanked the global community for the donations received so far. They released a DOT address and noted that they could accept donations in other cryptocurrencies too.

“The people of Ukraine are grateful for the support and donations from the global crypto community as we protect our freedom. We are now accepting Polkadot donations too: $DOT: 1x8aa2N2Ar9SQweJv9vsuZn3WYDHu7gMQu1RePjZuBe33Hv. More cryptocurrencies to be accepted soon,” the tweet read.

Gavin Wood made his pledge via a reply to the Ukrainian government’s earlier plea for more donations. While he could have simply donated in BTC, ETH, or USDT, Wood’s request for a DOT address appears not to be such a bad move after all for the Ukrainian government.

The addition of the Polkadot cryptocurrency could open up the donation basket to more people, boosting the effort to support the battle against Russia and to offer humanitarian aid to a growing number of people.

The DOT address has just over $6 million at the time of writing, but the amount could grow quickly as witnessed with BTC and ETH over the past week.

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• Crypto VCs Sanctor Capital and GBV co-led the funding round
• The Manchester start-up plans to use the funds to innovate and build an NFT platform that allows for a democratised access and usage by artists and collectors.

UK-based non-fungible token (NFT) platform KnownOrigin has raised $4.85 million in its series A funding round the startup said in a press release shared with CoinJournal.

Venture capital firms GBV and Sanctor Capital co-led the financing round, with participation from D1 Ventures, Cultur3 Capital, LD Capital, MetaCartel Ventures DAO, and Pluto Digital. The round also attracted support from Future Arts, Yin Cao and Colborn.

KnownOrigin ‘KO’ is a pioneer NFT platform, co-founded in 2018 by David Moore, Andy Gray and James Morgan. The platform has over the years allowed for a democratised art world where artists showcase and sell their digital artwork via simplified transaction processes.

The Manchester-based startup plans to use the new funds to reinvest in its NFT digital art marketplace, with the aim of ensuring creatives continue to benefit from new technologies in the space like Web 3 and Metaverse.

Partnerships include Netflix and Adidas

According to co-founder James Morgan, the $4.85 million will help the startup to grow, innovate and to build an ecosystem that will benefit the broader NFT space.

To help achieve these goals, the KnowOrigin team has looked for investment and expertise from prominent crypto investors and blockchain innovators in the NFT space. It has also partnered with top brands such as streaming giant Netflix, Europe’s largest sportswear firm Adidas and US-based computer software company Adobe.

Commenting on the investment, co-founder Morgan said the aim is to offer “a permissionless, transparent, fair thriving ecosystem where creators and collectors can engage in culture excellence and experience.”

Bringing NFTs to the community

KnownOrigin has over 5000 creators on its platform, with sales of over $30 million in the past year alone netted from a growing market of NFT collectors from across the world.

As well as providing an ecosystem that favours NFT creators and artists, KO has built a new royalties system that allows artists to receive royalties instantly after every sale.

But their work does not end with the platform participants, the team noted in the press announcement. The startup has sought to bring the NFT world to the Manchester community, including events that feature both local and global NFT talent.

The post UK-Based NFT Platform KnownOrigin Secures $4.85M Series A Investment appeared first on Coin Journal.

• The collaboration allows for a syndicated lending solution, which will help Nexo reach a growing user base of crypto miners utilizing BlockFills’ technology.
• BlockFills on the other hand will benefit from the strategic access to Nexo Prime, a premium brokerage solution tailored to meet institutional investor needs.

Nexo and financial technology firm BlockFills have announced a strategic partnership that sees the regulated digital assets provider expand its brokerage services to crypto miners.

The announcement comes a few weeks after BlockFills secured $37 million in its Series funding, with Nexo as one of the investors.

Targeting BlockFills‘ miner-rich client base

The partnership will see Nexo leverage the end-to-end digital asset solutions offered by BlockFills to roll out crypto services targeted at cryptocurrency miners. The collaboration allows Nexo to avail syndicated lending services via BlockFills’ software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform Phoenix.

This allows Nexo to tap into a miner-rich client base at BlockFills, using its own advanced financial tools to benefit the crypto mining community. 

In addition to this, the partnership allows for the two firms, via Nexo Prime, to expand their business reach to institutional investors.

“Nexo’s collaboration with BlockFills is logical and synergistic,” said Tatiana Metodieva, the head of corporate finance and investments at Nexo.

 “Our service offerings, geographic coverage, and addressable user bases complement each other; thus, our joint work will be conducive to the growth of our respective business operations in the digital assets industry,” she added.

‘Reliable trading opportunities’

Nick Hammer, co-founder and CEO of BlockFills said that the partnership allows both companies to offer their respective clients “reliable trading opportunities.”

Nexo’s partnership with BlockFills is yet another growth opportunity for the company as it seeks to increase its presence in the decentralized finance (DeFi) and the metaverse.

The firm’s Instant Crypto Credit Lines facility allows users to efficiently handle their crypto tax obligations while maximizing the value and utility of their holdings.

Apart from that, Nexo offers a high-yield Earn Crypto Interest suite, instant exchange, and over-the-counter (OTC) trading.

Nexo serves over 3 million users from across 200 jurisdictions.

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• Realm users can tap into decentralised ads and earn as they experience the metaverse.
• The partnership will allow players to opt-in or opt-out as they wish.

Realm has teamed up with decentralised advertising exchange Alkimi Exchange to bring fraud-free and transparent advertising to the play-to-earn platform’s Metaverse.

Built on Constellation’s Hypergraph, Alkimi aims at bringing value exchange to advertisers, publishers and players within the industry.

The partnership, according to the press announcement, sees Realm and Alkimi align the core values of ensuring a sustainable advertising environment. The collaboration allows Realm to use the Hypergraph-based platform’s technology to incentivise players, making it easy to earn from advertisements.

Growth within the metaverse has seen major brands and providers seek to leverage the technology to reach potential customers.

As the branded partnerships explore the ads, players can choose to opt-in or out, with access to “custom, branded content” or retain control over their data.

“Realm partnering with Alkimi enables us to tap into revenue streams from existing advertising formats, then share that revenue with the player that created the data in a transparent way,” Realm co-founder and CEO Matthew Larby said.

Creating a personalised NFT microverse

Realm’s mobile-first, play-to-earn (P2E) platform provides for a metaverse environment where gamers and artists have the unique opportunity to create a non-fungible token (NFT) collection in ‘realm.’

It is thus possible for a player or artist to create a personalised NFT microverse with all their unique music, art, and games. Users can then mint a whole metaverse world as an ERC-1155 NFT that would be tradable on the OpenSea marketplace.

Realm also offers a platform where players can explore the NFT space, allowing them to discover, trade, and collect NFTs.

The post Realm teams up with Alkimi to bring Ads into the Metaverse appeared first on Coin Journal.

Fidelity Investments has launched a physical bitcoin exchange-traded product (ETP) in what it says is the growing demand for digital assets among European investors. The fund is listed on Frankfurt’s Xetra and shall start trading on Zurich’s Six a few weeks from now.

Fidelity’s ETP comes three months after Invesco launched its bitcoin ETP following the increased interest for cryptocurrency investments among asset managers.

The ETP comes after Fidelity Digital Assets was awarded an official registration by the UK Financial Conduct Authority for its digital trading business and assets custody in late 2021.

Previously Fidelity Digital Assets was listed as a temporary member on FCA’s register but has now been moved to the permanent register of FCA.

In December 2021 Fidelity Investments launched a Canadian-based physical bitcoin ETF, which currently has about $30 million in assets.

Fidelity’s Physical Bitcoin ETP

Fidelity’s Physical Bitcoin ETP shall be available to institutional and professional investors in Europe and shall be domiciled in Germany. However, Fidelity Digital Assets, which is the digital assets arm of Fidelity Investments based in the US shall be the custodian of the ETP.

The head of Fidelity Investments Nick King said that the launch of the ETP was an important step in the company’s ETP offering and the first in offering digital assets products.

The ETP was launched with about $6 million worth of assets and shall have an ongoing charge of 0.75%.

Managing director for Europe at Fidelity Christian Staub said:

“Underlying distributed ledger technology has the potential to revolutionize the financial system over time and disrupt many parts of the financial world with profound implications for investors.”

Fidelity Digital Assets recently conducted a survey that showed that 70% of institutional investors looked forward to investing in digital assets soon. Also over 90% of those who participated in the survey said that they want digital assets that shall have an allocation within the next five years.

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