The ETC Group and white-label issuer HANetf have reportedly announced the continuation of their partnership with the introduction of the ETC Group Digital Assets & Blockchain Equity UCITS ETF, a fund that tracks other cryptocurrency products. The new crypto-focused fund will provide digital assets and blockchain investment possibilities in a variety of subject areas, according to reports. Investors who are unable to trade digital assets directly or do not wish to hold non-UCITS may find the new ETF appealing. The ETC Group and HANetf are the main participants in the multi-billion dollar BTCEtc – ETC Group Physical Bitcoin (BTCE), which …

Crypto investment firm Paradigm has revealed a new $2.5 billion”New Venture Fund” to expand its investment into cryptocurrency companies and protocols. According to a Nov. 15 announcement, Paradigm co-founders Fred Ahrsam and Matt Huang stated that “the fund and its size are reflective of crypto being the most exciting frontier in technology.” The Financial Times reported that the funding pool is now the largest among VC crypto funds, edging out Andreesen Horowitz’s (a16z) $2.2 billion raise in June of this year. The announcement did not state which sectors within the cryptocurrency industry the New Venture Fund will be allocated to. …

Institutional traders have locked a record sum of capital into Bitcoin investment products despite trade volume declining during the second half of 2021. According to CoinShares’ Nov. 15 “Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly” report, Bitcoin (BTC) investment products saw total inflows of $97.5 million between Nov. 8 and Nov. 12 — pushing the sector’s assets under management (AUM) up to a record $56 billion. Year-to-date (YTD) inflows also tagged $6.5 billion last week. Bitcoin instruments represented 64.6% of the $150.9 million that flowed into digital asset investment products last week. While the record AUM coincided with BTC establishing a new …

We have seen a steep adoption of crypto-based systems this year, including decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) such as digital art, crypto-centric gaming, and increased adoption of cryptocurrencies as investment and payment tools. One of the more recent developments is the emergence of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). DAOs have existed since 2016, when The DAO organization, a new form of investment vehicle that attracted a sizable portion of Ethereum (ETH) tokens, raised more than $150 million at the time. Many saw The DAO as the ultimate form of human coordination. Yet, due to a reentrancy exploit, hackers stole …

Crypto has seen a rise in novel uses of liquidity mining and rewards through protocols like Uniswap, Aave and Compound. More recently, a new crop of DeFi 2.0 protocols such as OlympusDAO, Alchemix and Abracadabra are exploring new ways of operating without giving up token rewards. For all the innovations happening with decentralized systems in crypto, they are still failing to open new pathways for economic prosperity for the most marginalized. In its current form, DeFi remains open only to people who already have access to the financial system and live in countries with strong financial markets. This is evident …

The story of Shiba Inu (SHIB), crypto’s best-performer of the year, still boggles the mind — even after multiple retellings. Just 12 months ago, the price of one SHIB token had ten zeros in front of it: $0.000000000063 on volume of $682.58, according to CoinGecko. By late October of this year, six of those zeros had gone and Shiba Inu had flippened Dogecoin to become the largest dog-themed token in the world, a top-ten cryptocurrency worth around $47 billion. Despite dropping almost 40% from that all-time high, SHIB still sits at a market cap of almost $29 billion — making …

MyEtherWallet, or MEW, launched its first NFT collection called ETH Blocks on Thursday, which tokenizes individual blocks on the Ethereum blockchain. Unique images associated with ETH Blocks are generated based on the block’s data. These NFTs are available exclusively to MEW users via the MyEtherWallet website. A number of blocks have already been claimed, according to the company. Ethereum's founders called first dibs on blocks 1-10. There are also thirteen ETH Blocks representing The History of Ethereum, such as major milestones, forks and updates to the Ethereum blockchain, that have been put up for a month-long auction — The proceeds …

In a live recording with Reddit's r/CryptoCurrency Talk Thursday, Shark Tank celebrity Kevin O'Leary discussed how cryptocurrencies now make up 10% of his investment portfolio: At the beginning of the year, I was at 3% weighting; the target was to get 7% by year-end. However, because of the appreciation of so many of the assets I have now, we're almost at 10% today. Some people think the game is over, and Ethereum is it, but I don't agree. There are many other alternatives, whether it be Solana or anything else. If you're an investor like I am, you want diversification. …

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, has officially disapproved asset manager VanEck’s spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund months after the firm submitted its application. According to a Nov. 12 filing, the SEC rejected a proposed rule change from the Cboe BZX Exchange to list and trade shares of VanEck’s Bitcoin (BTC) Trust. Specifically, the SEC said any rule change in favor of approving the ETF would not be “‘designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices” nor “protect investors and the public interest.” “The Commission concludes that BZX has not met its burden under the Exchange Act and …

BlackRock Financial Management’s global head of iShares and index investments said the financial firm will likely not be launching exchange-traded funds linked to crypto assets anytime soon. According to a Nov. 12 report from Financial News, BlackRock executive Salim Ramji said the firm with $9.5 trillion in assets under management has “no current plans” to launch a cryptocurrency exchange-traded fund, or ETF, until there was additional regulatory clarity in the United States. He added that BlackRock would be unlikely to be among the first in this emerging market for investments with exposure to crypto, but the firm needed to practice …

Imagine an institutional investor like an insurance company or pension fund decides that it wants to test the cryptocurrency waters. Or maybe a large corporation is looking to buy some Bitcoin (BTC) to diversify its treasury holdings. One thing they’re unlikely to do is announce their intention beforehand.That could drive up the price of the digital asset they are trying to buy. Thus, there’s often a lag between a large institution’s action — purchasing $100 million in Bitcoin, say — and its public announcement of such. “Institutional participation flows in cycles,” Diogo Mónica, co-founder and president of crypto custody bank …

Standard Custody & Trust Company, a digital asset custodian based in New York, has expanded its crypto offerings to include Solana (SOL), giving institutional investors the ability to stake and custody the world’s sixth-largest cryptocurrency. Beginning Wednesday, institutional investors will have the ability to interact directly with Solana’s rapidly growing ecosystem through both segregated and on-chain accounts, with staking services offered through Figment, an application layer solution provider for institutions. The company said it also plans to provide custody services for Solana Program Library tokens, which are a collection of on-chain programs. Standard Custody is rolling out support for Solana …