Robinhood Domesticates Shiba Inu, Changes for Celsius Users in US + More News

Linas Kmieliauskas
Last updated: | 4 min read
Source: AdobeStock / Anne

 

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.

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Investments news

  • Trading app Robinhood included four new cryptoassets on its platform: solana (SOL), polygon (MATIC), compound (COMP), and shiba inu (SHIB). They added that deposit and withdrawal won’t be available immediately for these assets, but that capability is coming soon.
  • Celsius (CEL) said that starting April 15, as a result of their discussions with the US regulators, there will be changes to the way their Earn product will work for users in the US. “New transfers made by non-accredited investors in the United States will be held in their new Custody accounts and will not earn rewards,” the company said, adding that “all coins transferred to Celsius by users in the United States prior to April 15, 2022, will continue to earn rewards.”
  • Asset manager IDEG Asset Management announced its Ethereum Enhanced Portfolio, an actively managed fund tracking the price of ethereum (ETH). The fund will be part of the new TIMES suite of products, short for Trust, Interest, Mining, Yield Earnings, and Structured Solutions.
  • Uniswap Labs, the community behind the Uniswap (UNI) blockchain protocol, announced the launch of Uniswap Labs Ventures. The fund will invest in teams at different stages and levels of the Web3 stack, and has already invested in 11 companies and several native protocols across the ecosystem, they added.
  • The IOST Foundation, the team behind the IOST (IOST) blockchain network, announced the launch of their USD 100m fund for developers on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). They noted that any projects developing on EVM, not just on the IOST blockchain network, are welcome to apply.
  • Tech investment platform White Star Capital announced it has raised USD 120m for its second crypto fund, called DAF II, investing in companies developing the metaverse. The new fund aims to deploy between USD 1m and USD 7m in token and equity investments into 20 to 25 companies with a core focus on North America, Europe, and Asia.
  • Fintech firm Voyager Innovations is considering raising USD 150m to USD 200m to help finance its expansion, Bloomberg reported, citing undisclosed people with knowledge of the matter. Discussions are still ongoing and the fundraising size could change or Voyager could decide against proceeding with the plan, per the report.
  • Crypto portfolio manager CoinStats raised USD 3.2m in a funding round led by Hack VC. They added that the funding is “instrumental” for the development of new features, but did not elaborate on their upcoming projects.
  • Decentralized finance (DeFi) trading tools provider BloXroute raised USD 70m in a Series B funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
  • Crypto tech company Pluto Digital stated that they will “continue to explore opportunities and look at all public markets in [the] UK, US or Canada where investors are supportive of a business such as ours” after blockchain investment firm NFT Investments backed out of a deal to purchase the business.
  • Fidelity Investments announced the launch of two new thematic exchange-traded funds (ETFs) – Fidelity Crypto Industry and Digital Payments ETF (FDIG) and Fidelity Metaverse ETF (FMET) – as the company expands its lineup into the crypto and metaverse industries. These funds will be available on or about April 21, 2022, for individual investors and financial advisors to purchase “commission-free” through Fidelity’s online brokerage platforms, they said.
     

Adoption news

  • Colombian delivery app Rappi begun a crypto payments pilot program in Mexico in partnership with crypto payments provider BitPay and Mexican crypto exchange Bitso, per Reuters. The service will let users turn crypto into credits within the app to make purchases.
  • Mozilla, the developer of the Mozilla Firefox web browser, announced that it will no longer accept crypto donations in cryptoassets using the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm, instead opting for proof-of-stake (PoS)-based networks, due to concerns about environmental impact. They added that they will share a list of the accepted cryptoassets by the end of Q2 2022.
  • Fundraising platform Pledge launched PledgeCrypto to allow nonprofits to accept crypto donations in more than 130 cryptoassets and then turn them into fiat.

DeFi news

  • Decentralized oracle service Umbrella Network (UMB) announced the launch of its Layer 2 oracle solution on the Solana network, which will have 3,800 data feeds available upon launch.

NFTs news

  • A physical artwork, titled Alexander the Great, by famous artist Andy Warhol is going to be sold, and a sale will also take place as an NFT on the Rarible marketplace in mid-April. The buyer should receive both the digital and the physical item.
  • Payments giant Mastercard has filed 15 non-fungible token (NFT) and metaverse trademark applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), per NFT trademark attorney Michael Kondoudis. The filings include plans for a virtual community for interacting with digital assets, the processing of payment cards in the metaverse, an online marketplace for buyers and sellers of downloadable digital goods, virtual reality events, and more.
  • The National Basketball Association (NBA) has filed seven trademark applications that cover a list of virtual items including “game tickets, game programs, trading cards, collectibles, memorabilia, jerseys” and even “memes relating to the field of basketball authenticated by non-fungible tokens.”