Category Archives: Crypto

The US Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the collapsed blockchain firm and stablecoin operator Terraform Labs and its founder Do Kwon with defrauding U.S. investors who purchased the digital assets Terra USD and Luna. The US financial regulator accused Kwon and the Singpoare-based crypto firm of offering and selling an inter-connected suite of cryptoContinue reading “SEC charges Terraform Labs and founder Do Kwon with defrauding investors”

Web3 gaming company Unagi today announced a €4.7 million ($5 million) seed round of funding, as the French startup prepares to expand its NFT fantasy sports platform beyond football (“soccer”) and into the basketball realm. Unagi, which doesn’t yet have its own website, was founded out of Paris by Charlie Guillemot, son of Ubisoft co-founderContinue reading “Binance-backed web3 gaming startup Unagi gets funding to expand fantasy sports platform”

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. Welcome back to Chain Reaction. The past few weeks in crypto land have been focused on the latest craze: Ordinals. What are Ordinals, you might ask? They’re NFT-like Bitcoin digital artifactsContinue reading “NFTs could give Bitcoin a face lift as it increases its blockchain demand”

Ordinals, a Bitcoin-based NFT-like project, has expanded significantly over the past two weeks, but its creator, Casey Rodarmor, said he had no idea it would explode. “I thought I was building something good and I thought I was meeting an unmet market demand that NFT collectors had expressed a desire for,” Rodarmor told TechCrunch. AndContinue reading “Ordinals creator views his Bitcoin-centric creation as ‘digital artifacts,’ not just NFTs”

Stelo Labs, a web3 security company, raised $6 million in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The company was co-founded by Ben Scharfstein, CEO, and Aman Dhesi, CTO. Both have backgrounds in product management — Scharfstein worked at Google, and Dhesi held roles at Facebook, DoorDash and Square. SteloContinue reading “Stelo Labs raises $6M in a16z-led round to help crypto wallet users protect themselves”

Amid signs of life in the NFT market, an NFT-focused startup, Thred, launched today to help users discover new collections, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. “We think of it like a Yelp, Tripadvisor or Zillow of the space,” Ben Straley, founder and CEO of Thred, said to TechCrunch. Straley has over 25 years of experienceContinue reading “Former Amazon, Starbucks exec launches Yelp-like platform to review and discover NFTs”

As many observers question what real value blockchain can bring to video games, a conglomerate is vouching for the space. SoftBank Corp, the telecom operator arm of SoftBank Group, has joined Oasys, a blockchain designed for video games, as a validator. A validator is a node or computer that helps to verify transactions being addedContinue reading “SoftBank joins game-focused blockchain Oasys as validator”

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, expects to pay monetary penalties to settle probes into its business in the U.S., a top executive said, in a major about-face after publicly disputing the idea that it was under any investigation and mocking media outlets that reported otherwise. In an apparent admission of breaking laws, Binance chiefContinue reading “Crypto exchange Binance expects to pay penalties to settle US investigations”

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a new rule on Wednesday that may back crypto companies further into a corner as regulators continue to crack down on the space. The SEC voted 4-1 for a proposal that would direct registered investment advisers (RIAs) — like wealth managers or hedge funds — to keep customers’Continue reading “SEC’s proposal could affect which crypto companies can manage assets”