IOTA’s Upgrades Network Speeds by 50X; Morgan Creek Leads $50M Investment in BlockFi; UK Grants Licenses to Archax & Gemini
Linas Beliūnas
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Last week (17-22 August) was yet another interesting week in the Blockchain & Crypto world. Grayscale Investments, the asset manager behind the world’s largest Bitcoin trust, announced that its Bitcoin Cash Trust and Litecoin Trust are eligible for deposit at the Depository Trust Company, the largest securities depository in the world; the IOTA project has successfully completed its Chrysalis upgrade, enabling the network to handle up to 1000 transactions per second. This is around 50x faster than previously when the network topped out around 20 TPS, and more!
Without further ado, let us dive into what has happened in the new age of finance this week. Let’s connect the dots.
IOTA’s Chrysalis Upgrade Supercharges Network Speeds 50x
IOTA’s network upgrade Chrysalis is now live, bringing an exponential increase in speed.
The IOTA project has successfully completed its Chrysalis upgrade, enabling the network to handle up to 1000 transactions per second. This is around 50x faster than previously when the network topped out around 20 TPS.
According to an Aug. 19 blog post from the IOTA Foundation, IOTA 1.5, AKA Chrysalis, is now live. The upgrade is designed to be an intermediate stage before the removal of the Coordinator from the IOTA network. The Coordinator is a centralized server managed by IOTA developers that creates checkpoints in its transaction history.
Under Chrysalis, the confirmation time of transactions for token transfers on the IOTA mainnet has been reduced to four seconds in some cases, at least eight times faster than before.
It’s also possible the network may be able to handle more than 1000 TPS — during community testnet testing, IOTA stated the network was able to reach 1500 TPS.
This is a significant improvement for the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution.
Morgan Creek Leads $50M Investment in BlockFi
$50 million Series C round was led by Anthony Pompliano’s crypto asset management firm Morgan Creek Digital.
BlockFi, a big American cryptocurrency lending startup, has completed another funding round featuring major industry investors.
The company has raised $50 million in a Series C round led by Anthony Pompliano’s crypto asset management firm Morgan Creek Digital, BlockFi announced on Aug. 20.
The funding round also featured some established BlockFi investors like Winklevoss Capital, venture capital fund Valar Ventures and CMT Digital. Other participating investors included Castle Island Ventures, SCB 10X, Avon Ventures, Purple Arch Ventures, Kenetic Capital, HashKey, and NBA player Matthew Dellavedova.
As announced, the new funding comes amid BlockFi seeing a 10-fold revenue increase over the past year. The company now has $100 million in revenues over the past year, while managed assets account for more than $1.5 billion to date.
UK Grants Licenses to Archax & Gemini
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has granted licenses to two crypto exchanges operating in the country, Archax and Gemini.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has granted operational licenses to two cryptocurrency exchanges operating in the country: digital security exchange Archax and the UK branch of the Winklevoss twins’ Gemini exchange.
According to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) website, both Archax and Gemini Europe Services are currently registered in the U.K. as crypto asset firms as of Aug. 18 and Aug. 19, respectively. Both crypto exchanges had to meet compliance requirements in terms of a risk assessment of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter-Terrorism Financing (CTF) regulations which were mandatory as of Jan. 10.
Archax said in an Aug. 19 blog post that the FCA’s decision had made it the “first ever FCA regulated digital securities exchange and custodian in the UK.”
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Week in Brief
IOTA’s network upgrade Chrysalis is now live, bringing an exponential increase in speed.
BlockFi nets $50 million Series C round led by Anthony Pompliano’s crypto asset management firm Morgan Creek Digital.
The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has granted licenses to two crypto exchanges operating in the country, Archax and Gemini.
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About: I am a business developer, sales professional, FinTech strategist, as well as Cryptocurrency and Blockchain enthusiast. I'm highly passionate about Financial Technology and Digital Innovation, and strongly believe that it will change the world for the better. Apart from my daily job at a global payments startup where I'm leading company's expansion into Europe , I'm an active member of FinTech community and a TechFin evangelist.
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