Bitcoin Lightning company River raises $35M amid ‘new wave of institutional adoption’

The tide might have gone out on Bitcoin Ordinals, but there’s a strong undercurrent of investments in Bitcoin-only companies. River, a U.S.-based Bitcoin (BTC) technology and financial services company is the latest to make a splash.  River announced a $35 million Series B equity funding round despite the bear market. Kingsway Capital led the round, with notable contributions including Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, Cygni, Goldcrest and Valor Equity Partners. According to Alex Leishman, the CEO of River, the new wave of Bitcoin interest is “largely driven by business and institutional adoption.” He added:…

The role of central limit order book DEXs in decentralized finance

A central limit order book (CLOB) is a digital platform or system that facilitates trading financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, commodities or cryptocurrencies. It is a critical component of modern electronic trading and is used by financial exchanges, marketplaces, and trading venues to compare buy and sell orders from various market participants. A CLOB is a database that organizes and manages incoming buy and sell orders, aggregating orders from different market participants. These orders are time-sequenced, creating an order book reflecting the market’s current supply and demand dynamics. The…

Billionaire Investor Peter Thiel Backs Bitcoin Startup River in $35M Round

River offers a wide range of bitcoin-related services for individuals and businesses, including a brokerage that offers zero-fee dollar-cost averaging, mining, full-reserve custody, and a wallet that supports both on-chain transactions and transactions on the Lightning Network – a bitcoin scaling solution that settles transactions off-chain for faster speeds and lower fees. Last October, the company launched River Lightning, an application programming interface (API) that makes it easier for companies to connect their applications to the Lightning Network. Source

Bitcoin (BTC) Miner Marathon Digital-Linked Startup Auradine Raises $81M

“The Auradine team of bold entrepreneurs are building a web infrastructure platform that will enable a new era of decentralized and distributed applications,” said Chaddha, managing director at Mayfield, in the press release. “We are excited to serve as an inception investor on their journey to leverage AI, blockchain, and privacy technologies to help create an industry leader.” Original

Vodafone CEO Announces Record Layoff of 11,000 Workers, Shares Sink 7%

Vodafone shares took a beating today amid company plans to layoff thousands of workers, and properly allocate resources. Vodafone (LON: VOD) shares fell 7% on Tuesday following a mass layoff announcement by the British multinational telecom company. In a statement, chief executive officer Margherita Della Valle said the company’s plan to ax a record 11,000 jobs is necessary to remain profitable. Vodafone forecasted flat profit growth and explained that the massive downsizing would take place over three years. The cut accounts for a wipeout of just over 10% of the telecom…

Can we fix it? – Cointelegraph Magazine

The launch of BRC-20 tokens and Ordinals NFTs on Bitcoin has transformed the No. 1 blockchain overnight into a clunkier version of Ethereum. The core developers and miners who signed off on the network’s Taproot upgrade in November 2021 never envisaged this would be the result. Bitcoin now suffers from many of the same problems that have bedeviled Ethereum for years, including scammy memecoins and shitcoins, NFTs of monkey pictures hogging block space and skyrocketing transaction fees. The network is even having to deal with incidences of miner extractable value…

Banking Giant BNY Mellon Announces Its Long-Term Committment to Digital Assets

The American banking giant will be focusing on three key initiatives – distributed ledger technology, tokenization, and digital cash. Over the last few years, traditional banking players have been showing some affinity towards crypto assets and America’s oldest bank BNY Mellon is the latest to join the bandwagon. BNY Mellon is pushing for digital innovation while focusing on digital assets, not necessarily crypto. Roman Regelman, CEO of securities services and digital at BNY Mellon, said that the banking is working on initiatives that involve the use of distributed ledger technology,…

US Secret Service Shares Insight into Its Love for Crypto

To combat illegal crypto transactions, the Secret Service has successfully seized millions of dollars in cryptocurrency from criminals. The US Secret Service revealed that it trades crypto and owns a small collection of NFTs in an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Reddit. According to reports, the Secret Service also acknowledged the potential of blockchain to boost the security and effectiveness of innovations beyond cryptocurrency. On Monday, representatives from the US Secret Service San Francisco Field Office and the Bay Area Regional Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT) were questioned by…

SEC Says Crypto Regulatory Clarity May Take Years and They’re in No Rush

The regulator argues that it is under no obligation to meet the requirements outlined in Coinbase’s recent petition. The United States Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has finally replied to Coinbase’s demand for regulatory clarity. Recall that the American exchange recently filed a petition asking the regulator to make clear crypto regulations. In a formal response issued to the court, the SEC insists that it will take its time to come up with regulations. But while the rules may take some years to make, the regulator confirms that it will carry…