Blockfi funding

Matthew Shillito does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Leading crypto banks such as BlockFi and Nexo are attracting a lot of attention. First you need to realise what these banks are offering interest on. Because most crypto banks only deal in cryptocurrencies or stablecoins, you must first transfer your money into this form. This can be done via a crypto exchange such as Coinbase or Binance, or in a more limited way via a crypto bank: for example, you can transfer US dollars to BlockFi and they automatically convert them into another stablecoin called Gemini USD also paying 8. Most crypto banks offer the opportunity to trade your money within their platform — for example from Gemini USD to bitcoin.

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Content:

• BlockFi Completes $350M Series D Funding
• Crypto Lender BlockFi in Talks to Raise Funding at $5 Billion Valuation
• BlockFi Review – Trustworthy Crypto Platform to Use in 2021?
• BlockFi Gets A $3 Billion Valuation With New $350 Million Series D Funding
• BlockFi lands a $350M Series D at a $3B valuation for its fast-growing crypto-lending platform
• BlockFi Raises $350 Million In Just-Concluded Series D Round of Funding
• BlockFi Review 2022: Pros, Cons and How It Compares
• BlockFi Review: Do More With Your Cryptocurrency
• Venture Capital Funding for Crypto Companies Is Surging

WATCH RELATED VIDEO: How to Withdraw Money From Blockfi Tutorial

BlockFi Completes $350M Series D Funding

It's not clear what's worse for crypto investors and the companies catering to them: the present lack of guardrails or the impending arrival of stricter regulations. Crypto lending has come under scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission and state regulators. These products, which often tout high yields, are securities, the agencies have said. The field is growing fast, despite increasing regulatory pressure.

There are a host of ways crypto owners can get paid interest or its equivalent. Some are steeped in the decentralized finance DeFi world, while others have more connections with traditional finance. They vary in how they're set up and who operates them — details which may prove crucial both to investors seeking to navigate this world and regulators seeking to put guardrails in place.

Underlying crypto lending is crypto trading and speculation. There is strong demand to borrow crypto because hedge funds — and a range of investors — have found they can make money placing leveraged bets on tokens and crypto derivatives. Because these players can make considerable sums with their trading strategies, they can afford to pay middlemen high rates to borrow crypto.

Those payments, minus a profitable cut, trickle down to ordinary crypto investors as yields that far exceed what they could get from bank deposits. Of course, the products aren't FDIC-insured. And ultimately, the higher risk of the products explains why there are higher rewards. So far, there hasn't been a high-profile example of a crypto lending failure. But if there were a scenario where crypto tokens are loaned out and not returned, that could bring cascading failures throughout the crypto world and even the traditional finance system.

That's why regulators are increasingly talking about the systemic financial risk crypto poses. Coinbase canceled the launch of its Coinbase Lend program in September after the SEC said the offering was a security. And New York Attorney General Letitia James this month sent cease-and-desist orders to Celsius and Nexo on their interest-bearing products and requested information from three other companies. Coinbase declined to comment for this story, but has laid out a proposal for a crypto policy framework that partially addresses its crypto lending product.

With interest rates still low, crypto developers have filled a void with DeFi. The premise of decentralized finance is cutting out middlemen such as banks and other financial institutions. Consumers and businesses are starting to use these products. If anything, crypto lending has offered a welcome outlet for a tiny slice of that cash seeking yield. Beyond satisfying the hunger for yield, crypto lending products are also a "fundamental building block of the industry," said Steven Goldfeder, co-founder of Offchain Labs.

Most crypto projects need liquidity in their tokens in order to grow and scale operations, as well as to attract new developers to build applications or artists to create NFTs, he said. They also make it possible for users to invest or participate in new projects, he added. But the financial aspects of DeFi products, even if they're built for other purposes, could get them regulated too — particularly if they provide tokens or incentives, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has said.

How exactly the SEC would regulate a decentralized system, which has no company owning it, is still not clear. Several companies offer lending products that work much like Coinbase's proposed Lend would. They include BlockFi, Nexo and Celsius.

Their products accept crypto and then pay earnings on them to customers. Since these products aren't regulated, how exactly they earn yield for consumers — and how risky that is — is not always transparent. For example, BlockFi says: "BlockFi also engages in a number of other revenue-generating activities that support its balance sheet and its payment of crypto interest. The SEC has said these products are securities, based on the definition that an investment contract "exists when there is the investment of money in a common enterprise with a reasonable expectation of profits to be derived from the efforts of others.

Based on a legal rule called the Howey Test that defines whether something is an investment contract and SEC v. Edwards, a Supreme Court case , it's "abundantly clear" that what Coinbase proposed was a security, said Dan Awrey, professor of law at Cornell University, who has written about regulation of banks and financial markets.

There are also products that accept U. These customers only see fiat in their account. They're designed to make it easier for non-crypto experts to access the perceived financial upside of crypto. Outlet uses DeFi systems, such as Anchor, an automated lending protocol on the Terra network. When a user authorizes a payment to Outlet, Outlet's partner converts it to crypto, which goes directly to Terra or Celo, Manfra said.

That's meant to avoid being categorized as a money transmitter, which could trigger state-level regulation. There are products that have some regulation or are only for businesses, large institutions or accredited investors — which could limit their regulatory exposure.

They're only open to accredited investors — and their backers have in some cases sought regulation as securities. Fireblocks provides the custody service. It then sends the token to the Compound protocol, a DeFi system that automatically lends it out to counterparties.

In this sense, they're like investing in startups or a venture fund. Circle, which is behind the USDC stablecoin, has its own regulated product, Circle Yield, which is only open to accredited investors. The activity is further overseen by the Bermuda Monetary Authority under our Digital Asset Business license," according to a Circle spokesperson.

BlockFi also has corporate treasury products , including BlockFi accounts for businesses, which are not specifically for accredited investors, and which are not registered securities.

BlockFi also has crypto trust products for accredited investors. Finally, there are pure DeFi systems — some of which are used by crypto lenders to earn the money they then pay out to their customers.

Compound and Anchor, for instance, enable people to put crypto assets on networks where they are automatically matched with borrowers. It was designed to offer higher earnings than traditional finance products in which interest rates were dropping close to zero, said Do Kwon, CEO of Terraform Labs, which built Terra and Anchor.

Whether and how DeFi products will be regulated is an open question. Anchor was launched by Terraform Labs, but now runs as an automated system operated by community members. Kwon believes that regulatory approaches will depend on how genuinely decentralized systems turn out to be: "I think regulations are going to look at each of these protocols a little bit differently depending on the facts and circumstances and the degree of decentralization and the type of market they operate in.

Staking is a separate process where token holders deposit their tokens to support a protocol and help verify transactions. It's roughly analogous to mining in the bitcoin world, but it's seen as a more sophisticated and efficient way to support transactions on a blockchain.

Staked tokens aren't lent out in the same way — ownership stays with the original token holder, versus, say, BlockFi, which explicitly tells customers that a "digital asset is replaced with an obligation to return the same amount of that crypto. Still, the fact that a lending system is decentralized or automated does not necessarily mean it's exempt from securities laws, says Cornell's Awrey.

The SEC is reportedly investigating Uniswap Labs, the company behind decentralized crypto exchange Uniswap, looking at how investors use Uniswap and how it is marketed. The lack of clarity from U. Once they set some rules, everyone will complain. However, it gives them some rules to engage with. Tomio Geron tomiogeron is a San Francisco-based reporter covering fintech. He was previously a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, covering venture capital and startups.

Before that, he worked as a staff writer at Forbes, covering social media and venture capital, and also edited the Midas List of top tech investors. He has also worked at newspapers covering crime, courts, health and other topics.

He can be reached at tgeron protocol. Other crypto leaders call the idea for a single agency regulating crypto impractical — even stupid. Faryar Shirzad continues to argue that crypto is a game-changing technology requiring a totally new framework.

Benjamin Pimentel benpimentel covers crypto and fintech from San Francisco. He can be reached at bpimentel protocol. His ideas are already shaking things up at Coinbase —even across the industry. Last December, Coinbase unveiled a policy framework which included an idea many found jarring: a single regulator for crypto. But it quickly got scathing reviews from leading figures in crypto and fintech. Shirzad has been unfazed by the criticisms, as he continued to argue that crypto is a game-changing technology requiring a totally new framework.

He also talked about his decision to join Coinbase and the key lessons from a career that took him from the White House to Wall Street. It was fascinating. I obviously knew about it, but I didn't have any particular expertise in it.

And I got hooked. In the course of all of that, I also did my own research. And it was a journey that I sort of launched into that I'm still on and I'm super excited about it.

I heard about crypto very early on. I'm a policy guy so part of my job and my career has been to track innovations and kind of watch them. It's kind of what you do in government and then the various policy jobs I have. You sort of see things that could become something. The nature of the jobs I've had is to kind of watch things that may not seem that important but may have broader consequences down the road.

Crypto was one of them. Bush administration. Photo: Coinbase. Do I have conviction about it in a way that would work for me and would be sustainable, that would be a passion of mine? I think fundamentally I'm a policy guy. I'm fundamentally passionate about good public policy.

Crypto is an area and an innovation that is so potentially consequential and transformational and, by its nature, tests a lot of the habits of policymaking and politics and tests a lot of the parameters of existing policy.

It's very hard for everyone to figure out the adaptation. I actually got the final, final elements of [the offer] when I was on a mountain bike trail with my son in North Carolina. I think the first thing is analysis, data and content matter and are formidable by a million miles.

Crypto Lender BlockFi in Talks to Raise Funding at $5 Billion Valuation

It's not clear what's worse for crypto investors and the companies catering to them: the present lack of guardrails or the impending arrival of stricter regulations. Crypto lending has come under scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission and state regulators. These products, which often tout high yields, are securities, the agencies have said. The field is growing fast, despite increasing regulatory pressure. There are a host of ways crypto owners can get paid interest or its equivalent. Some are steeped in the decentralized finance DeFi world, while others have more connections with traditional finance. They vary in how they're set up and who operates them — details which may prove crucial both to investors seeking to navigate this world and regulators seeking to put guardrails in place.

BlockFi Review – Trustworthy Crypto Platform to Use in 2021?

The company, founded in , provides traditional financial services to cryptocurrency holders. Sign up to receive the daily top stories from the Financial Post, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Financial Post Top Stories will soon be in your inbox. We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again. This website uses cookies to personalize your content including ads , and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

BlockFi Gets A $3 Billion Valuation With New $350 Million Series D Funding

A lot has changed since then and the company has been expanding its global footprint. Just last month, BlockFi launched an over-the-counter market trading desk. It also rolled out private client services in Asia in February. Founded by Zac Prince and Flori Marquez in , BlockFi is a provider of cryptocurrency-focused financial products, including zero-fee trading and interest-bearing accounts.

BlockFi lands a $350M Series D at a $3B valuation for its fast-growing crypto-lending platform

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BlockFi Raises $350 Million In Just-Concluded Series D Round of Funding

BlockFi , the New York-based startup that provides crypto collateralized loans, has raised additional funds to expand its services. The startup, who recently expanded overseas , says the funding would be used to grow its workforce and launch exciting new products, including a crypto savings account that earns interest and crypto-backed credit cards. He said the company plans to launch two separate credit cards. The amount they have access to will vary based on the amount of crypto they hold with BlockFi — similar to how our loans work now. Both cards would be available in selected locations where BlockFi operates, though the firm has yet to choose a credit card company partner. The company hasn't decided on the exact interest rate, but Prince said it would be higher than the interests that accrue on a traditional bank-held savings account. For Prince, the funding is a testament to BlockFi's growth. Despite a gloomy market that has seen trade volumes drop and prices fall, BlockFi has continued to improve its business on all fronts, he claims.

BlockFi Review 2022: Pros, Cons and How It Compares

At the time, the company positioned itself as a retail lender-a platform where users could store their own Bitcoin or Ethereum and ensure high yields. Now holding cash, the company is looking for new opportunities, including expanding its institutional loan business, retail brokerage business, and new Bitcoin rewards credit cards. In addition, Silicon Valley investment legend Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures is an investment institution focused on fintech. Its portfolio includes well-known companies such as Stash, TransferWise, and N

BlockFi Review: Do More With Your Cryptocurrency

RELATED VIDEO: I'm Leaving Blockfi... (How To Withdrawal From Blockfi Tutorial)

Some of the highest-yielding savings accounts barely break the 0. But what are your alternatives for higher yields? But if you're a cryptocurrency trader, you may have another option. Another advantage of BlockFi is that you can borrow against your coins.

Venture Capital Funding for Crypto Companies Is Surging

Ability to earn interest on bitcoin. Services are limited in several states. Where BlockFi shines. Where BlockFi falls short. What BlockFi is best for. BlockFi at a glance.

Cryptocurrency What every business needs to know. Read More. Formed in , Arcade is an NFT marketplace for lending that independently appraises, validates and curates NFT collections and that enables owners of highly valued NFTs to use them as collateral for loans. Robert Masiello, co-founder of Arcade, said in an interview with ZDNet that the platform is for both borrowers and lenders.