Skip to main content

Deck.blue brings a TweetDeck experience to Bluesky users

With over 3 million users and plans to open up more broadly in the months ahead, Bluesky is still establishing itself as an alternative to Twitter/X. However, that hasn’t stopped the developer community from embracing the project and building tools to meet the needs of those fleeing the now Elon Musk-owned social network, formerly known […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/TBbEAPF
Post a Comment

Binance.US sailed away from its $1.3B deal with Voyager, now what?

Welcome back to Chain Reaction.

Earlier this week, Binance.US broke off its $1.3 billion deal to buy crypto broker Voyager Digital’s assets due to a “hostile and uncertain regulatory climate.”

The announcement comes about nine months after Voyager filed for bankruptcy. At the time, the U.S.-headquartered firm — and its two affiliates — said in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in the Southern District of New York that it had between $1 billion and $10 billion in assets and more than 100,000 creditors.

In a court filing on Tuesday, Voyager lawyers said the company reserves all rights for the $10 million good-faith deposit from Binance.US to Voyager, in addition to a reverse-termination fee owed by the U.S.-based crypto exchange.

“While our hope throughout this process was to help Voyager’s customers access their crypto in kind, the hostile and uncertain regulatory climate in the United States has introduced an unpredictable operating environment impacting the entire American business community,” Binance.US said in a statement on Tuesday.

This back-out is the latest headache for Voyager, which has been trying to raise capital through asset sales so it can repay creditors after it filed for bankruptcy last year. The company also struck out with an agreement with FTX, which agreed to buy Voyager’s assets but then collapsed itself in November (and filed for bankruptcy, too).

Following Binance.US’ termination of the asset purchase agreement, Voyager said the “development is disappointing,” but its Chapter 11 plan allows the company to return cryptocurrency and cash directly to customers through its platform.

“Consistent with the plan, we will now move swiftly to return value to customers via direct distributions. We will provide more information on next steps and any actions customers need to take in the coming days,” Voyager added.

This week in web3

OpenSea’s next journey is to help Web 2.0 brands get into web3 (TC+)

OpenSea, one of the largest NFT marketplaces, is well-known for its trading platform, which allows users to buy and sell digital assets. But the company is continuing to expand its product footprint to appeal to other audiences like Web 2.0 brands, said Shiva Rajaraman, OpenSea’s chief business officer.

Crypto wallet Phantom to release public multichain support for Ethereum and Polygon

Phantom, a crypto wallet for Solana blockchain users, will start supporting the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains in a public launch across browsers, iOS and Android on Monday, May 1, at 9 a.m. EST, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. Support for the two new blockchains was originally slated for the first quarter of 2023, but was pushed back. The multichain integration will be available to its 3 million users, Brandon Millman, CEO and co-founder of Phantom, said to TechCrunch.

Crypto exchange Coinbase sues SEC over rulemaking petition

Coinbase has filed a petition to compel the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to respond to a months-old petition that asks whether the securities regulator would allow the industry to be regulated using existing SEC frameworks, the exchange firm said on Monday, escalating its tensions with the regulator that has ramped up enforcement actions and warnings against crypto firms, including the American giant.

What happens to your crypto when you die? (TC+)

As the crypto industry matures, one consideration often left ignored is estate planning for your assets when you pass. Given that a lot of crypto assets are held in both hot and cold wallets and guarded by private keys (among other security elements), these funds could be virtually lost forever without a plan in place. “The call to action is to do it,” Jaime Herren, an attorney at Holland & Knight, said. “Don’t think you’re too young to put a plan in place for your assets.” (Of course, this advice also applies to people with traditional assets, too.)

Coinbase’s layer-2 blockchain Base plans for 2023 mainnet launch

Coinbase’s blockchain Base has been live in testnet, which is a test phase of the blockchain network, since late February. It isn’t sharing “official timelines,” but Jesse Pollak, the lead for Base and head of protocols at Coinbase, disclosed exclusively to TechCrunch that Base is planning for its mainnet launch in 2023. “It’s coming soon, we’re working hard on it,” Pollak said. “It’s our number one priority alongside decentralization goals and the rest of the year is really about making sure we get there as quickly as possible.”

The latest pod

For last week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Jesse Pollak, the lead for Base and head of protocols at Coinbase. Base is an Ethereum-focused layer 2 blockchain launched by Coinbase in February of this year.

Pollak previously led all retail engineering at Coinbase, including building Coinbase, Coinbase Pro and Coinbase Wallet. In a past life, Pollak started Clef, a 2FA mobile app and was an engineer at BuzzFeed.

A number of crypto businesses, platforms, marketplaces and infrastructure firms have committed to building on Base. Those that plan to be involved include Blockdaemon, Chainlink, Etherscan, Quicknode, Aave, Animoca Brands, Dune, Nansen, Magic Eden, Pyth, Rainbow Wallet, Ribbon Finance, The Graph, Wormhole and Gelato, to name a handful.

We talked a lot about Base and where it’s headed in the future, as well as how regulation could affect the blockchain and the timeline for its mainnet launch; Pollak shared it’s aiming for 2023.

We also dove into:

  • Decentralizing Base
  • Developers growing internationally
  • Coinbase’s role in Base
  • Advice for developers

Subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the latest episodes, and please leave us a review if you like what you hear!

Follow the money

  1. Now valued at $500 million, Cosmose ditches Stripe to adopt Near’s crypto solution
  2. Digital asset custodial provider Zodia Custody raised $36 million
  3. Izumi Finance raised $22 million for its multichain DeFi protocol
  4. Cata Labs raised $4.2 million for its blockchain-focused liquidity protocol
  5. Animoca Brands’ TinyTap raised $8.5 million for its educational games

This list was compiled with information from Messari as well as TechCrunch’s own reporting.

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important crypto stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12 p.m. PT, subscribe here.

Follow me on Twitter @Jacqmelinek for breaking crypto news, memes and more.

Binance.US sailed away from its $1.3B deal with Voyager, now what? by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch



from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/bqpMhK8
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nimbus launches tiny EV prototype that’s like a motorbike with a roof

As shared e-scooter companies have infiltrated cities and e-bike sales have soared, micromobility has been offered up as a panacea to save us all from the ill humors and packed streets caused by gas-guzzling cars. However, one of the major roadblocks in front of well-intentioned city dwellers who’d love to trade in their cumbersome and environmentally unfriendly vehicles for an e-bike or scooter remains: What happens when it rains? Nimbus, a California-based electric vehicle startup, wants to solve that problem with a simple solution: Put a roof on it. The company recently came out of stealth with a prototype for its Nimbus One, a tiny, three-wheeled EV that “combines the convenience and cost of a motorbike with the safety and comfort of a car.” The Nimbus One. Image Credits: Nimbus The thin, pod-like vehicle is only about 2.75 feet wide and 7.5 feet long, which Nimbus says makes it three to five times smaller than a compact car — the better to park and navigate busy urban stree...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ivella is the latest fintech focused on couples banking, with a twist

Money can make people moody. There are layers of privilege, or lack thereof, that can make even the simplest conversation about bills feel like baggage to deal with. Translate that discomfort to relationships and it can feel like an awkward — and fragmented — dance on who pays which bill when (and how). Ivella , a Santa Monica-based startup, wants to build banking products for couples to take away some of these tensions. Led by CEO and co-founder Kahlil Lalji , the startup is launching with a split account product that just raised $3.5 million in funding from Anthemis, Financial Venture Studio and Soma Capital. Other investors include Y Combinator, DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder and Gumroad CEO Sahil Lavingia. Lalji, who helped creators with digital content before jumping into the world of fintech, says that the startup was born out of his own frustration at the expectation that couples would just use Venmo unless they were married. The best solution, so far, has been joint accounts...
Post a Comment
Read more

Multifamily housing has missed the solar boom. PearlX wants to fix that with $70M Series B

If you’re a renter and you want solar power, you’re usually out of luck. For most, the only option is a community solar program, where people subscribe to utility-scale projects, but they’re not available everywhere. And given that most renters only stay for a few years, which of them are going to pay tens of thousands of dollars for solar panels — and what landlord would let them? That’s where PearlX comes in. “Think of us as like the Sunrun for renters,” said co-founder and CEO Michael Huerta, referring to the company that rents solar installations to single-family homeowners. “PearlX is a rental electrification platform.” Earlier this year, the startup began installing solar panels and backup batteries at multifamily rentals in Texas as part of its “TexFlex” project. PearlX’s next step, which Huerta shared exclusively with TechCrunch, will be a California expansion called “Flexifornia.” The startup is also rolling out a virtual power plant, which will allow the company to tap the...
Post a Comment
Read more