BRIEFINGS

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

Jan 13, 2021
  • Coinbase makes its first acquisition of 2021
    Acquired this week by Coinbase for an undisclosed amount, Routefire is a San Francisco-based technology company founded in 2017 that seeks to help institutional customers execute large trade values at high speeds and low costs. With institutional interest in cryptoassets and crypto-related companies on the rise, Routefire will help expand Coinbase’s prime brokerage business. Routefire...
Jan 07, 2021
  • Exchanges begin to delist XRP
    Several prominent exchanges including Coinbase, Binance US, and eToro have begun to delist Ripple (XRP). The moves follow accusations made by the US Securities and Exchange Commission that XRP is an unregistered security. While the majority of the measures involve suspending trading for U.S.-based customers, many of these exchanges will reportedly continue to facilitate trading...
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  • Stellar to oversee Ukraine CBDC efforts
    Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation has reached an agreement with the Stellar Development Foundation related to the development of the country’s central bank digital currency. In addition to efforts related to CBDCs, Stellar will also assist in developing a broader strategy for digital asset regulation and establishing digital asset infrastructure in the country.
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  • Total cryptoasset market capitalization surpasses $1T
    The total market capitalization of all cryptoassets surpassed $1T this week, according to CoinGecko, which tracks 6,124 cryptoassets. The event marks a new all-time high cryptoasset market capitalization, with BTC and ETH representing roughly 67% and 13% of this sum, respectively. The total cryptoasset market capitalization was around $760B at the start of 2021.
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Dec 31, 2020
  • Cover Protocol hacked
    Cover Protocol, a decentralized insurance provider, was hacked on Dec 28th. The hacker, Grape.Finance, exploited the protocols rewards program, causing it to mint 40 quintillion COVER tokens, which were then sold for $4 million in cryptoassets, but later returned. The protocol has since warned users not to buy COVER tokens, and has indicated that it...
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  • 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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