December 21, 2020
This week’s post was slightly delayed since the industry decided to sneak in an overflowing bag of presents before the year ends. Buddy the Elf’s excitement when he learns that Santa will arrive in NYC doesn’t do justice to the level of enthusiasm building as we head into 2021 (yes, I’m in full holiday mode). Now that I’ve brought you to my level, let’s jump right into the week’s highlights.
Coinbase decided why not, it’s 2020, and announced their submission of a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the SEC in preparation to go public. This is the not first time we’ve heard this news, and no timeline has been set….yet. The U.S. Treasury Department decided to go full naughty list and released a proposed rule (late on Friday, by the way) around a requirement of KYC/AML for exchanges and wallets. Stay tuned for more on this and its rippling effects on now just the industry but the financially underserved, DApps, and more. Shifting back to the nice list, E.Y. and Microsoft announced an expansion of Microsoft’s blockchain solution enabling its Xbox gaming partners and network of artists, musicians, writers & other content creators to gain increased visibility into tracking, management, and payment processing for royalty contracts. Visa shares a technical paper on the use of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) or “digital cash” & how they could benefit consumers & economies. Speaking of digital currencies…Bitcoin tops $24k, which is worth mentioning for many reasons but in particular as Northern Trust and Standard Chartered partner on a new custody solution AND Coinstar expands its Coinme Bitcoin ATM fleet to 5,000 providing greater access to digital currencies.
Germany legalizes digitized securities by passing a new law that will end the requirement to have a paper certificate for the sale of a security. IDEO CoLab launches collaborative DeFi Incubator & Residency Program. Compound releases a whitepaper for Compound Chain, a distributed ledger capable of transferring value & liquidity between peer ledgers. Baseline Protocol revels Ethereum interoperability. Kraken Exchange plans to integrate Bitcoin’s Lightning Network later next year. While Square’s Cash App now allows customers to receive Bitcoin back on purchases. BitGo provides multi-signature wallet technology for Hedera Hashgraph. Blockdata and CBinsights share with us 2020’s Blockchain Top 50.
If you thought that was the end, refill your cocoa as we’ve got new 11 funding announcements, including Paxos’s monstrous Series C and American Express’s recent investment in the industry. Plus DApps round-ups, research, and much more! Enjoy!
🏢 Coinbase announces confidential submission of draft registration statement on Form S-1
Coinbase Global, Inc. today announced that it has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). The Form S-1 is expected to become effective after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions…read more by Coinbase
Related: 🚨Messari values Coinbase at $28 billion following IPO filing
Related: 📈What Coinbase Going Public Means for the Crypto Industry– Decrypt
🏦 US Floats Long-Dreaded Plan to Make Crypto Exchanges Identify Personal Wallets
U.S. cryptocurrency users hoping to transfer their holdings from an exchange to their own personal wallets may need to comply with new know-your-customer (KYC) requirements under a rule proposed by the Treasury Department Friday. Under the advanced notice of proposed rulemaking, users who want to send cryptocurrencies from centralized exchanges to a private wallet would need to provide personal information about the owner of that wallet to the exchanges, if the amount sent is greater than…read more
Related: 📈 Bitcoin Tops $24K, Setting New All-Time High
Related: 🏦 Standard Chartered and Northern Trust partner to launch Zodia, a cryptocurrency custodian
🎮 Microsoft, EY Expand Blockchain Platform for Gaming Rights to Include Payments
Ernst & Young (EY) and Microsoft today announce that they have expanded Microsoft’s blockchain-based solution for gaming rights and royalties management to provide a financial system of record, from contract creation to payment and reconciliation. Microsoft plans to use the expanded blockchain functions to enable its Microsoft Xbox gaming partners and its network of artists, musicians, writers and other content creators to gain increased visibility into tracking, management and payment processing for royalty contracts. EY expects to help its business-to-business enterprise clients that have contractually driven…read more
Related: 📖 COVID & Big Tech Burnout Are Pushing Social Tokens Mainstream — Kevin Chou
More For Your Week:
📈 Central Bank Digital Currency & the future: Visa publishes new research — Cuy Sheffield
📈 IDEO CoLab Launches Collaborative DeFi Incubator & Residency Program & along with mega hire of Reuben Bramanathan
🏧 Coinstar Expands Its Coinme Bitcoin ATM Fleet to 5,000
🇩🇪 Germany legalizes digitized securities
📈 Blockchain 50: The Innovators Using Blockchain & Crypto To Transform Industries — BLOCKDATA
💸 Tokenized Asset Market Surpasses $20 billion
💸 JPMorgan Using Blockchain to Move Billions in Repo-Market Trades
💸Square’s Cash App Now Lets Customers Get Bitcoin Back on Purchases
🏦 Bitcoin adoption in Nigeria soars as central bank blocks remittances in Naira
🏦 These Banks And Startups Are Using Blockchain To Reimagine Fundraising — CB Insights
📖 Spencer Dinnwiddie Expands Crypto Ties With Bison Trails Deal
📦 Improve supply chain resiliency, traceability, and predictability with blockchain — Yorke E. Rhodes III
🇨🇳 China is testing its digital currency in Suzhou
🏦 Coinbase Commerce Adds Invoicing
💸 Capital Update️:
Highlighting the recent venture announcements from investments to new funds to M&A all throughout the landscape.
💸 Binance Labs Leads $12M Funding Round (Series B) for Multi-Asset Wallet Developer MATH
💸 Paxos raises $142 million in latest funding round (Series C)
💸 Maple Finance raises $1.3 million seed in a latest funding round
💸 Union has raised $3M to bring Credit to Ethereum — Jacob Shiach
💸 PoolTogher raises see extension lead by ParaFi Capital
💸 Bitcoin Trading Firm B2C2 Gets Acquired by Japan’s SBI
💸 American Express’s venture arm announces investment in FalconX
💸 Safello Raises $1.3M for Planned 2021 IPO
💸 Data protection startup BigID raises $70M
💸 Lido, Eth2 staking protocol, raises $2 million in new funding
💸 Bonfida raises $4.5M in seed round led by CMS Holdings
DApps (Decentralized Apps) Watch:
🔗 Yes, You May Need a Blockchain
There’s a certain kind of developer who states that blockchains are just terrible databases. As the narrative goes, why not just use PostgreSQL for your application? It’s mature, robust, and high performance. Compared to relational databases, the skeptic claims that blockchains are just slow, clunky, and expensive databases that don’t scale…read more by Balaji S. Srinivasan
Related: 📖 Voting Options in DAOs — Eric Arsenault, DAOstack
🌐 2021 Predictions and Needs for the Web 3 Ecosystem
2020 was a defining year for the Web 3 ecosystem, but the Figment Networks team is already thinking about 2021. Bitcoin (BTC) will finally become a “mainstream” investment asset among traditional financial institutions (grudgingly). This will lead to demand-supply imbalance driving up price unless regulators kill the golden blockchain. BTC will then act as the gateway to other decentralized networks/assets for investors and more importantly hacker developers. We’ll see the first mainstream non-speculative use case for blockchains and it will not be “x but decentralized” but a totally new and novel use of technology…read more
Related: 📈DeFi boom drives 1200% increase in DApp volume in 2020 — DappRadar
Related: 📈DappRadar’s Top 52 Dapps of 2020
⚒️ Baseline Protocol unveils Ethereum interoperability, deployment will take time
Enterprise blockchain applications are slowly but surely making their way to public networks, especially as new upgrades and features are being implemented into the Ethereum ecosystem. While Eth2 promises to bring scalability, security and capacity across the Ethereum network to advance enterprise use cases, other techniques are being developed to help enterprises properly leverage the Ethereum network.…read more — Rachel Wolfson
Related: ⚒️ The Radish Farmer’s Story — John Wolpert
📖 BitGo Provides First Multi-Signature Wallet Technology for Hedera Hashgraph’s HBAR
♎ Revisiting Facebook’s Blockchain Plans — Joel John
📖 Kraken Exchange Will Integrate Bitcoin’s Lightning Network in 2021
📖 Kadena Building DeFi Bridge to Celo — Tony Pham
📖 Why Nobody Can Hack a Blockchain
🎙️ Research: State of the Blockchain & DApps 2020:
Available now, for free is my latest research on Decentralized Applications or DApp “Stack” Landscape Map— the Q4 2020 edition. This map provides a full overview and taxonomy of the emerging DApps industry highlighting 400+ global companies teaching playing a vital role in building next-generation applications. As a bonus, I’ve included some of the ecosystem players and groups you need to be familiar with as you prepare to release your applications. If this is the first version you’ve seen of the landscape, consider it your guiding roadmap to further understanding not only the industry but all the core technology required to build a full or partial Decentralized Application (DApp).
We are transitioning to a completely digitized economy and the activity in the blockchain industry during 2020 proves this more than ever. Now w/ 1,100+ companies building & funding ($30bn+!) the infrastructure layers that will make up this new economy. The full breakdown is now available including an in-depth overview of the landscape, new categories & business models, areas of opportunities, rising categories, use-cases, and view for the remainder of 2020 into 2021.
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Author’s note: Article originally published on Medium.