18 October 2024
Macro/TradFi
Telegram is set to open an office in Kazakhstan to improve regulatory compliance. More than half of Kazakhstan’s population are monthly active users of Telegram.
African crypto startup, Yellow Card, has raised US$33M in a Series C round. Yellow Card is the largest and first licensed stablecoin on- and off-ramp in Africa.
Stripe, who recently re-enabled crypto payments for US merchants, is said to be in talks to acquire a stablecoin-focused fintech firm, Bridge.
The European Central Bank has cut rates by 25bps, in line with market expectations. This is their third rate cut this year, following cuts in June and September, and comes after inflation fell below 2% in September.
Crypto
L1/L2:
Blockstream has raised US$210M in convertible note financing in order to develop its L2 technologies (Liquid and Lightning), grow its mining operations, and expand its Bitcoin treasury.
Bitcoin staking platform, Solv Protocol, has announced a US$11M funding round, and also launched a staking token on Solana linked to Jupiter Exchange.
Worldcoin has rebranded to World and launched their Ethereum L2 chain, World Chain.
Australia’s first spot Ether ETF went live earlier this week, attracting US$176K of AUM on day one.
Canary Capital has filed for a U.S. Litecoin ETF.
Fuel Labs has announced the launch of Fuel Ignition, an Ethereum L2 powered by the FuelVM.
DeFi:
Ethena Labs, the team behind the USDe stablecoin, has proposed adding SOL as part of USDe’s backing collateral. Initial feedback from stakeholders has been largely positive.
World Liberty Financial, the DeFi project backed by Donald Trump and his family, had their first public sale on October 15, raising only US$12.7M as compared to an initial target of US$300M.
Bitnomial has announced a US$25M funding round and launched a crypto futures trading platform in the U.S. called Botanical.
Others:
Praxis, which refers to itself as the first “network state” has raised US$525M in financing for the development of a new city to attract crypto entrepreneurs.
A16z-backed SocialFi platform, Towns, launched earlier this week. The messaging app has a similar interface to Discord or Slack and is built on the EVM-compatible L2 chain, River.
Opacity Labs, a ZK data verification platform, has raised US$12M in a seed round.
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