Microstrategy Acquires BTC, Fundraising Rounds Continue, Paypal New Feature for Crypto
On June 6th, reports emerged that Microstrategy purchased BTC after taking a $2.4 billion debt.
Microstrategy Buys BTC with Debt Funding
Reports now indicate that Microstrategy currently owns 129k BTC worth $3.8 billion. In August 2020, Microstrategy bought its first chunk of BTC(21,454) worth around $250 million.
In a CNBC analysis, Kate Rooney recently said,
“MicroStrategy can be a tough company to size up… It’s both a software firm and essentially a Bitcoin holding company, and both of these businesses impact the balance sheet and the bottom line.”
MicroStrategy’s BTC purchases came as convertible notes, offering investors company stocks on maturity.
Entropy $25 Million Seed Round
Entropy, another popular crypto asset custodian, announced a successful $25 million seed round with Andreessen Horowitz earlier today. According to their press release, the participants in the round include Ethereal Ventures, Dragonfly Capital, Variant, Robot Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Komerabi Fund, and Inflection.
Earlier in January, the company raised $1.95 million. Entropy aims to develop a cryptography-compatible decentralized custody platform, unlike Coinbase and Fireblocks. By decentralizing the custody, users will implement personalized rules to interact with funds.
Tux Pacific, the project’s founder, recently noted, “I’m just going to compose it radically different than they are and just make it super user-friendly.”
Solana $100 Million Fund
Earlier today, Solana foundation and Solana ventures announced that they would be committing $100 million to fund new South Korean crypto projects. This comes after Terra, one of the largest Korean-based blockchain networks, crashed, causing millions in losses for investors. Solana will target to fill the vacuum left by Terra.
According to reports, these new funds are dedicated to helping NFTs, GameFi, Gaming and DeFi networks as seed investments.
Valkyrie Raises $11 Million in a Fundraising Round
Today, fundraising rounds in the crypto world have continued, with atleast two crypto-focused networks raising funds. Valkyrie investments, an investment firm created mainly for digital assets, recently raised over $11 million.
Among the top contributors in this funding round include Wedbush Financial services, Zilliqa Capital, Senahill Partners, Coinbase Ventures, and C-Squared ventures. These funds will help in further company developments.
In a press statement, CIO and Co-Founder of Valkyrie Investments Steven McClurg noted,
“This fundraise shows the breadth of interest in both our industry and what we are building at Valkyrie… This strategic round will enable us to better service the broader market, and to integrate with traditional financial services platforms.”
Paypal Adds Crypto Features
In other news, Paypal, an American multinational company focusing primarily on online payments, just recently introduced a new feature allowing users to transfer BTC and ETH to external wallets. Earlier on Tuesday, the company announced the launch of this long demanded feature.
In their statement, Paypal said,
“Starting today, PayPal supports the native transfer of cryptocurrencies between PayPal and other wallets and exchanges.”
This new feature allows customers to transfer supported coins into and out of Paypal and move the funds to external crypto addresses, including hardware wallets. Moreover, you can send some BTC and ETH to your family and friends using PayPal within seconds, with no fees. The new addition is excellent news for crypto.
Most Crypto Hedge Funds will Fall, Says Novogratz
At a Piper Sandler Conference recently, Mike Novogratz, the CEO of Galaxy Digital Holding, noted that two-thirds of crypto-focused hedge funds would fail. Mr. Novogratz pointed out that the hedge funds will fail due to the ongoing market downturns.
He mentioned that “there are literally 1,900 crypto hedge funds. My guess is two-thirds will go out of business.” Many will experience even lower volumes, and the hedge funds will either have to restructure or go out of business.
Grayscale Preparing for Legal Battle with SEC
Grayscale, crypto and digital asset management and investment firm is bracing for a legal spat with the SEC. This comes after they applied to change their Bitcoin trust worth $20 billion to exchange-traded funds. On Tuesday, the company announced the hiring of Donald Verrilli as part of their legal counsel. While the SEC still has until about July 6th to make their final decision on the Grayscale application.
BlockFi Intends to Raise New Funds
BlockFi, a crypto lending platform, recently announced plans to raise new funds to get a new reduced valuation of $1 billion. Last year March, BlockFi raised $350 million, reaching a valuation of about $3 billion. This time the company plans to raise $100 billion to revalue the company at $1 billion.
