Last week, BlockFi raised another $50 million in fresh capital, bringing the crypto lender's funding to nearly $100 million in the last 12 months. The Series C round was led by Anthony Pompliano's Morgan Creek Digital and included investments from Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures, Winklevoss Capital, and 2 unnamed university endowments. CEO Zac Prince said BlockFi currently boasts $1.5 billion in crypto assets on its lending platform and is seeing almost $10 million a month in revenue. He added that BlockFi wants to launch a Bitcoin (BTC) rewards credit card by year's end. BlockFi plans to use the new funds to grow its risk management team and balance sheet in order to further reduce its risk to counterparties.
Here is the rest of the week in review:
Mexo, a new crypto exchange developed especially for Latin American customer, debuted on Thursday. The startup is backed by global venture capital firm and blockchain incubator Krypital Group. According to a press release, Mexo will offer a range of services to its Latin American users including spot trading, contract trading, peer-to-peer lending, and trading education. Mexo's chief marketing officer David Yao noted the exchange's services were developed because crypto users in Latin America have conveyed they are seeking to access more advanced crypto products via a convenient mobile application. The firm said it aims to leverage its Spanish language website to help meet the growing demand for digital assets in Mexico and throughout Latin America. Mexico currently features a booming crypto market, with record-high remittance flows and a 342% explosion in trading volume on its premier exchange Bitso this year.
Binance launched a new feature, its decentralized finance (DeFi) staking platform, on Wednesday. Users of the major crypto exchange can now stake the dai (DAI) stablecoin generated via loans on the MakerDAO platform, as well as kava (KAVA), a token backed by exchanges Binance, Huobi, and OKEx. CEO Changpeng Zhao stated: "Binance prioritizes user experience and in the spirit of the community, Binance.com now offers direct integration into these DeFi products allowing the products' value to flow out to Binance.com users and that's happening with KAVA and BNB to name a few." The Binance feature attempts to tap into the booming DeFi market by offering users the ability to earn staking rewards on certain digital assets. Staking in DeFi means users can use smart contracts to participate in various community issues via blockchain voting and also earn some passive crypto rewards by locking up their tokens for a specific time period.
Crypto prices slipped to $363 billIon this week in a minor pullback. For the majors, all except Crypto.com Coin (CRO) ended in the red, with Chainlink (LINK), Bitcoin SV (BSV), and Cardano (ADA) posting outsized double-digit losses. In the top 100, the biggest losers were JUST (JST), down 24%, Chainlink, down 22%, and Band Protocol (BAND), down 20%. The biggest gainers were OMG Network (OMG), up a whopping 169%, yearn.finance (YFI), up 103%, and Golem (GNT), up 49%. Next week traders will see if the market can bounce back up from the dip.
The author owns a small amount of BTC.