Day: November 3, 2018

Cute Cats Power Serious $15 Million Funding for CryptoKitties Creators

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The company behind the viral blockchain phenomenon CryptoKitties is planning to enhance its platform – and it’s received backing from some major tech firms to do it. Announced Wednesday, Dapper Labs, the startup that spun out of parent firm Axiom Zen to continue working on CryptoKitties, has secured $15 million in funding. The round was led by Venrock and was joined by Google Ventures, SamsungNEXT and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), as well as names not normally associated with venture investing, such as the talent agency William Morris Endeavor and e-sports firm aXiomatic.…

New York Awards First-Ever BitLicense to Bitcoin ATM Company

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Bitcoin teller machine (BTM) operator Coinsource has just become the 12th crypto company to receive a license from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS). The firm announced approval of the so-called BitLicense on Thursday, with the firm’s general counsel Arnold Spencer noting that it was the first granted to a bitcoin ATM provider to date. The company already has 40 BTMs in the state, having been operating under a provisional license pending full approval. In a statement, NYDFS superintendent Maria Vullo confirmed the news, saying the license…

Tether Produces Letter Vouching for Dollar Deposits, But Bank Hedges

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Stablecoin issuer Tether Limited confirmed Thursday it was banking with Bahamas-based Deltec Bank and Trust Limited and published a letter purportedly from the institution as evidence of its reserves. The company, which issues the controversial tether (USDT) stablecoin, has long been under fire over concerns that it does not have the fiat holdings to fully back the tokens in circulation. It had been rumored for weeks to be working with Deltec but did not previously acknowledge the relationship. “The acceptance of Tether Limited as a client of Deltec came after…

Sia Completes Hard Fork as Bricked Miners Form Rival Blockchain

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The distributed cloud storage blockchain network Sia has successfully completed a planned hard fork, changing its consensus rules in a way that prevents some specialized hardware from mining on the network. “All is working normally now,” David Vorick, co-founder and CEO of Nebulous, the for-profit company behind the Sia network, told CoinDesk on Thursday. The fork, planned for the previous day, was set to take place at block 179,000 in the Sia chain, but miners found themselves stuck at block 178,999 for hours because, as Vorick wrote in a community…

Another Stablecoin Just Launched With ‘Real-Time’ View of Dollar Backing

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Yet another stablecoin has just launched – this time from a blockchain startup founded with the explicit aim of taking on the controversial but dominant tether (USDT) token. Stably announced Thursday that its StableUSD (USDS) is now available for purchase and redemption. The token is backed by U.S. dollars held in escrow by Prime Trust, a regulated trust company in Nevada that has carved out a niche playing this supporting role in a number of stablecoin projects. Perhaps most notably, Stably claimed in a blog post it would be transparent about its fiat…

‘Ruff’ Month? Dogecoin’s Price Slid 36 Percent in October

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Market data shows that the meme-themed dogecoin was the worst-performing coin out of the world’s largest 25 cryptocurrencies by capitalization for the month of October. The cryptocurrency – derided as a joke by some, beloved by others – first hit the market in 2014 and has since been through a series of boom-and-bust cycles ever since in terms of overall market performance. The cryptocurrency’s most recent price boom began at the end of August and extended into early September, when its price surged over 160 percent to reach a six-month high…

Apps for Kik’s Crypto Are Beginning to Appear on Apple and Google Stores

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The number of mobile apps built around kin – the cryptocurrency created and launched by mobile messaging app Kik – is growing. As of this writing, ten are already out, and more will become available as the Google Play and iOS stores move to approve them. All told, more than thirty apps are expected to debut in the coming weeks. A quick summary: kin was created by the Canadian messaging app company Kik. To help bootstrap the project, Kik raised $98 million in one of 2017’s biggest initial coin offerings (ICOs).…

DeVere Group Targets Arbitrage With New Crypto Fund

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U.K.-based financial advisory firm deVere Group, which says it has over $10 billion under advice and management, has launched an actively managed cryptocurrency fund. Announced in a press release Thursday, the new investment offering, called deVere Digital Asset Funds, is being launched in partnership with Dubai-based hedge fund manager Dalma Capital Management. The fund will provide investors with a diversified exposure to digital currencies, but aims to reduce the volatility “for which the market is known,” deVere states. The fund will invest in a portfolio of various digital assets using…

IDG-Backed Ethereum Wallet to Integrate With Ledger Device

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Cryptocurrency users who store their private keys on Ledger’s hardware wallets will soon be able to manage their assets via imToken, the China-based ethereum wallet app backed by investment firm IDG Capital. Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, imToken said on Friday that the firm has independently built what it calls a “universal hardware solution” that will link up with cold wallet devices made by Ledger and the Taiwan-based CoolBitX – a firm partially owned by Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings. Ben He, founder and CEO of imToken, said the aim is to…

Winklevoss Brothers Sue Charlie Shrem Over $32 Million in Bitcoin

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Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are reportedly suing early bitcoin investor and entrepreneur Charlie Shrem over thousands of bitcoin they allege he owes them from a previous business deal. According to a report from The New York Times on Thursday, Shrem – who previously spent a year in prison for money laundering and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business related to the BitInstant exchange that he founded – had helped the Winklevoss brothers invest in bitcoin back in 2012. Acting as their first crypto adviser, Shrem had accepted $750,000 to buy bitcoin on their behalf,…