Cryptos: Cosmos-based DeFi protocol to offer structured products

Quasar Finance, a decentralized asset management protocol using the Inter Blockchain Communication (IBC) technology released by the Cosmos blockchain, has raised US$5.4 million in a funding round led by Shima Capital at a US$70 million valuation.

The protocol allows users to create and join vaults, or independent asset containers capable of connecting tokens and data transfers between chains. Other investors in the round included Polychain Capital, Blockchain Capital, HASH Capital, CIB and Osmosis co-founder Sunny Aggarwal, among others.

The capital will go toward product development and scaling out the team. The company plans to offer structured investment products for DeFi, starting with an automatically rebalancing index of the Cosmos ecosystem that supports the staking of assets. After months of private testing, Quasar will open its public testnet on 10 February.

‘Securing this funding given ongoing and difficult market conditions is a massive show of confidence and a significant reaffirmation of our partners commitment to the common goal – making non-custodial and permissionless asset management available to all,’ said Quasar co-founder and CEO Valentin Pletnev (right).

CyberX closes US$15m Series A+ funding round

Singapore-based market maker for digital assets CyberX has raised US$15m in Series A+ funding round led by Foresight Ventures.

The company intends to use the funds to expand its team in Asia and North America, integrate more exchanges and DeFi protocols into its liquidity network, and strengthen its trading infrastructure to further improve liquidity and pricing for its partners and clients. 

Led by CEO Hao Wang, CyberX is a trading technology firm in digital asset trading, infrastructure building, and market making. The company currently offers a suite of liquidity solutions including algorithmic market making in spot and derivatives markets across perpetuals, futures options, structured products, OTC services and DeFi protocols.

CyberX has built an extensive crypto liquidity network with a US$400 million daily trading volume and network spanning more than 30 venues and 5,000 tokens with 10,000 trading pairs.

Coinbase and GenTwo Digital announce partnership for custody and execution

GenTwo Digital, the Zug-based subsidiary of GenTwo, has partnered with publicly-listed cryptocurrency platform Coinbase, to expand the investment universe on digital assets available for professional investors.

Under the partnership Coinbase crypto assets to be wrapped in bankable financial investment products to enable financial intermediaries to issue passive and actively management certificates (AMCs) - any financial intermediary can create white labelled investment products in collaboration with GenTwo Digital and execute via Coinbase’s platform.

Coinbase Prime is a fully integrated platform built specifically for institutions to support the entire transaction lifecycle including advanced multi-venue agency trade execution for 200 assets, custody for more than 360 assets, financing, staking and staking infrastructure, data and analytics, and reporting.

Institutions can access Coinbase Prime directly via a user interface or as an integrated platform via APIs to offer crypto related products such as ETPs and ETFs, custodial solutions, or brokerage for their institutional, private wealth, and retail clients.

‘These instruments will benefit from execution services through Coinbase multi-venue execution platform, and assets will be held 1:1 in segregated cold-wallets for optimum security,’ said Guillaume Chatain (above-right), head of Emea institutional sales at Coinbase.

Coinbase Institutional powers several institutions including involved in the digital assets market including BlackRock, Google, Wisdom Tree, 21 Shares, Grayscale, PIMCO, Brevan Howard Digital, Invesco, GSA Capital, Lakestar, and Millennium Global.

CME enters the Metaverse

CME Group has launched three new Metaverse reference rates and real-time indices, which will be calculated and published daily by CF Benchmarks, beginning 30 January.

The new Metaverse reference rates and real-time indices include Axie Infinity (AXS); Chiliz (CHZ); and Decentraland (MANA). Each of these new reference rates will provide the US dollar price of each digital asset, published once-a-day at 4 pm London time, while each respective real-time index will be published once per second, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.

The new Metaverse benchmarks will use pricing data from crypto exchanges and trading platforms that are current constituent exchanges for the CME CF Benchmark suite of reference rates and real-time indices.

Each of the new Axie Infinity, Chiliz, and Decentraland benchmarks will be calculated with pricing data from a minimum of two of these exchanges – Bitstamp, Coinbase, Gemini, itBit, Kraken, and LMAX Digital.

CF Benchmarks is a provider of cryptocurrency benchmark indices authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under the EU Benchmark Regulation (BMR). Its benchmark indices are composed of market data from six constituent exchanges and have been used to settle over US$500bn of cryptocurrency derivative contracts listed for trading by CME Group and Kraken Futures.

These reference rates and indices are not tradable futures products. 

‘With increased price transparency across more cryptocurrency products, market participants will be able to price sector-specific portfolios, develop structured products with greater confidence and manage price risk around various Metaverse-based projects,’ Giovanni Vicioso (above right), CME group global head of cryptocurrency products.

xToken launches origination platform

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol xToken has launched Origination, an on-chain financing platform targeted DeFi and NFT projects to configure and deploy a variety of capital markets use cases, including customised token offerings and crowdsourcing programs.

With no technical expertise required, users can leverage the new platform for additional financing use cases, including Olympus Pro-style bonding and one-to-many OTC markets. Origination is supported on the Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, and Optimism networks.

The new platform went live on Tuesday 10 January with launch partner Galleon DAO’s $DBL bonding program, a provider of best-in-class decentralized, on-chain structured investing products.

‘With Origination, projects can tackle complex financial primitives with confidence,’ said xToken founder, Michael J. Cohen (right).

The new Origination platform is also adding new capital markets capabilities to xToken’s existing suite of investment banking applications via Terminal, a functionality designed to provide access to fundamental on-chain primitives that all DeFi and NFT projects will need during their lifecycle.

Matrixport enhances compliance standards

Digital assets platform Matrixport has started using Chainalysis’ blockchain data platform as part of its efforts to enhance compliance capabilities, support anti-fraud protocols and monitor risk.

The move is part of the firm’s commitment to building trust and transparency across its digital assets financial services, including Cactus Custody, spot OTC, fixed income, structured products, asset management and digital prime brokerage.

Christopher Liu, chief compliance officer at Matrixport, said compliance was a cornerstone of the firm’s institutional risk management framework.

‘By harnessing Chainalysis’ blockchain intelligence and real-time transaction monitoring capabilities, we are enabled with best-in-class controls to protect and provide our clients with secure, transparent and efficient digital asset services,’ he said.

Chainalysis’ compliance suite, including its ‘know your transaction’ (KYT) solution and anti-money laundering tools, offers continuous, real-time transaction monitoring for all cryptocurrency assets to detect patterns of high-risk activity and deeper due diligence into suspicious activities.

Image: Defi Artbackground/Adobe Stock