CoinDesk Crypto

New York State-regulated Paxos Trust Company has used blockchain technology to achieve same-day settlement for a selection of U.S. equity trades, with the help of Credit Suisse and Instinet.

The trades occurred on March 4, at 11 a.m. ET and 3 p.m. ET and were settled at 4:30 p.m. ET, demonstrating the platform’s ability to enable same-day settlement for trades conducted throughout the day, the companies said. (In the legacy system, settlement can only occur the same day if trades are completed before 11 a.m. ET.)

This seemingly nerdy enterprise blockchain pilot looks much more important in light of the recent share-trading fiasco involving the Wall Street Bets movement, which saw trading platform Robinhood fall foul of the arcane infrastructure used to settle U.S. equities. 

Related: In Europe, Football NFTs and Tokens Are No Fantasy

For a couple of years now, Paxos, Credit Suisse and Instinet have been advancing simplified settlement of trades using a blockchain. (Paxos Settlement Service is built using a homespun variant of Ethereum code.) Back in February 2020, the three firms claimed to have done the first live blockchain-based settlement of U.S. equities – although Patrick Byrne’s tZERO project had previously carried out a blockchain-based settlement of shares in Overstock.

The Paxos settlement platform operates under “No-Action Relief” from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – basically when the regulator accepts a commonsense approach to something which is not technically legal. Paxos will apply for full clearing-agency registration with the SEC, and hopes to secure registration in 2021, it said. 

“Settlement in U.S. equities is opaque and laden with unnecessary delays, capital costs and expenses,” said Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla in a statement, adding:

“We are working hard to improve settlement for the benefit of all market participants. An upgraded settlement system can create safer, fairer and more open capital markets that foster innovation. Modern technology makes the risks of the current system obsolete while also enabling greater trading liquidity with greater ownership transparency.”

Related: Coinbase, Fidelity, Square Form Crypto Lobbying Group

The Paxos permissioned blockchain system is interoperable with the legacy clearing system and can facilitate settlement on any time cycle, Cascarilla said. Paxos also intends to run multilateral netting processes in real-time to ensure fast and transparent net settlement of transactions. 

“We’re excited to stress test same-day cycles on Paxos, because our long-term goal is to always offer our clients more choices, advanced technologies, and greater efficiencies in both their settlement processes as well as time horizons,” Luke Mauro, global head of operations at Instinet, said in a statement.

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Nifty’s Inc., a fledgling social media platform focused on the burgeoning non-fungible token (NFT) market, has hired a lawyer conversant in both financial technology and intellectual property law.

Olta Andoni has joined the Miami-based startup as chief legal officer, the company announced Tuesday. She is employee No. 5 at Nifty’s, which last month said it had raised pre-seed funding from Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin and a pseudonymous NFT investor known as 0xb1, along with a host of venture capital firms. (The size of the round was not disclosed.)

In her new role, Andoni will be navigating uncharted waters, given the novel and complex legal questions posed by NFTs in areas such as consumer protection, sanctions, money laundering, copyright and IP, securities, tax and counterfeiting law.

Related: In Europe, Football NFTs and Tokens Are No Fantasy

Roughly the digital equivalent of an autographed baseball card – valued for its uniqueness despite an abundance of similar items – these blockchain collectibles have been selling at auctions for as much as eight figures in dollar terms this year, propelled by the star power of artists and celebrities.

Andoni practiced IP law in the U.S. for six years, according to her LinkedIn bio. She then headed the blockchain practice at the Ziliak Law firm in the Chicago area for a year and for the last year worked as a fintech and IP attorney at Zlatkin Wong LLP.

“Olta has been a visible advocate for developing the NFT and broader blockchain universe in a responsible and durable way,” said Jeff Marsilio, CEO and co-founder of Nifty’s, in a statement.

The company said it aims to launch its platform, a sort of hub for NFT collectors and their communities, this spring.

Related: Coinbase, Fidelity, Square Form Crypto Lobbying Group

Read more:

On Covering the NFT Hype

How Bananas and Mortgages Can Explain the NFT Craze

How the Incoming Administration Can Fix Crypto Regulation

DeFi Is Just Like the ICO Boom and Regulators Are Circling

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A rally divorced from reality. A reader might not be blamed for thinking that, after looking at the payment-focused cryptocurrency XRP’s rally to a three-year high above $1 in the face of lingering regulatory concern. 

There’s more to it, according to some observers. The token might be getting price support from the XRP community, popularly known as the XRP Army, CoinDesk’s Ben Powers said during a panel discussion on CoinDesk TV Monday. 

In December, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a case against Ripple Inc., which uses XRP in its payments network, for raising $1.3 billion by selling the token in unregistered securities offerings. While there is no closure yet, the cryptocurrency has climbed to the highest level since March 2018, having erased December’s decline from roughly to $0.60 to $0.20 in recent weeks. 

Related: In Europe, Football NFTs and Tokens Are No Fantasy

The token’s price is still well off its January 2018 all-time high of $3.30, based on pricing from the cryptocurrency data provider Messari.

“They are still purchasing, they are still trading,” Powers said, referring to XRP’s devoted community. It goes back to the “tribalism of crypto. You know, like people have their camps, and they rep them hard.”

Many feared the cryptocurrency would miss the 2021 crypto bull run because of the shadow of the SEC probe. That pessimism likely stemmed from observers being overly U.S.-centric. 

“The SEC can take action, but these are currencies that go beyond just the reach of the U.S.,” Powers said. 

Related: Coinbase, Fidelity, Square Form Crypto Lobbying Group

Several major western crypto exchanges have suspended XRP trading due to regulatory concerns. However, XRP believers can still buy the cryptocurrency on other, less-regulated exchanges, or on Asia-oriented venues. 

Two of the top five XRP exchanges, as per the 24-hour trading volume – VCC and HBTC – are based in Singapore, while Bidesk is based in Australia. Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, does not fall under the purview of U.S. regulations. 

It’s quite clear the buying pressure is coming from outside the U.S. It validates cryptocurrencies’ appeal of being censorship resistant – one that governments cannot control. 

However, the XRP community’s tenacity and the price rally do not necessarily mean the cryptocurrency’s adoption as a payments mechanism will continue to grow. 

“The XRP army is not going to be dissuaded by an SEC enforcement, even if it means that Ripple and XRP could ultimately get iced out of a major financial market,” CoinDesk reporter Danny Nelson said on the panel. “That would presumably have a big impact on its usefulness to other businesses around the world.”

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After last Friday’s better-than-expected jobs report, eyes today will be on the Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) this morning and on the progress being made with President Biden’s proposed stimulus package. 

Grayscale Investments, the world’s largest digital asset manager, has added the Chainlink (LINK) cryptocurrency to its Digital Large Cap Fund, providing a possible tailwind to the coin.

• The native token of decentralized oracle network Chainlink fills the void left in the fund after the removal of XRP, the native token of Ripple Labs in the wake of that company’s being sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
• Chainlink’s oracles act as a bridge between cryptocurrency smart contracts and off-chain data feeds.
• Becoming a component of a popular fund often creates demand for an asset and thus its price. In the last 24 hours, the price of LINK is up 4.29% is currently trading at $32.25. It’s risen more than 190% this year, according to the CoinDesk 20.
• The Digital Large Cap Fund has assets under management (AUM) of $538.2 million, according to Grayscale.
• Private placement in the fund is only offered at certain times of the year and is currently closed. Grayscale is owned by Digital Currency Group, the parent of CoinDesk.

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Tharman Shanmugaratnam, chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said Monday that cryptocurrency is “certainly not suitable for retail investors” in response to a parliamentary question.

• Shanmugaratnam added that the crypto market in Singapore remains small when compared to shares and bonds. The combined peak daily trading volume of bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and XRP (XRP) in 2020 was only 2% of the daily trading volume of securities on Singapore Exchange (SGX).
• The statement came days after Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was caught up in a token scam on blockchain social media platform BitClout.
• A profile appeared to have been set up using the Prime Minister’s name and photo without his knowledge or permission.
• According to a screenshot shared by Loong on Facebook last week, there were 27.3955 tokens created for the account priced at $357.85 each.
• One user had purchased $4.77 worth.
• Loong urged Singaporeans to “remain vigilant when dealing with cryptocurrency platforms” warning that they “won’t be protected by the laws administered by MAS” when dealing with unregulated firms.

See also: BitClout’s Alleged Leader Hit With Cease-and-Desist by Prominent Crypto Law Firm

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Bitcoin (BTC) traded lower during Asia hours as buyers took profit near the $59,000 resistance zone. But selling pressure was limited near $57,900 support. Momentum signals are neutral over the short-term as BTC continues to consolidate.

• The relative strength index (RSI) on the hourly chart signaled overbought conditions yesterday. This preceded a near 3% selloff during Asia hours.
• Buyers continue to defend rising support levels from the April 3 price low around $56,500.
• For now, BTC continues to trade above its 50-period volume weighted moving average on the hourly chart, which helps to define support and resistance levels during intraday price swings.  
• BTC has retraced roughly half of its near 6% selloff from April 1, although price action has been rangebound over the past month.
• “A consolidation phase is underway as overbought conditions are absorbed,” wrote Katie Stockton, managing partner of Fairlead Strategies. “A breach of the 50-day moving average near $54,000 would be a reason to manage risk of a pullback given the first major support is uncomfortably far below near $42,000.”

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Grayscale Investments DID NOT FILE to register a new trust for Microsoft-partnered Ethereum scaling project Nahmi, a spokeswoman for the world’s largest digital asset manager said.

• The filing with the State of Delaware indicated that a company named “Grayscale” had filed for a trust in a way that was identical to how Grayscale Investments had done for multiple other trusts.
• “We did not make that filing,” the spokeswoman said.
• As such, the filing may have been an attempt to pump the price of the project’s native token NII.
• According to CoinGecko, the price of NII has more than doubled in the last 24 hours to $0.01, with a 24-hour trading volume of $20.2 million.
• It appears at least one other trust filing with the name “Grayscale” may also be fraudulent.
• Grayscale is owned by Digital Currency Group, the parent company of CoinDesk.
• A call is being placed with the State of Delaware.
• CoinDesk regrets any confusion caused by the previous report.

See also: Grayscale Says It’s ‘100% Committed to Converting GBTC Into an ETF’

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Grayscale Investments, the world’s largest digital asset manager, filed April 1 to register a new trust for Microsoft-partnered Ethereum scaling project Nahmii.

• The registration was made by the Delaware Trust Company, Grayscale’s statutory trustee for the state.
• Filed with the Delaware corporate registry April 1, the registration indicates Grayscale is considering a trust based on the Nahmii project’s token as a future offering.
• Nahmii is an Ethereum-based second layer blockchain scaling platform that partnered with Microsoft in 2019 thereby offering its solutions on Microsoft’s cloud computing platform Azure.
• According to CoinGecko, the price of Nahmii’s native token NII has almost doubled in the last 24 hours to $0.01 with a 24-hour trading volume of $15.3 million.
• Grayscale is owned by Digital Currency Group, the parent company of CoinDesk.

See also: Grayscale Says It’s ‘100% Committed to Converting GBTC Into an ETF’

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Tether is set to go live on Polkadot following a launch on the network’s cousin, Kusama.

• The aim is for USDT to be the first-ever stablecoin on the Polkadot network, according to an announcement Tuesday.
• Polkadot is a network that supports various interconnected blockchains called parachains. It is set to go fully live later this year.
• Polkadot’s DOT token is currently the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, according to CoinGecko.
• Kusama launched in 2019 as a pre-production environment to Polkadot, known as a “canary network.”
• Tether is the world’s largest stablecoin with a market capitalization of over $40 billion.
• It recently launched on its eighth blockchain, Solana.

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New research has found that cryptojacking, or the illegal use of someone else’s computing resources to mine cryptocurrencies, has quietly decreased for the first time since 2018.

Unit 42, the global threat intelligence team at Palo Alto Networks, which conducted and published the research as part of a larger “Cloud Threat Report,” first started tracking cryptojacking in 2018. 

The report focuses specifically on the illicit mining of privacy coin monero, given its popularity with hackers, the authors say. The research was conducted from September 2020 through February 2021. 

Related: XRP Rises Above $1 for First Time Since March 2018, Despite SEC Shadow

“Globally, 23% of organizations with cloud workloads experienced cryptojacking from July through September 2020, compared to only 17% from December 2020 through February 2021, according to our findings,” the report states.

Monero and cryptojacking

According to Unit 42 researcher Nathaniel Quist, cryptojacking is both an issue and appealing to attackers for two reasons. 

First, the cloud has lots of CPUs and lots of virtual machines, said Quist, which can translate to big mining profits. Second, the cloud is hard to monitor. Quist said miners can run undetected for a long time, and without any detection mechanisms in place, they may run until the user finds an inflated cloud usage bill and realizes that something is wrong.

“There is currently a heightened awareness by cloud security teams towards the significance, impact and risks of cryptomining operations and we believe the initial steps are being taken to better secure cloud environments,” Quist said. 

Related: Grayscale Adds Chainlink to Its Digital Large Cap Fund

Researchers saw that the lowest number of network connections took place at the highest market price points, which may indicate that mining operators were performing the majority of their mining during bear markets before selling during high price runs.

While XMR is the most popular coin for cloud mining, Unit 42 also looked at the network  connections for ether, bitcoin, litecoin and dash. In each case, XMR mining connections significantly outperformed the other mining operations.

Vulnerabilities galore

While cryptojacking itself was down, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t an increase in other kinds of cybercrime associated with increased demand for cloud computing products. 

Looking from October 2019 to February 2021, Unit 42’s research indicates that cloud security incidents exploded by 188% in the second quarter of 2020 (April to June) as nationwide lockdowns went into effect. 

The team also found that while organizations and businesses were quickly able to move their workflow to the cloud, automated security measures lagged behind. 

And these kinds of security incidents didn’t discriminate by industry. The retail industry saw incidents increase by 402% while manufacturing and government increased by 230%, and 205%, respectively. 

It wasn’t just security incidents that increased either, but also the risk to sensitive data. 

Surprisingly, the Unit 42 research found that 35% of businesses globally let their cloud storage resources be publicly accessible from the internet. Thirty percent of those organizations exposed some form of sensitive data to the internet, making it potentially vulnerable. This data included personally identifiable information, intellectual property and healthcare and financial data. 

“This finding was shocking, given that anyone who knows the right URLs can access the data without passwords or other authentication,” the researchers wrote. 

There have been numerous instances of researchers and attackers accessing inadvertently exposed data in this way.

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Asset manager CoinShares has launched a new physically backed litecoin exchange-traded product (ETP) on the Swiss SIX exchange.

• Listed under the ticker LITE, each unit of the ETP will be backed with 0.20 LTC, according to an announcement Tuesday.
• The product has a base fee of 1.5% per annum.
• This is the third such product launch by CoinShares of 2021, following the announcement of ETPs backed by BTC and ETH in January and February respectively.
• About two thirds of CoinShares’ more than $4 billion in assets under management (AUM) is in bitcoin with an increasing amount held in ethereum.
• Litecoin is the world’s eighth largest cryptocurrency with a market capitalization of $14.83 billion.
• CoinShares’ profits more than doubled in Q4 2020 compared to the year earlier according to results announced March 31.
• Jersey-based CoinShares describes itself as Europe’s largest digital asset investment house. The company is publicly listed on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market.

See also: CoinShares Partners With Canada’s 3iQ to Launch New Bitcoin ETF on TSX

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India now has a marketplace for digital collectibles. 

On Monday, the Mumbai-based WazirX exchange, the largest in India, launched a non-fungible tokens (NFT) platform through which creators can auction their digital assets and earn royalties. 

“The development has paved the way for seamless exchange of digital assets and intellectual properties including art pieces, audio files, videos, programs, and even tweets apart from other digital goods and services,” the Binance-owned exchange said in a press release shared with CoinDesk in a Telegram chat.

Related: Tether’s USDT to Launch on Kusama With Polkadot to Follow

NFTs are a class of cryptocurrencies representing a wide range of unique tangible and intangible items, from collectible sports cards to virtual real estate and even digital sneakers, as discussed by CoinDesk last month.

In plain English, an NFT is not replaceable by any another item and acts as proof of ownership over a piece of a digital asset. 

“We are delighted to launch one of India’s first NFT marketplace,” Nischal Shetty, CEO of WazirX, said. “Both digital creators and collectors stand to benefit from the WazirX NFT marketplace.”

WazirX does not charge customers for creating and listing NFTs on its platform and is working toward making its marketplace more lucrative by eliminating costs associated with verifying NFT transactions on the blockchain, according to the press release. 

Related: CoinShares Launches Litecoin ETP

Since NFTs run on blockchain, most trading platforms charge users for the computing power required to process and validate transactions on the blockchain. 

Film actor/producer and advisor to NFT market place Vishakha Singh said she’s confident the launch will be a success and help “erase the myth of the starving artist”.

“From the creative industry perspective, we believe this is a great opportunity for artists and IPR owners to monetize their existing assets via a new revenue stream,” Singh said. “We are confident that this would be a beautiful marriage of arts, technology and commerce.”

WazirX’s foray into the NFT space comes at a time when India’s crypto industry is facing regulatory uncertainty. The government is planning to introduce a bill in the parliament seeking to ban private cryptocurrencies and facilitate development of the digital rupee to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India. However, the government’s anti-crypto stance has failed to deter India’s millennial from embracing bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, in general.

Also read: What Are NFTs and How Do They Work?

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The Sacramento Kings are set to become the first major sports franchise to offer a bitcoin payment option to all players and staff, team chairman Vivek Ranadivé said on Clubhouse on Monday.

CoinDesk confirmed with a fellow speaker on the Clubhouse program, which was hosted by Tim Draper, that Ranadivé had previewed his announcement scheduled for later this week. News of the announcement first circulated on Twitter.

The move would strengthen the Kings’ longstanding claim to being one of the most crypto-forward teams in professional sports. The California NBA team began selling everything from tickets to hot dogs for bitcoin in 2014 and in 2019 launched rewards token for fans.

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It was unclear at press time how the Kings will facilitate bitcoin payments to players and staff. It partnered with BitPay for the 2014 offering. BitPay did not immediately respond to CoinDesk.

NFL player Russell Okung made headlines late last year for becoming the first NFL player to convert some of his $13 million salary into bitcoin. Okung used Zap’s Strike product to convert dollars to BTC.

A representative for the Kings did not pick up the phone.

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For the first time in the country’s history, South Korean prosecutors have sold bitcoin confiscated from criminals, CoinDesk Korea reported. The sale turned a profit of around 12.3 billion won (around US$10.9 million), which has been transferred to the national treasury. 

On April 1, the Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office announced it had sold “191 bitcoin confiscated in April 2017 from the operator of the illegal pornography site, AVSNOOP, identified thus far as ‘Ahn’ (assumedly his surname) at around 64,260,000 won ($57,000) per coin.”

In South Korea, producing, selling and distributing pornography is prohibited by law.

Related: Sacramento Kings to Offer Bitcoin Salary Option to All Players

Authorities originally confiscated 216 BTC from Ahn, but only 191 were determined to be “of criminal origin” by the Korean Supreme Court in a ruling in May 2018. It was the first time a South Korean court acknowledged cryptocurrency as “intangible assets” and gave the authorities the right to confiscate crypto acquired through, or used for, illicit activity.  

While the U.S. government has been auctioning bitcoin since 2014, Korean prosecutors have held on to the confiscated bitcoin for the past four years due to legal ambiguity surrounding cryptocurrency. According to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, prosecutors moved to liquidate the confiscated bitcoin on March 25, the exact day when the country’s crypto legislation went into effect. The revised legislation classifies crypto as “virtual assets.”

When prosecutors confiscated Ahn’s bitcoin in April 2017, it was worth around 270 million won (around $240,000). The amount when sold on March 25 is over 45 times that. 

Ahn operated AVSNOOP from May 2014 to when he was arrested in April 2017. He served 18 months behind bars and was released in October 2018. It looks like he will receive the remaining 25 BTC determined to be legit. 

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When Paul Tudor Jones bet 1% to 2% of his assets on bitcoin in May 2020 it was unclear where the billionaire had bought his crypto, or how. The industry remained uncertain if his investment was direct. After all, his hedge fund had started flirting with bitcoin futures only days before. 

But in the year since, his firm, the $44.5 billion Tudor Investment Corporation, has indeed established rails for direct crypto ownership. It secured custodial ties with institutional powerhouses Coinbase and Bakkt, according to new filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Coinbase Custody Trust Company, Bakkt Trust Company and Tagomi Trading LLC (the institutional brokerage firm Coinbase bought in May 2020) all provide custodial services to Tudor Jones’ family-only hedge fund, the documents state.

Related: Sacramento Kings to Offer Bitcoin Salary Option to All Players

The filings provide a rare glimpse into the hush-hush world of institutional crypto dealmaking, where well-heeled clients pile into an asset class bankers once deemed absurd. Many, like Tudor Jones, see bitcoin as an inflation hedge, and their ranks are swelling in the pandemic economy.

They’re also playing a key role in the 2020-21 bull market. On-chain data shows whales bought over 500,000 BTC in the final months of 2020, according to Chainalysis. 

Against this backdrop are service providers like Coinbase who occasionally tout their institutional clients as they race to capture yet more hedge funders’ dollars. But Coinbase, which did not comment for this article, never revealed its links to Paul Tudor Jones.

Representatives for Tudor Group and Bakkt did not respond to CoinDesk’s requests for comment.

A family affair

Related:

For now, Tudor Jones appears to be restricting direct crypto exposure to a small corner of his clients. “Tudor Family Fund II,” which is open to relatives and close associates of the macro king, was the only one of Tudor Investment Corp.’s eight hedge funds to disclose crypto custodians on the firm’s annual Form ADV, filed March 31.

Not even the $27 billion Tudor BVI Global Fund, which last year presaged Tudor Jones’ bitcoin romance when it jumped into crypto futures in early May, has any industry tie-ups, according to similar SEC filings.

The Tudor Jones family fund was worth $1 billion at last check but the chances of all that being bitcoin are slim to none. The exclusive fund maintains a vast network of partners in the custodian and prime brokerage space – names like Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Credit Suisse – that suggest broad exposure to the global markets.

But a wider swath of Tudor clients nonetheless appears poised for direct crypto exposure, according to the asset manager’s latest regulatory risk brochure. It included an entire section on the risks of investing in crypto for the first time in its four-decade history.

“Certain Clients are permitted to enter into cryptocurrency transactions as described in the relevant Offering Materials,” the document states, through “direct investment on a spot basis or indirect investment” in crypto derivatives. Notably, the firm is not holding itself to crypto futures contracts.

The document does not specify what it means by “certain clients.” However, in a section describing what investment strategies are only available to “proprietary accounts” like the family fund, it does not list cryptocurrency transactions. 

Institutional service providers

Tudor Investment Corp. is not the first big-name asset manager to loudly tout its crypto bets while keeping its custody links more quiet. 

Britain’s Ruffer Investment pulled a similar strategy when it bought $745 million in bitcoin last November without revealing who was holding the coins. (CoinDesk later revealed Coinbase as the custodian.)

The soon-to-be-publicly-traded Coinbase has expanded well beyond its roots as a retail exchange. The firm has served headline-grabbing clients like Ruffer, Tesla and MicroStrategy. 

The acquisition of Tagomi, the keystone of Coinbase’s institutional offering, was announced in May 2020. The deal closed in August 2020.

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So far this year, publicly traded Marathon Patent Group (Nasdaq: MARA) has mined 196 BTC worth $11.5 million at current prices, and the firm plans to expand its bitcoin mining fleet to more than 100,000 ASICs by the end of January 2022.

The newly mined coins bring Marathon’s bitcoin treasury up to 5,134.2 BTC (roughly $300 million), per an announcement. Marathon’s stock jumped 7% on the news and closed at $56.56.

Also in Q1, Marathon received 10,300 top-of-the-line Bitmain s-19 Pros, which are more powerful than most other hardware on the market. 

Related: Sacramento Kings to Offer Bitcoin Salary Option to All Players

The Las Vegas-based firm will receive recurring shipments from Bitmain throughout the year with the goal of having over 100,000 ASICs online by the end of January 2022, giving Marathon’s operations an estimated hashrate of 10.3 exahashes per second (EH/s). These purchases come after the company raised hundreds of millions from stock offerings and other financing over the past year.

Marathon’s aggressive expansion is in step with the other big names in the mining industry. New machines are just now coming online after heavy demand dammed-up the ASIC supply chain, and Bitcoin’s mining difficulty recently hit an all-time high in response to the flood of hashrate. (Bitcoin’s mining difficulty is a self-correcting algorithm that makes mining bitcoin harder or easier depending on market conditions.)

Compass CEO Whit Gibbs previously told CoinDesk this trend shows no signs of stopping this year. Marathon’s mammoth ASIC orders gives proof to that.

“The pending flood of hashrate about to enter the market will only continue pushing bitcoin’s mining difficulty higher, which should track with bitcoin’s price,” Gibbs said.

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Stacks token (STX), the cryptocurrency of decentralized computing platform Blockstack, doubled in value in less than 24 hours, after it became available to trade on South Korea-based cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, reflecting increased interest in alternative cryptocurrencies from retail traders in the East Asian country.

• At press time, stacks’ changing hands at $2.19, up 88% in the past 24 hours, according to data from CoinGecko.
• The total market capitalization of Stacks rose to around $2.4 billion.
• The latest price jump of Stacks came after it was listed on South Korea-based crypto exchange Upbit with a STX/KRW pair.
• There’s been an increased interest in so-called “alternative cryptocurrencies” (“altcoins”) in South Korea, after bitcoin’s price topped at $61,556.59 in mid-March.
• Arthur Cheong, founder and portfolio manager at DeFi-focused crypto fund DeFiance Capital, told CoinDesk that more “unsophisticated retail” traders, especially those in South Korea, are returning to the crypto market and looking at altcoins for their potential lucrative returns, evidenced by the spot trading volume of altcoins on South Korean crypto exchanges.
• Jason Lau, chief operating officer at San Francisco-based crypto exchange OKCoin, also noticed that the staking program offered at OKCoin for Stacks tokens has helped increase interest among investors in STX.
• OKCoin’s “STX holders are discovering and being comfortable with stacking – locking STX in order to earn bitcoin,” Lau said. “With bitcoin consistently charting new all time highs, the appeal of earning yield in bitcoin is alluring to many.”
• About 65% of Stacks token holders on OKCoin have locked up their STX for six months, according to Lau, a potentially bullish sign for Stacks token.
• The majority of the trading volume of stacks is on Binance, the biggest crypto exchange by trading volume.
• By press time, Binance did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s requests for comment on STX’s performance.

Read More: Latest ‘Altcoin Season’ Fueled by XRP, Tron, Stellar Pushes Crypto Market Value to $2T for First Time

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The number of nodes on Bitcoin’s Lightning network has nearly doubled year over year, according to public data.

The Lightning Network – a layer atop the Bitcoin blockchain that uses its own special rules to facilitate cheaper, faster transactions – had about 5,335 public nodes in April 2020. Now that number sits at 10,348, a roughly 94% increase. This figure only includes nodes with public connections, however, and the real number is likely higher when factoring nodes with private connections.

As Bitcoin’s on-chain fees grow alongside bitcoin’s price, scaling technologies like Lightning offer users a cheaper and faster way to transact. If bitcoin will ever be used as a day-to-day currency, a scaling solution like Lightning is paramount, and avid bitcoiners even use the network today to purchase goods and services. 

Related: Sacramento Kings to Offer Bitcoin Salary Option to All Players

Consider this Iranian Lightning user who used bitcoin to buy a PlayStation Now pass that is otherwise restricted by sanctions:

With Bitcoin’s Lightning network seeing more activity than ever, the total number of payment channels on the network (the two-way payment avenues that power Lightning’s plumbing) is now over 45,000. The Lightning Network currently holds 1,185 BTC, worth some $69 million. 

Lightning Network adoption

Though introduced in 2017, the past two years have been critical for Lightning’s growth.

At the end of 2020, crypto exchange Kraken announced it would support the feature. Before Kraken, the only prominent exchanges to adopt Lightning were Bitfinex and the bitcoin-only River Financial. Exchange integrations make it cheaper for their customers to deposit and withdraw bitcoin, often paying cents in fees instead of the single or double-digit dollar amounts they may pay Bitcoin’s main network.

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Since Kraken’s announcement, the U.K.’s CoinCorner, Vietnam’s oldest exchange and OKCoin followed suit with their own Lightning integrations.

In addition, Jack Mallers’ Strike – a Venmo-esque payment app that uses Lightning to settle USD and other fiat balances – came out of beta this year and is forthcoming full rollouts in a number of markets.

With businesses adding Lightning, the network’s liquidity and routing capabilities are improving. User-friendly apps like Strike are also making it easier to onboard users to what has historically been an even more unwieldy technology for the uninitiated than Bitcoin.

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Crypto finance firm Amber Group has passed $1 billion in assets under management (AUM), according to an announcement shared exclusively with CoinDesk.

The platform boasts around 100,000 users, with numbers doubling between January and February 2021. The user count pales in comparison to the 43 million on industry titans like Coinbase but it does represent the growing interest among crypto-curious investors clicking their way down the rabbit hole.

The Hong Kong-based company now provides trading and asset management services to 500 institutional clients, including family offices, funds and high-net-worth individuals. On the retail side, the Amber app gained over $390 million in assets in the first two months of 2021.

Related: Sacramento Kings to Offer Bitcoin Salary Option to All Players

Amber Group offers customized investment products such as Yield Boost, an options contract that allows users to commit to buying dips or selling rallies with preferred parameters.

The platform enables trading of BTC, ETH, USDT and USDC as well as decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens such as UNI and SUSHI.

Amber Group partnered with BitGo’s custodial arm BitGo Trust in November 2020 to service its institutional traders and draw more high-net-worth investors in places like Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea.

Correction (April 6, 4:01 UTC): Amber’s entire slate of investment products has surpassed $1 billion in assets under management, not solely its retail app, as was previously reported.

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