Bitcoins and Pieces: 1st Friday Edition

Valour, a Swiss-based exchange-traded product (ETP) issuer, has declared Bitcoin Zero’s launch, a bitcoin (BTC) ETP that arrives with zero management fees. The product is possible in euros and Swedish krona. Bitcoin Zero starts trading on the Stockholm-based Nordic Growth Market stock exchange today. It can be traded by any broker or financial institution with access to the exchange.
The digital asset data provider CryptoCompare announced it had launched an index that gauges bitcoin’s implied volatility (BTC) over 30 days into the future. The firm uses technology to measure the opinions on BTC volatility “held by sophisticated bitcoin option traders,” and was developed in conjunction with the University of Sussex’s Business School. The Bitcoin Volatility Index, the tool, stated that it’s reported: “the first rigorously constructed index that is suitable for use as a settlement price for bitcoin volatility futures.”

Major crypto exchange Kraken announced it would match USD 150,000 in donations to open-source Ethereum (ETH) projects. In partnership with Gitcoin, an Ethereum-based platform for fundraising. Kraken will meet grants solely in Gitcoin’s “Ethereum Infrastructure Tech” class, meant to reward developers building the blockchain’s most essential software. The grants will mark Kraken’s first-ever donation to an Ethereum project.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Aave has announced today that Aave V2 is live on mainnet. The new version creates the capacity to trade for free assets used as collateral, users’ ability to close their loan positions by paying directly with their collateral in 1 transaction, and upgrades to flash loans, among other notable changes. This week, the communication added that the Aave Protocol hit a significant milestone, with USD 1bn in flash loans volume and the 0.09% fee for flash loans. This has generated an additional USD 906,000 to reward depositors since the launch of V1 at the beginning of the year.

Titan, a company that offers software and services for Bitcoin (BTC) mining, has published what the press release described as “the first enterprise-grade Bitcoin mining pool in North America, dedicated to spearheading the region’s presence and impact in Bitcoin mining.” Two of the major miners in the US — CoinMint and Core Scientific — stated that they are backing Titan’s North American mining pool and are its inaugural partners. The Titan Pool’s open beta will begin mid-January 2021, while the full launch will follow soon afterward, said the company.

US crypto intelligence firm CipherTrace announced on December 2 that, within 24 hours, they saw an uptick of alerts and remarks inside the online cryptocurrency neighborhood of users’ funds being stolen via a Chrome browser extension phishing attack posing as a cryptocurrency wallet and browser extension MetaMask. The phishing site page mirrors the actual MetaMask site quite well. They affirmed that they have alerted and reached out to MetaMask to help take down the malicious browser extension.

Australian lawmakers have repeatedly voted in favor of a measure to scrap a provocative action. This sought to limit the amount of cash that can legitimately be used in transactions to AUD 10,000 (around USD 7,430). Following a recommendation from a government-run black economy taskforce back in 2017 to fight organized crime and tax avoidance, the planned effort was created. A One Nation bill seeking to scrap the bill received unanimous support from senators. A “senior” ruling Liberal Party MP is stating (per The Sydney Morning Herald) that Canberra would not seek to restore the bill, which was now “dead, dead and dead.”

The New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) has accumulated USD 150m from two new institutional investor-focused bitcoin funds. Per a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) report from late November and another from December 1, the NYDIG Digital Assets Fund I and Fund II have gathered USD 50m and USD 100m, respectively. They are mutual investment funds, indicating numerous investors are associated with both. Ben Loski, the former New York State Department of Financial Services employee credited with founding New York’s BitLiscence crypto trading permits system, is thought to be a significant decision-maker with the NYDIG.