BRIEFINGS

Smith + Crown’s summary of important news across the industry

Dec 31, 2020
  • Mining pool signals support for Taproot.
    Binance Pool, a mining pool responsible for 11% of the Bitcoin hashrate, has announced its support for the proposed Taproot upgrade. Bitcoin’s last upgrade, SegWit ran into delays when miners did not flag support for the changes, which required 95% support. Binance’s support brings overall support to 91%.
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Dec 23, 2020
  • Ledger customer data leaked on RaidForums
    On December 20th, customer information obtained from the June data-breach of Ledger, a cryptocurrency wallet hardware producer, was published on RaidForums, an information marketplace.
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  • EXMO exchange hacked.
    Hackers stole $10.5 million worth of cryptocurrency from EXMO, an exchange, on December 21st. Losses included BTC, XRP, ZEC, USDT, ETH, and ETC. The exchange is asking users not deposit funds into existing wallets at this time, but stresses that the exchange will cover affected users.
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  • The SEC sues Ripple.
    In a lawsuit filed December 22nd, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that Ripple Labs’ 2012 sale of XRP violated U.S. security laws. XRP’s price has fallen 20% in response to the news—Bitwise, a crypto-index fund, liquidated its XRP position and some exchanges have delisted the cryptocurrency. Ripple maintains that XRP is not a...
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Dec 16, 2020
  • Bonfida raises $4.5M.
    Decentralized exchange Bonfida has raised $4.5M in a seed round led by CMS holdings. Bonfida is built atop Serum, a, FTX-developed decentralized trading protocol, and is hosted on the Solana blockchain. Other participants in the round include Sino Global, Three Arrows Capital, Spartan Group and Genesis Block Ventures.
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  • SBI Financial Services acquires B2C2.
    A subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate SBI Holdings, SBI Financial Services, has acquired the U.K.-based cryptoasset market making firm B2C2. SBI previously acquired a minority stake in B2C2 earlier this year, and the latter’s over-the-counter trading volumes have reportedly quadrupled since the partnership was formed. B2C2 is currently the largest active cryptoasset market maker.
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  • Ruffer Investment confirms $744M BTC purchase.
    Ruffer Investment confirmed today that, to date, it has purchased 45,000 BTC, worth roughly $744M at the time of writing. These holdings account for 2.5% of the firm’s multi-strategy fund. The move is intended to “act as a hedge [against] a fragile monetary system and distorted financial markets,” according to a statement released by Ruffer.
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Dec 14, 2020
  • EY and Microsoft announced blockchain contract management platform.
    Big Four professional services firm Ernst & Young and Microsoft have announced a joint platform that will allow Xbox gaming partners and other content creators to manage royalty contracts using blockchain technology. The firms plan to also integrate AI and machine learning mechanisms into the platform, claiming that this will reduce processing times by up...
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  • Nexus Mutual CEO targeted in $8M attack.
    Hugh Karp, founder and CEO of blockchain insurance provider Nexus Mutual, was targeted this week in an attack that drained over $8M worth of NXM tokens from his MetaMask wallet. The attacker is also a Nexus Mutual member and, after completing KYC measures eleven days ago, remotely accessed Karp’s computer in order to reroute transactions...
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Dec 11, 2020
  • 3iQ completes IPO on Toronto Stock Exchange.
    Canada-based asset manager 3iQ a $76.5M initial public offering on the Toronto Stock Exchange for its Ether Fund, claiming to be the first firm to conduct such a sale. The firm sold Class F and Class A units, and the latter is now publicly-trading under QETH.U. 3iQ has previously launch a similar fund for BTC.
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