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General News
FTX Wants $1.5B in New Funding Round
This $1.5B dollar raise would value FTX at $32B and FTX.US at $8B. This only six weeks after FTX closed a $420,690,000 Series B-1 funding round. FTX CEO Sam Bakman-Fried said they’re planning to carry out a series of acquisitions and partnerships to get FTX into more countries, with more users.
This raise will ultimately aid broader crypto adoption. Funds who for legal, ,fiduciary, and other reasons can’t pour money into digital assets will continue participating in such rounds. Either directly or indirectly, this will allow FTX to fund developers and projects within the digital space. This translates into better quality products for users and more services. As the user experience improves and the barriers get eroded away, we’ll see broader adoption of blockchain based technologies by the masses.
WisdomTree Launches Crypto Index
On Friday Ritholtz Wealth Management and Wisdom Tree Investment announced they’re launching the RWM Wisdom Tree Crypto Index to provide retail investors easier access to crypto investments. The of research at Riholtz Michael Batnick said
“This is really trying to capture above and beyond just the ‘King Kong’ and ‘Godzilla’ of the cryptocurrency market,”
The index holds 36% BTC, 20% ETH and 4% of 11 other crypto assets that provide broad exposure to the digital asset space. The integration platform Onramp Invest will provide advisors with separately managed account infrastructure and Gemini Exchange will service as the trading platform and custodian.
In the coming years we’re going to see more products like this. Not only will it make it easier for retail to get exposure but large funds as well. It’s just a matter of time before pension funds and 401K managers begin allocating to and creating their own digital asset index. The amount of money poised to enter the space over the next five years is staggering. This makes me doubtful that the bear market will last for more than 1 year.
Crypto Lender Celsius Admits Losing Money in Hack
Celsius Network confirmed the company lost money in the recent hack on BadgerDao but didn’t specify how much. Some speculate that roughly $51M was lost based on blockchain based data. Alex Mashinsky said the following when probed,
“It wasn’t a Celsius hack. It was a Badger hack, but some of the Celsius funds were there so Celsius lost money. ... But none of the Celsius members lost money. We are working with Badger to recover those funds. We are collaborating with them on the investigation.”
This large loss comes after Celsius closed a $750M Series B funding round. It puts to question what lending platforms are doing with user funds. In most cases there is very little transparency in regards to post deposit activity.
Despite my bullish predisposition on DeFi and CeFi, I’ve always stated that hacks are to be expected. They make the entire industry resilient over, thus a necessary evil. I’ve taken the initiative to diversify my risk by depositing with numerous CeFi platforms and DeFi protocols. I only introduce quality platforms with the least amount of rug risk. You can learn more about them by visiting my website or subscribing to this newsletter.
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