Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Investments news
- Starting Monday, 4,000 of Germany’s Spezialfonds will be allowed to invest up to 20% of their portfolios in cryptoassets. These special funds, available to institutional investors only, manage around EUR 1.8trn (USD 2.1trn) worth of assets. Deutsche Bank AG’s asset manager DWS Group is monitoring developments, but is not currently planning to offer any funds that buy crypto, a spokeswoman told Bloomberg. Meanwhile, DekaBank, one of the country’s biggest asset managers, has been considering investing in crypto but hasn’t made a decision yet, per the report.
- GoldenTree, the New York-based USD 45bn asset manager, has been adding bitcoin (BTC) to its balance sheet as a diversifier for the broad mix of debt-focused strategies it has run for years, TheStreet reported, citing two undisclosed sources with knowledge of the matter.
- US-based automated investment service Wealthfront said it included Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) into their “menu of investments.” “We limit your allocation to GBTC and ETHE because, as a fiduciary, we act in your best interests at all times, and these investments can be riskier and more volatile than most [exchanged-traded funds],” they added.
- US-based business intelligence company MicroStrategy will continue investing in its “digital asset strategy” as its latest funding had allowed the firm to increase its digital holdings to more than BTC 105,000 (USD 4.1bn), the company’s CEO said in their Q2 earnings announcement.
- A platform enabling new utilities for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), AlchemyNFT, announced it has raised USD 6m from investors including Crypto.com Capital, Digital Renaissance Fund, Fenbushi Capital, billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, and others. The funds will be used to build the company’s remix NFT platform, they said.
- Crypto wealth platform Vauld announced it has raised USD 25m in a Series A funding round led by investment firm Valar Ventures. The funding will be used to support the company’s international growth and licensing as well as expand its retail crypto banking and investing platform, they said.
- Video game and Ethereum (ETH) Web3 wallet and platform company Horizon Blockchain Games announced it has raised USD 4.5m in a pre-Series A round SAFE from strategic gaming and blockchain investors. These include including BITKRAFT Ventures, CMT Digital, The Xchange Company, Khaled Verjee, and Zyshan Kaba. Horizon is set to launch its wallet and developer platform, Sequence, and digital trading card game, Skyweaver, in 2021.
Exchanges news
- India’s anti-money laundering agency is examining if Binance Holdings Ltd. had a role to play in an ongoing investigation involving betting apps, Bloomberg reported. India is probing betting apps run by Chinese operators, which collected more than INR 10bn (USD 134.5m) over the past 10 months, for allegedly laundering part of the money through the WazirX crypto exchange, acquired by Binance in 2019.
Altcoins news
- Miami Mayor Francis Suarez submitted a resolution authorizing the city to begin researching the possibility of accepting donations from a new cryptocurrency project that aims to support cities like this one, according to the Miami Herald. The CityCoin initiative wants to raise funds for municipalities by generating demand for city-specific digital tokens that would be turned over to the city as cash.
