Cryptocurrency finance company Circle Internet Financial Ltd. has acquired equity crowdfunding platform and broker-dealer SeedInvest, according to an announcement published October 5. Exact terms of the transaction were not disclosed. New York-based SeedInvest was founded in 2012 as a startup investing platform. Since then, the company has reportedly raised capital for 220 firms through more than 240,000 investors. The average investment per company through SeedInvest is said to be $500,000, while the largest investment was$2,000,000. Once the acquisition is approved by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), it will reportedly enable Circle to expand SeedInvest’s offerings to support cryptocurrencies, including …

Circle Internet Financial Ltd. is launching a USD-backed digital token dubbed the “USD Coin,” Circle’s blog reports Wednesday, September 26. A consortium called Centre — which includes Bitmain Technologies Ltd. among its members — will act as a platform for deposits and fiat conversions for the stablecoin. Bloomberg notes that although Centre is a “wholly owned subsidiary of Circle,” there are plans in plan to turn it into an independent organization. The USD Coin (USDC) will reportedly be available on Circle’s Poloniex exchange, as well as Huobi, OKCoin, KuCoin, and digital wallet and exchange Coinbase. As per Circle’s release, over …

San-Francisco-based bank Wells Fargo has outlined a patent for a tokenization system that would protect data, according to a filing published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) July 17. The newly published application details a system in which any type of data element — whether a document, graphic, or database value — could be located, accessed, and protected by means of tokenization. Tokenization, as the patent filing outlines, uses encryption methods to process an originally unrestricted data element into a corresponding restricted token that can subsequently only be retrieved — or ‘detokenized’ — by a specified user. The …

Crypto exchange and wallet Coinbase has retracted its previous statement that it received approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to trade in securities, Bloomberg reports July 18. Last week, Coinbase reported that it could now operate as a broker dealer, offering digital tokens considered to be securities, after its acquisition last month of Keystone Capital Corp., Venovate Marketplace Inc., and Digital Wealth LLC. As reported at the time, the acquisition occurred with the blessing of two regulators: the SEC and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Coinbase has since reversed its statement, telling Bloomberg it had not in …

Stock and crypto trading app Robinhood plans to offer banking services to its 4 mln users, Bloomberg reported June 20, citing anonymous sources. Robinhood, which in February began allowing zero-fee cryptocurrency trading through its Robinhood Crypto tool, is currently in “constructive” talks with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to position itself as a banking services provider. According to “people familiar with the matter,” Robinhood is going after features such as savings accounts, beating out competition from traditional banks through improved interest rates and an all-in-one financial portal. The move comes a month after the company …

Crypto and fintech conference MoneyConf in Dublin, Ireland continues today, June 13th, with a live-stream from Cointelegraph available to watch here. Jeremy Allaire, Co-Founder & CEO of payments company Circle spoke this morning of an unprecedented “crypto-revolution,” saying that global society is “at the beginning of a tokenization of everything.” Just as the early internet transformed data and communications, blockchain is now poised to revolutionize “every aspect of finance” and “reinvent public and civil services in [its] image”: “Once you have an open global immutable record-keeping system, [a] transaction-processing system and [a] secure computing environment, you can re-conceptualize on a …

Peer-to-peer payments platform Circle Internet Financial Ltd., is pursuing both a federal banking license with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and registration as a brokerage and trading venue with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The news comes from a Bloomberg report today, June 6. Robert Bench, COO of Circle -- which was partly funded in an investment round by Goldman Sachs -- told Bloomberg that obtaining a banking license would cut down on the amount of regulators the platform needed to work with: “You’re able to have a single conversation. It’s hard to have …

Goldman Sachs-funded Circle Internet Financial Ltd. has launched a new feature for its crypto investment app Circle Invest that makes it easier for “newbies” to enter the market. The feature, dubbed “Buy the Market,” gives customers the option to invest in all listed coins at once, rather than having to decide between coins individually, according to a Bloomberg report Tuesday, May 22. The app splits their investment – which can be as little as $1 – according to the coins’ market capitalization weightings. The seven supported coins in Circle Invest are Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), Ethereum Classic …

Top Stories This Week Circle Partners With Bitmain For Planned Release Of USD-Backed Stable Coin Circle Internet Financial Ltd. has finished a $110 mln investment round with led by Chinese mining hardware manufacturer Bitmain as part of their project to create a US-dollar backed stable coin. The Circle USD Coin, which will function as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum network, will reportedly be integrated into the Circle Pay payment app and in Circle Trade, as well as traded on the Poloniex exchange. Microsoft’s Bing Joins Facebook, Twitter In Crypto Ad Ban Search engine Bing will be blocking crypto-related advertisements …

P2P payments technology company Circle announced that they rolled out the latest addition to its “family” — the cryptocurrency investment app Circle Invest — to most of the US on Tuesday, March 13. In a blog post and email sent to customers, Circle, which is one of a handful of businesses to have received a New York BitLicense, confirmed its crypto investment platform would be available in “early access” form to US citizens in 46 states. Minnesota, Wyoming and Hawaii remain excluded due to regulatory red tape, while New York will gain access “very soon”, the company said. The unveiling …

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has visited Coinbase and Ripple on a US research delegation about the “significant” issue of cryptocurrency. As local news outlet Sohu reports this week, the visit to various San Francisco startups was part of a mission to understand US approaches to Blockchain regulation. "The PBoC was one of the parties to travel, with representatives also coming from the Shanghai New Financial Research Institute and Peking University Digital Finance Research Center, among others." “Through this mutual communication, the delegation members reached a number of effective and valuable conclusions [on fintech regulatory approaches],” Sohu reports. In …

Goldman Sachs has joined a round of funding for internet bank Circle, Purse.io has integrated with Shapeshift.io to allow altcoin holders to make third party purchases from Amazon, SilkRoad trial judge rejects retrial demand and many more top stories from April 30. Goldman Sachs invests US$50 million in Circle Leading the start-up’s series C funding round, Goldman Sachs has joined a group of investors in raising US$50million for Circle. Working alongside IDG Capital Partners, Breyer Capital, General Catalyst Partners, and Accel Partners, the involvement of a high profile name like Goldman Sachs is likely to encourage increased interest and attention …