BlockFi to pay 100$ Million in a settlement? Open Sea to invest in NFT Ecosystem and Polygon Raises $450 Million from Investors

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BlockFi to pay $100 million for settling investigations against its interest-generating accounts

BlockFi, a virtual asset lending platform, has agreed to pay $100 million to settle an investigation into its interest-generating accounts, which attracted the attention of US state securities investigators last year. BlockFi has previously said that their offering does not fit within the definition of securities, which regulators in New Jersey, Alabama, Texas, Kentucky and Vermont are scrutinising.

The SEC's Gary Gensler said that his agency is interested in expanding its control of the US crypto industry, including crypto lending. When compared to U.S. FDIC-insured banks, the interest rates on BlockFi's crypto savings accounts are more than three where such deposited monies are loaned by BlockFi similar to banks.

The current steps shall not result in the complete closure of the service provided by BlockFi. However, new customers in the affected states will not use BlockFi's products until the legal proceedings are concluded.

Traditional banks do not have to comply with securities legislation regarding savings accounts, whereas BlockFi has been in contact with US authorities about its products for quite some time now. Regulators in some states have recently taken action against interest accounts because they believe they are securities, unlike bank savings accounts.

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OpenSea to invest in NFT ecosystem through its venture arm

OpenSea, an NFT marketplace, said that it would provide funding and access to its leadership and investors, including Standard Crypto and a16z, to firms and projects in the market for non-fungible tokens and Web3.

Alchemy and FTX are among a growing number of crypto organizations that have formed their own venture divisions. As a result, the company has pledged $2 billion to new crypto businesses.

OpenSea has also introduced a new "Ecosystem Grants" initiative. In terms of OpenSea Ventures, the new operation will concentrate on four primary themes: novel NFT protocols, NFT aggregators, and social and gaming ventures. This year, OpenSea received more than $13 billion in funding.

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Polygon raises $450 million through a private token sale

Polygon raised $450 million in a private token sale to grow its ecosystem and onboard users in crypto. In addition to Sequoia Capital India, more than 40 additional investors participated in Polygon's fundraising, including SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Tiger Global, Alan Howard and Kevin O'Leary, Galaxy Digital and Alameda Research.

Now that it has access to new funding, polygon expects to set aside $100 million annually for its ecosystem fund and around $10 million for each of its scaling products, such as Hermez, Miden, Zero, and Nightfall.

Polygon has made two acquisitions totalling $650 million after pledging $1 billion in ZK rollup-related scaling efforts: Mir and Hermez. Polygon's ecosystem has developed tremendously since its inception in 2017. According to Polygon, over 7,000 decentralised apps are presently being developed. Some of its main partners are Aave, OpenSea, Lazy.com, Dolce & Gabbana, and Mark Cuban's Lazy.com.

The CEO and COO posts have also been abolished from Polygon, arguing that the project is decentralised and does not need them. Due to a serious problem, Polygon feared losing all of its tokens in December, which was a huge setback for the company. Despite Polygon's efforts to close the hole, a hacker ran off with nearly $2 million worth of MATIC tokens. Two whitehat hackers who identified the problem received a total of $3.46 million in bug bounties from Polygon.

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Jamaica to roll out digital currency to facilitate greater financial inclusion

According to Prime Minister Andrew Holness, Jamaica plans to implement its central bank digital currency (CBDC) this year. On the first day of parliament's 2022/2023 session, Holness reiterated the key aspects of his address in a series of tweets.

Jamaica's Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) announced in December that it minted $230 million worth of digital currency on August 9 and issued a wallet provider $1 million the following day, and two months later issued an additional $5 million in CBDC to a deposit-taking institution, the National Commercial Bank, as part of a pilot programme.

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What's your take on the developments? Join the conversation in the comments below.

Image Credits: Jan Antonin Kolar, Polina Kondrashova, Mehdi MeSSrro and Caspar Rae.