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Billion-Dollar Asset Manager Stone Ridge Reveals $115M Bitcoin Allocation

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Stone Ridge’s recent announcement is a work in progress that started in 2017 when it came up with New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), its first independent subsidiary.

As a surprise to many in the cryptocurrency space, Stone Ridge Asset Management has become the latest firm to reveal huge Bitcoin investments. The firm announced that it has been able to accumulate BTC worth $115 million.

On October 13th, Forbes confirmed this news about Asset Management’s purchase of these coins but didn’t disclose when the deployment of the funds took place.

Through its spin-off New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), Stone Ridge Holdings Group has been able to hold 10,000 bitcoin, whose valuation is nearly $115 million.

Reasons for a Sudden Interest from Institutions in BTC

Stone Ridge joins other firms such as Square and MicroStrategy, that have revealed their substantial exposure to BTC. Square, a payments giant, made bitcoin investments worth almost $50 million while MicroStrategy, a business intelligence firm, converted assets worth a whopping $425 million into bitcoin.

Macroeconomic backdrop – where central banks have been using trillions to revamp struggling economies following the COVID-19 pandemic – is the main factor fueling the ever-growing interest in the cryptos. New York-based Ark Invest’s institutional investor Cathie Wood told Forbes that ‘she sees bitcoin as an “insurance policy” against inflation.’

Over recent years, institutions’ appetites for Bitcoin have been growing exponentially as Fidelity Investments, a $2 trillion asset manager, notes. In the coming years, the drive will be even higher due to deglobalization influenced inflationary trends, wealth seeking investors, millennials’ inheritance worth trillions transferred to Bitcoin, and central banks’ ongoing monetary stimulus. From the 800 institutions, Fidelity surveyed across Europe and the U.S., nearly 60% of investors said cryptocurrencies are a worthwhile investment.

More Holdings via NYDIG

Stone Ridge’s recent announcement is a work in progress that started in 2017 when it came up with New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG), its first independent subsidiary. During that year, it raised $50 million as a move to build a spin-off that would cater to the requirements of the new breed of institutional investors. The synergy continued up to last Friday when it raised an additional $50 million in a funding round led by Ribbit Capital, Bessemer Venture and Fintech Collective.

NYDIG offers its custody services to institutional clients through a BitLicense and a New York trust charter – a trend that has been going on for the past three years. According to Forbes, in 2017, internal auditors had to investigate its cryptocurrency holding since a Stone Ridge staff had personally accumulated substantial bitcoin amounts.

However, the pandemic accelerated the firm’s involvement in cryptocurrency made the asset manager’s co-founder Robert Gutmann, to tell Forbes that:

“The long term growth of an open-source monetary system – in assets like bitcoin. Macro backdrop against the public health backdrop has caused a lot of people to rethink their portfolio composition.”

Institutional Bitcoin Fund LP and Bitcoin Yield Enhancement Fund LP are the two largest funds currently that NYDIG manages, amounting to $190 and $140 million, respectively. Amongst what Gutmann refers to as “several” smaller funds are the NYDIG Basket Fund, which includes BTC, XRP, LTC, ETH, and BCH, amounting to $2.4 million. The firm has also seen clients quadruple in numbers in just ten months and total assets to more than $1 billion, besides having holdings via NYDIG.

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James Lovett is a talented crypto enthusiast who finds pleasure in sharing more knowledge on fintech, cryptocurrency as well as blockchain and frontier technologies. He likes to keep himself furnished and updated with the latest innovation in the crypto industry, blockchain technology, Internet of Things (IoT) and other technologies. As a result, he tries to furnish ardent crypto supporters with the latest news on blockchain and distributed-ledger technologies. Indeed, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency is changing the world as we know “one block at a time”. As a hobby, he also trades in small amounts of cryptos every now and then.
An author with experience writing for tech, digital, and cryptocurrency blogs!





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Hackers Exploit DeFi Project Cover Protocol, COVER Token Price Tanks 90%

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In one of the biggest attacks in the DeFi space, hackers exploited the DeFi project Cover Protocol by liquidating nearly 12K COVER coins and injecting an additional supply of 40 quintillion Cover “coins”.

DeFi project COVER staking protocol has recently been the victim of a suspected attack while artificially inflating the COVER token supply. The hackers have reported exploited the Cover protocol with millions of stolen cover tokens amounting to a massive $2 trillion.

Allegedly, the hackers infused an additional supply of over 40 quintillion Cover “coins”. This resulted in the COVER coin price crashing nearly 90%. On Monday, December 28, the COVER token price crashed all the way from $735 to $53, as per the data on CoinGecko.

The hacker – may be an individual or a small group – has taken responsibility for the attack. In a dramatic, the suspected attacker also returned the funds saying “Next time, take care of your own shit”.

Ethereum wallet explorer Nansen also presented some key details of the event. Soon after inflating the token supply in the initial exploit, the attacker liquidated nearly 12K COVER coins on decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch. In a message on the Discord Group, the Cover Protocol noted:

“The Blacksmith farming contract has been exploited to mint infinite $COVER tokens. We have restricted minting access to the farming contract in order to stop the attacker. If you are providing liquidity for $COVER token (uniswap or sushiswap) please remove it immediately.”

The Cover Protocol team said that the issue has only affected the token supply. However, the funds in the “claim/noclaim” pools are still safe.

Exploring a New Cover Protocol Token

Soon after the attack on Monday, Cover Protocol also announced that it is exploring a new Cover token after a snapshot of the LP token holders. In a message on its Twitter handle, the Cover Protocol team noted.

Interestingly, soon after getting the alert message, all developers from Yearn Ecosystem came to support the Cover team. The team noted that they “are working with multiple teams and individuals within the Yearn Ecosystem. We will provide updates as they come. We can not thank everyone enough for their help in this unfortunate situation.”

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Bhushan is a FinTech enthusiast and holds a good flair in understanding financial markets. His interest in economics and finance draw his attention towards the new emerging Blockchain Technology and Cryptocurrency markets. He is continuously in a learning process and keeps himself motivated by sharing his acquired knowledge. In free time he reads thriller fictions novels and sometimes explore his culinary skills.





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Altcoin Rally Dimming Bitcoin’s Shine, Polkadot Gains 34% in One Week

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Polkadot (DOT) saw daily gains of 22.5% wrapping up an impressive week with an almost 34% rise in its value.

Bitcoin bullish run looks to have come to a halt amidst an altcoin rally which has seen relatively lower coins put up impressive performances in the past few weeks. Bitcoin dominance is gradually fading as many experts believe the biggest digital coin is backing down as some top altcoin are showing strong “moves” or signals. 

Bitcoin hit an all-time high over the weekend, the third time its price has done so in just over 2 months. The price of the biggest digital coin touched $28,400 on December 27, before a lightning drop took it to $27,000 just hours of that incredible feat. 

Bitcoin failed to hold onto the $27,000 mark as its price further dropped to $26,000 a day after and is now testing lower levels centered on $26,000 as immediate support. Reports from crypto exchanges revealed BTC/USD trading at lows of $25,830 during the early hours of December 29. 

While Bitcoin has seen red over a couple of days, some altcoins are putting up impressive numbers, giving off signals of a strong altcoin rally. Despite XRP’s current issues, the altcoin market is showing glimpses of its glory days as some digital coins are poised to see major gains over the next couple of weeks. Ethereum (ETH) is at the forefront of the rally, with its price climbing above $700 for the first time since May 2018. 

Polkadot (DOT) also saw daily gains of 22.5% wrapping up an impressive week with an almost 34% rise in its value. The coin is now the seventh-largest token by market cap. Kusama (KSM), a cousin of Polkadot, also saw its price gain 46% last week, pushing its price from $43.1 to $63. The digital token is currently trading at $56 but experts are adamant a breakout above $65 is possible as the token has rebounded off the 20-day exponential moving average ($50.90)

Speaking on the possibility of a long term altcoin rally, analyst Van de Poppe stated that altcoins are next in line to see greens. He added that the next “impulse wave” on Bitcoin next year should be able to take the market to $40,000 or $50,000, but until then, the possibility of a continuance altcoin rally is very much likely.

Although many factors could be in play with regards to the latest Bitcoin price dip, it’s recent fallout with Ripple’s XRP leads the way. Ripple was hit with a lawsuit from the United States Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) and subsequently suffered drops that left its price in a pit. XRP, the fourth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is now trading at $0.20 as news broke that Coinbase, a major US cryptocurrency exchange has decided to suspend its trading from next month.

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XRP Crashes Below $0.25 as Coinbase Announces XRP Trading Suspension

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Some of the popular crypto exchanges have announced XRP trading suspension following the SEC lawsuit. This is seriously going to hurt XRP investors’ interest over a long period of time.

XRP investors have met with an unfortunate fate. It has been a rocky ride for XRP investors as the cryptocurrency has been heading south after the SEC lawsuit. From its monthly high of $0.66 on December 1st, XRP has reduced to only 1/3rd of the price. At press time, XRP is trading 20% trading at $0.22 with a market cap of $10.3 billion. The latest price crash comes amid crypto exchange Coinbase announcing its plan to suspend XRP trading starting January 19, 2020.

Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewar writes that the latest suspension comes amid the SEC lawsuit against Ripple Labs. Also, in the official announcement, Grewar writes:

“We have made the decision to suspend the XRP trading pairs on our platform. Trading will move into limit only starting December 28, 2020 at 2:30 PM PST, and will be fully suspended on Tuesday, January 19, 2021, at 10 a.m. PST. The trading suspension will not affect customers’ access to XRP wallets which will remain available for deposit and withdraw functionality after the trading suspension. We will continue to support XRP on Coinbase Custody and Coinbase Wallet”.

Coinbase joins Bitstamp as one of the top crypto exchanges to suspend XRP trading in recent times. There have been several other exchanges that have announced XRP trading suspension in recent times. Following the Coinbase announcement today, another major crypto exchange Crypto.com also announced its decision to delist the crypto asset.

The Road to XRP Recovery Isn’t an Easy One with Measures by Coinbase and Others

It looks like XRP’s road to recovery ain’t going to be an easy one! Over the last few years, the SEC has conducted a crackdown on several such crypto projects. Speaking to CoinTelegraph, Bybit CEO Ben Zhou said:

“SEC and Ripple will have their day in court with due process of law, so we shall not prejudge the case in the court of public opinion. It is of course likely that the case will take up much of Ripple’s attention and resources. […] We hope a clear precedent and framework emerge from these proceedings.”

Furthermore, the SEC has accused Ripple of selling unregistered XRP securities under Section 5 of the Securities Act of 1993. Also, the case will proceed further in the New York Federal Court. Todd Crosland, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange CoinZoom said that the lawsuit will have a long-lasting impact on XRP price.

XRP which has already been a laggard performer over the last two years will continue trading at lower levels even further. While institutional players have been betting big on crypto, they will refrain from having any exposure to XRP.

“Lack of institutional support will hurt liquidity. Institutions will not bet against the SEC, and will be unloading their positions and will avoid taking new positions in XRP until the lawsuit is resolved,” said Crosland.

The only hope for XRP currently is the appointment of new crypto-friendly SEC chairman Elad Roisman. Soon after filing the lawsuit complaint, previous SEC chairman Jay Clayton submitted his resignation. However, we don’t expect things to improve anytime soon.

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Bhushan is a FinTech enthusiast and holds a good flair in understanding financial markets. His interest in economics and finance draw his attention towards the new emerging Blockchain Technology and Cryptocurrency markets. He is continuously in a learning process and keeps himself motivated by sharing his acquired knowledge. In free time he reads thriller fictions novels and sometimes explore his culinary skills.





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