Morgan Stanley has made its first capital investment foray into the blockchain space, co-leading a $48 million funding for Securitize. According to a release issued on Monday, the Coinbase-backed asset tokenization outfit has completed a Series B funding round that drew participation from Morgan Stanley Tactical Value-managed investment funds and Blockchain Capital. Other participants in the funding round included Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank (SMTB), Emin Gün Sirer’s Ava Labs, and venture capital fund IDC Ventures, among others. The oversubscribed Series B round also saw participation from previous Securitize backers like Ripple and Borderless Capital. Monday’s Series B funding announcement comes …

Bitwise, a four-year-old crypto asset management firm, has closed a Series B funding round, raising $70 million in fresh capital from investors. According to a report by CNBC on Tuesday, major Wall Street figures such as billionaire investor and Bitcoin (BTC) proponent Stanley Druckenmiller and David McCormick, CEO of asset management giant Bridgewater Associates, participated in the funding. Commenting on the stellar cast of investors, CNBC quoted Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley stating that the company was keen to attract major Wall Street and crypto backers. Bitwise will reportedly utilize the newly raised funds to beef up its balance sheet as …

This year, stocks like the movie theater chain AMC Entertainment and video game retailer GameStop (GME) have been the vehicle for individual retail traders to show their dissent against the so-called “free market.” Starting in late January and driven by sentiment from Reddit communities such as r/Wallstreetbets, these meme stocks have seen enormous growth this year. GameStop has shown 1,069.80% year-to-date returns, while AMC has shown 1,919.34% gains. At this rate, they should have 2,440% and 4,378% returns on an annual basis, respectively. Around the same time, Bitcoin (BTC) ventured beyond the $50,000 mark for the first time ever following …

Major Wall Street bank executives will appear before the United States Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday to discuss the role of their financial institutions in the recovery of the American economy. Democratic lawmakers plan to grill a number of major bank execs, whose firms saw record profits during the COVID-19 pandemic while average Americans struggled to make ends meet. In prepared testimonies posted on Tuesday, CEOs at the Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo described their respective banks' responses to major challenges such as inequality, diversity, climate change, taxes, as well as how their banks handle cryptocurrencies. This year …

Wall Street megabank Goldman Sachs has initiated coverage of United States cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase with a buy rating following a major crash on crypto markets. In a note to clients on Monday, Goldman Sachs analyst Will Nance stated that Coinbase stock is the best way for investors to gain exposure to the crypto industry, CNBC reported. According to the report, shares of crypto companies like Coinbase should be regarded as a hedge against the parabolic volatility of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC). “While we believe the core business today offers an attractive growth profile with the potential to drive new high …

Beyond Coinbase, are there any other examples? One company that has been in the process of completing a Reg A token sale is Exodus. Exodus — which offers desktop, mobile and hardware crypto wallets — said that it wanted to pursue this approach to ensure that its users had equal access to equity as venture capital firms and crypto whales. The company’s stock was listed at a price of $27.42 a share, and was available directly through the Exodus wallet in exchange for Bitcoin, Ether or the USDC stablecoin. It was also available exclusively in the U.S., barring three states. …

Every significant transformation comes with a new toolset, one that is always surprising at the time and obvious in hindsight. If we look at the past few years, we can notice that events around Bitcoin (BTC), the Black Lives Matter movement, climate change and GameStop — to name a few — are individual vectors of the same movement that highlights the need to refine inefficiencies of current systems and drives solutions led by an aggregation of individuals with a collective belief. This follows the recent events in which certain users were unable to access platforms such as Reddit, Parler and …

Citigroup is reportedly considering offering crypto-related services to its customers in response to rising demand, specifically from asset managers and hedge funds. The financial services firm’s global head of foreign exchange, Itay Tuchman, told the Financial Times on Friday that the investment bank was already exploring the possibility of providing crypto services to its clients. Trading, financing and custody services are being discussed, but Tuchman said the firm would not be rushed into launching something that could worry regulators. “We shouldn’t do anything that’s not safe and sound. We will jump in when we are confident that we can build …

Betterment, a major financial advisory company providing robo-advising and cash management services, has not yet decided whether it will introduce cryptocurrencies to its platform. Betterment is still researching a potential expansion of its services to include digital assets like Bitcoin (BTC), CEO Sarah Levy said. “We’re believers that if we can provide the right kind of context and advice, that it’s OK to participate in some of these newer asset classes,” Levy said in a Tuesday interview at Bloomberg’s Wealth Summit. “I’d like us to find a way to responsibly offer crypto, but I can’t say that we’re there yet. …

S&P Dow Jones Indices, a major global resource for index-based data and research, has introduced its first cryptocurrency indexes amid a renewed surge on crypto markets. The company announced on Monday that it had launched three crypto indexes tied to the performance of the two largest cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). The newly introduced indexes include Bitcoin-based S&P Bitcoin Index (SPBTC), Ether-based S&P Ethereum Index (SPETH), and S&P Cryptocurrency MegaCap Index (SPCMC), which is designed to track the performance of BTC and ETH weighted by market capitalization. All three indexes are immediately available on the S&P’s website. The company …

Depending on where you stand on the GameStop saga, which saw organized retail traders extract $6 billion from Wall Street overnight, you may think someone should either take the matches away from Elon Musk, or give him more. The CEO and “Technoking” of Tesla was accused of pouring “jet fuel” on the GameStop short-squeeze at a critical moment by hedge fund manager David Einhorn, founder of Greenlight Capital, in a letter to investors published on Thursday. Einhorn said Musk and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya were the real instigators behind the short-squeeze, claiming both had supplied “the real jet fuel” for …

Panelists at a DeFi-focused talk held at the BlockDown conference on Thursday expressed their optimism at the past and future growth of decentralized finance, but highlighted the hurdles to adoption due to congestion on Ethereum. The panel, titled “DeFi’s newest waves,” featured Anton Bukov, co-founder of 1inch Network, Ajit Tripathi, head of institutional business at Aave, Hyung Lee, CEO of B.Harvest, and Eric Chen, co-founder of Injective Protocol. The panel was moderated by Cointelegraph’s technology editor Andrey Shevchenko (yours truly). Bukov characterized the current crypto cycle as somewhat more mature than those of the past, notably 2017. The projects raising …