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| Here's your daily Inside Cryptocurrency briefing: - ✂️ Binance's decision to cut ties with its venture capital arm,
- 💰 Berachain's new $69M funding,
- 🎟️ Indian Railways' plans to offer train tickets in the form of NFTs, and more.
Enjoy your reading, and have a great weekend! Doğa
p/dogayurduneri | |
| 1 | | Binance, the largest crypto exchange by trading volume, has recently cut ties with its venture capital (VC) arm, Binance Labs, making the unit an independent entity. A spokesperson said Binance Labs' staff members now have separate contracts from the exchange's employees, and the independence will create very few changes to the entity. More: - Binance Labs' investor director, Alex Odagiu, stated that the investment firm will license the Binance brand moving forward.
- The VC unit also added a disclaimer text to its website, pointing out that Binance Labs is an independent venture and is not part of the Binance Group or involved in any of the businesses it operates.
- The entity is led by Yi He, who co-founded Binance with the exchange's former CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ).
- Formerly, the operations of Binance Labs were predominantly funded by Binance's profits.
- The unit, serving as both a VC investor and incubator, mostly backs early-stage crypto startups.
- Since its launch in 2018, the unit has invested in around 250 projects, including Sky Mavis, Aptos Labs, LayerZero, Polygon, and The Sandbox.
- Binance Labs currently has $10B of assets under management (AUM).
Zoom Out: - Binance also previously spun off its blockchain network project, BNB Chain.
- Several other rival crypto exchanges, such as Coinbase, Kraken, and OKX, similarly operate VC arms.
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| 2 | | 
What the numbers say: A recent survey conducted by the crypto-focused venture capital (VC) firm Paradigm Capital with 1,000 registered voters in the U.S. has revealed that most electors owning crypto plan to vote for Donald Trump in the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. In the poll, 48% of the respondents who own crypto said they would vote for Trump, while 39% reported a preference for Joe Biden. On the other hand, survey participants who do not own crypto painted a different picture in terms of their presidential ballot through their answers. In the survey among the participants without any crypto holdings, 44% of the respondents stated they would vote for Biden. However, Trump still managed to become a preference for 43% of those respondents, with a rate almost equal to his competitor. Relevance: Crypto has become an important material for election campaigns in the U.S. over the last several years due to its rising popularity and the lack of a regulatory framework for the market in the country. In recent months, Trump has hit the headlines with his crypto-friendly approach several times, which is different from his attitude toward digital assets during his presidential term. Most recently, the former U.S. President stated that if he were elected again, his administration would not crack down on the use of Bitcoin (BTC) or other cryptocurrencies. On the other side, Biden revealed a more anti-crypto approach during his term as his administration heightened its scrutiny over the digital asset market within the past several years. The president also recently added crypto-related provisions to his annual budget proposal once more, proposing new or higher taxes both for crypto trading and crypto mining activities. The conflicting picture caused voters owning crypto to gravitate to Trump a bit more, though the gap has yet to be very wide in the polls. Brands that should care: Amid an increased crackdown on the crypto industry by U.S. regulators, many crypto firms have launched initiatives to influence digital asset policies. These initiatives include Stand With Crypto, a nonprofit organization launched by crypto exchange Coinbase for crypto advocacy, and pro-crypto super political action committee (PAC) Fairshake, backed by some leading venture capital firms, such as ARK Invest and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and crypto companies like Ripple, Circle, Kraken, and Messari. | | | |
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| 3 | | El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has announced that the country decided to transfer a significant portion of its Bitcoin (BTC) holdings to a cold wallet. Bukele said the wallet would be stored in a physical vault within the national territory. More: - Cold wallets allow users to store their crypto assets without internet connectivity, making it less susceptible to hacks.
- As part of the decision, El Salvador moved around $400M of Bitcoin to a cold wallet.
- A recent crypto market rally caused Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market cap, to hit new all-time highs consecutively, reaching as much as the $73,750 level before experiencing a slight price decline.
- Following the latest all-time high of Bitcoin, some reports revealed that El Salvador has $85M in profit from its Bitcoin investment.
Zoom Out: - El Salvador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as a legal tender in September 2021 under the Bukele's leadership.
- Last month, Bukele was re-elected as El Salvador's president for the second time.
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| 4 | | NFT marketplace SuperRare has announced that it would expand its ecosystem into the Bitcoin network by launching Bitcoin-based Ordinals collections on its platform. The decision marked a reversal from SuperRare's single-chain operational structure since the platform previously only supported transactions and NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain network. More: - The marketplace partnered with Bitcoin Ordinals marketplace Gamma to bring Ordinals collections to its platform.
- SuperRare's senior vice president, Zack Yanger, said their decision followed the high interest shown by their artist community.
- Yanger added that he had met many people working within the Ordinals space and realized there had been a lot of development in the field.
- The company executive also stated that Bitcoin is the largest blockchain with its high liquidity, underlining that Ordinals have a very bright future.
- The first Ordinals collection debuted on SuperRare will be No Brainers by the artist Killer Acid, famous for his works with psychedelic themes.
- The collection will be put up for sale on the platform on April 11.
- The No Brainers collection will also align with other collections in SuperRare's selection since each piece in it is unique and different from the others.
Zoom Out: - Ordinals refer to the digital assets permanently attached to a satoshi or 1/100,000,000 of a full Bitcoin (BTC).
- The Ordinals protocol was launched by programmer Casey Rodarmor in January 2023, allowing developers to inscribe various data file formats, including text, images, videos, and video games, onto the Bitcoin network.
- The protocol also paved the way for Bitcoin-based NFTs, and since then, it gained massive popularity.
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| 5 | | Blockchain startup Berachain has secured $69M in funding in its latest financing round, according to a recent Bloomberg report citing sources familiar with the matter. The report pointed out that the latest funding increased the project's valuation to $1.5B, making it a unicorn. More: - The funding round was co-led by the investment management firm Brevan Howard Digital and the venture capital (VC) firm Framework Ventures.
- The project raised new funding through the sale of digital tokens.
- The round made Berachain one of the first crypto projects to achieve unicorn status during the current crypto bull market, exceeding $1B in valuation.
- Berachain mainly focuses on decentralized finance (DeFi) that allows users to trade, lend, and borrow digital assets without using traditional intermediaries.
- The network has pseudonymous co-founders, such as Smokey The Bera and Dev Bear, with a cartoon-bear theme and is marketed as a more community-driven blockchain.
- The blockchain is compatible with Ethereum-based applications.
- Also, the network offers two native tokens, BERA and BGT, alongside a dollar-pegged stablecoin, HONEY.
- The project has yet to be fully launched, though its test version was released to the public in January this year.
Zoom Out: - Berachain's previous investors include some of the most well-known VC firms like Polychain Capital, Hack VC, and Robot Ventures.
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| 6 | | The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has announced that it will offer train tickets in the form of NFTs for the two newly launched semi-high-speed trains, Tejas Express 82501 and 82502. The entity said passengers will be able to purchase NFT train tickets from March 20 to April 2. More: - The IRCTC defined its upcoming NFT tickets as digital souvenirs.
- The move aims to enhance the journey experience of travelers by allowing them to create personalized NFTs and prevent the common issue of forgery and misplacement, making the purchases viewable by authorities and the public.
- Passengers will be able to buy NFT tickets only for travels between the Indian cities of Lucknow and New Delhi.
- The initiative will be co-powered by the digitization platform NFTtrace.
- The IRCTC will maintain the record of train ticket purchases on the Hyperledger blockchain network and use smart contracts to manage the traceability process.
- The company said the initiative will pay tribute to Holi, a Hindu festival celebrating colors, love, and spring.
Zoom Out: - The IRCTC is an Indian public sector entity that provides ticketing, catering, and tourism services for the state-owned Indian Railways.
- The company is operated under the administrative control of India's Ministry of Railways.
- Passengers book more than 1.2 million tickets on the IRCTC on average every day.
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- Drift Protocol, a crypto exchange operating on the Solana blockchain network, has announced that it will soon offer a pre-launch markets service that allows traders to bet on the price of tokens before the coins officially begin trading.
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 | Staff Writer | | Doga is a tech and science editor who has been writing news for nearly 10 years. She worked for leading tech platforms and mainstrem media channels as an editor and presenter throughout his career. Then, she carried her know-how to more than one platform. She is a part-time cat lover and binge-watcher, and also fond of science, space, and emerging tech. She always has a story to tell. She is a bit addict to the laughter and -unfortunately- the '90s culture. | | This newsletter was edited by Aaron Crutchfield | |
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