Grayscale Reopens Doors For New Crypto Investors + More News

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.

Investing news

• US-based major digital asset manager Grayscale Investments said that most of their private placements are now open for daily subscription again after they were temporarily closed in December. The company did not elaborate any further. Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is the largest trust controlled by the company and has over USD 20bn in assets under management. As reported, the Bitcoin Trust experienced USD 719.3m in 3Q20 inflows, while other products accounted for 31% of inflows during 3Q20. (Learn more: Watch Grayscale Bitcoin Trust For BTC Price Clues – JPMorgan)
• Diginex Limited, a digital assets financial services company, said it has entered into definitive agreements with certain institutional investors to raise aggregate gross proceeds of approximately USD 38.6m through the private placement of its equity securities. Diginex intends to use the net proceeds from the offering for working capital and general corporate purposes, they added.

Adoption news

• Copper.co, the London-based digital asset infrastructure provider, said it has entered into an agreement to act as a custodian for Hehmeyer, the Chicago-based global market maker in digital assets. Copper will provide Hehmeyer with a custody solution for Hehmeyer’s assets and off-exchange settlement functionality, the company said in an emailed press release.
• The Spanish crypto platform Criptan has completed a new USD 600k investment round, and aims to unveil a new Visa card and crypto payment gateway, reported El Economista. The Valencia-based company stated that it expects to process some USD 48.6m on its platform in the year ahead, and claims it will expand its user base after talks with a number of new potential partners. Criptan last year sealed a crypto pay deal with the hotel bookings chain Mirai.

Exchanges news

• The under-fire South Korean crypto exchange Coinbit has changed its executive staff, exclusively appointing individuals aged in their early 30s in its top management roles. Per media outlet Law Issue, the firm claimed that an influx of “young blood” at the highest level of the company would help improve communication between departments and customers, as well as bringing new energy to the exchange, which has also been totally restructured. Last year, a number of executives, including the Coinbit CEO, were accused of fraud, with market manipulation charges and accusations of falsifying trading figures.

Blockchain & DLT news

• The Shenzhen Stock Exchange has signed a blockchain cooperation deal with six equity trading centers, reported China’s Financial News. The deal will see the entities work together on financial technology innovation projects, and could make use of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange’s blockchain platform, which rolled out last year, has already begun certificate deposit services, digital securities contracts and debuted blockchain-powered deposit certificates.
• US-based AVC Global, a supply chain platform, and its Bahrain-based subsidiary Medical Value Chain, today announced a strategic technology integration with Hedera Hashgraph’s Consensus Service (HCS). HCS is a distributed ledger technology network service that provides the validity and order of events and transparency into the history of events over time, without requiring a persistent history of transactions, they said in an emailed press release.