Coinbase Sale, Micro Bitcoin Sunday, Revolut Frees BTC + More News

Get your daily summary of crypto-asset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories that pass under the radar of today’s crypto news.

Investment news

• Intercontinental exchange (ICE), the operator of New York Stock Exchange and the owner of Bakkt digital asset platform, sold its 1.4% stake in the new Nasdaq-crypto exchange listed Coinbase. According to their profit call, the sale generated more than $ 1.2 billion in gross proceeds and about $ 900 million net after tax. CFO Scott Hill said the proceeds were used to reduce ICE’s debt at the end of the first quarter, which he added was being paid off faster than expected. The company posted record first quarter revenue of $ 1.8 billion, up 4% year-over-year.
• Speaking of Coinbase, the exchange denied allegations that its executives sold large amounts of their shares after the company was listed. The blog post says its CEO Brian Armstrong sold 2% of its holdings, not 71% as some have suggested. Other named executives have sold between 8% and 38% of their total outstanding equity, he said. Coinbase executives and early investors sold some of their total holdings to create liquidity on the day Coinbase shares opened for trading, which is essential for a direct listing, he added. The sale of securities or the purchase of additional shares may occur at “various times in the future”.
• CME Micro Bitcoin (BTC) futures trading will start at the start of the Globex “These smaller, good-sized CME Micro Bitcoin futures will make crypto futures trading more accessible to traders of all sizes, providing greater choice, flexibility and precision in trading,” Brooks Dudley , Global Head of Digital Assets at ED&F Man Capital Markets, said in an emailed comment. This new product offers “a cost effective way for investors to adjust bitcoin exposure and add versatility to their trading strategies.” It builds on the strength and liquidity of CME Bitcoin futures, but is smaller in size, offering the same benefits as larger contracts at 1/50 the size of the contract on a traditional Bitcoin future. It will be settled in cash and traded electronically on Globex and OTC via Clearport.
• From next Thursday, Revolut UK customers using their Revolut Metal premium account will be allowed to withdraw bitcoin to another BTC wallet outside of the Revolut ecosystem, altfi and the Financial Times reported. It will start on a small scale, in ‘beta mode’, with withdrawals limited to GBP 500 per day or GBP 1,000 per month, they added.
• Business intelligence company MicroStrategy announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2021. CEO Michael Saylor said the company had one of its best operating quarters in its software business in years. Total revenue was $ 122.9 million, an increase of 10% or an increase of 7.6% at constant non-GAAP exchange rates, compared to the first quarter of 2020. Gross profit was 100 million USD. They raised over $ 1 billion in additional capital during the quarter to expand their BTC holdings, which now exceed 91,000 BTC ($ 4.96 billion). “MicroStrategy’s first quarter results are a clear example that our two-pronged business strategy to grow our business analytics software business and acquire and hold bitcoin is delivering substantial shareholder value,” Saylor said.
• U.S. based mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments announced Sherlock, a digital asset data and analytics solution that helps institutional investors navigate digital assets by bringing together data coverage and analytics tools. Sherlock provides access to fundamental and technical data on development ecosystems, network activity, trading, social media activity, news and other research on digital assets from some of the leading institutional data providers, as well as blockchain data and analytics to help investors assess the market.

News from the exchanges

• Hotbit stated that it “suffered a serious cyberattack starting at 8:00 p.m. UTC on April 29, 2021, which led to the paralysis of a number of basic services.” “The Hotbit team immediately stopped all inspection and restoration services, and the overall payback period should be no less than 7 days,” they said, adding that “all of your assets are safe and secure” .
• Turkish court jailed six suspects pending trial on Thursday evening as part of cryptocurrency trading platform investigation Thodex, including the CEO’s siblings, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office told Reuters. At least 83 people were arrested last week. Most of those detained over the past week have been released, according to the report. Others, including seven on Thursday, were dropped with judicial oversight, he added.
• Coinbase said it was in the process of acquiring distort, an institutional data visualization and analysis platform for the crypto markets, which now serves more than 100 clients, including One River Asset Management and Susquehanna International Group. “With this acquisition, Coinbase strengthens our commitment to serve the growing institutional market,” the exchange said without providing further details of the deal.

Tax News

• There have been more cryptocurrency-themed political wrangling in South Korea, as senior officials from the two main political parties – the ruling Democratic Party and the opposition People’s Power Party – pushed up the charm with the aim of convincing voters between the ages of 20 and 39. Young voters have generally voted Democratic in recent years, but have shown signs of frustration with recent policies. However, Dailian reported that senior Democratic politicians have suggested that a possible delay in the crypto tax was not completely out of place, with an opposition “crypto task force” criticizing the government for its refusal so far to deviate from its plans to introduce a flat rate. 20% tax on crypto profits from 2022.

DeFi News

• Dispersion funds, a publicly traded decentralized finance (DeFi) fund created by the co-founders of a publicly traded crypto-mining company Argo block chain, debuted in London Aquis Exchange Growth Market (AQSE). The shares are traded under the ticker symbol DEFI, the press release said. The company was admitted to the access segment of AQSE following a placement and subscription which raised a total of GBP 9 million (USD 12.5 million) and a fundraising pre-IPO which raised GBP 2.2 million (USD 3 million), before fees. On admission, the company received 612.5 million ordinary shares outstanding, valuing Dispersion Holdings at a market capitalization of approximately GBP 18 million (USD 25 million).
• Reverse financeThe governance of the company has approved a proposal to acquire Toned finance in a transaction of 1.6 million USD. Members of DAO Inverse Finance vote on a proposal to acquire Tonic and hire its founder and lead developer Tony Snark, quickly surpassing the mark of approval of 4,000 tokens. It seems that no vote has been throw away against the proposal. Inverse described the event as “the first on-chain DAO acquisition vote in crypto history.”
• Automated Market Makers (AMMs) have catalyzed the DeFi explosion over the past year, but they are beset with problems, wrote Haseeb Qureshi, an investor in Dragonfly capital. What market makers needed was a platform to enable them to effectively serve the DeFi order flow, Qureshi said, presenting Hashflow – a protocol that connects users on a chain to the main manufacturers of the crypto market. He describes it as a decentralized shadow brokerage – it connects users with “the world’s most elite market makers”, thus creating a portal to all the liquidity of centralized finance, and also making it cheaper, a- he asserted. Dragonfly co-led the Hashflow seed round.

Mining news

• Kyrgyzstan has become another country victim of what appears to be power shortage issues linked to the crypto-mine. In recent months, the South Caucasus state of Abkhazia has suffered de facto crippling power shortages, power outages and fires, with police blaming home-based crypto-mining operators for a massive leak of the network. And by Tazabek (via Feranga), Daniyar Akmatov, the former director of Kyrgyzstan Investment attraction and protection agency, a rise in crypto mining is “one of the reasons” for an energy deficit that has been exacerbated by low levels of investment in the sector.

Blockchain news

• The first purchase of renewable energy certificates (CERs) was made on a Sberbank-blockchain platform operated. According to Finam, the transaction was carried out by Polyus, Russia’s largest gold producer and one of the world’s top 10 precious metal producers. The company obtained 303,460 certificates, a move it says will offset its carbon output for the first quarter of 2021. The platform is Sberbank’s original idea. Sberbank Blockchain Laboratory.

Career News

• Jason Somensatto, former lawyer for the decentralized exchange project 0x Labs (ZRX), is the new acting director of LabCFTC, the United States Commodity Futures Trading CommissionCFTC Financial Technology Research Division (CFTC), on the regulator’s website. Somensatto will succeed Melissa Netram, who left in early April.