City Sequoia Financial News

Michael Moritz, the storied venture capitalist who sits on the boards of Stripe and Instacart, is leaving Sequoia Capital after 38 years, according to a letter sent to limited partners on Wednesday and viewed by Reuters. Moritz, 68, will now focus on Sequoia Heritage, a $15 billion wealth management fund that he helped launch in 2010. The fund will be independent from Sequoia Capital, with focus on a diversified range of assets, according to the letter.

Fino Payments Bank is keen to become a small finance bank after having completed five years of operations, Managing Director Rishi Gupta said. The Navi Mumbai-based company is a subsidiary of Fino Paytech, which is backed by marquee investors such as Bharat Petroleum, ICICI Group, Blackstone, IFC, Intel and LIC, among others. The company started operations in July 2017 with 410 branches to become the fourth payments bank after Airtel Payments Bank, India Post Payments Bank and Paytm Payments Bank. Fino, which was a remittance service provider, has converted most of its Fino Money Mart outlets into bank branches after getting licence from the Reserve Bank. Also, Fino is the only lender in this space being traded on the exchanges. «From regulatory and compliance perspectives we are eligible for an upgrade to a small finance bank, having completed the mandatory five years of operations. Our board also favours such a conversion and soon we'll be moving an application with the RBI in this regard,» Gupta told PTI.

New Delhi: Actor and entrepreneur Suniel Shetty has invested in a new healthcare venture The Biohacker, a full-service integrative health and wellness clinic founded by Lalit Dharmani. “I’m excited about ‘The Biohacker’ as it is definitely my wisest collaboration till date since it explores the impact of the approach of biohacking on our personal health and society. There is rapid growth in the healthcare and fitness sector to improve the lifestyle of people, and, ‘The Biohacker’ interests me because of their approach towards wellness, starting right from the diagnosis to therapeutic treatments by using high-end technology," Shetty said in a statement.

Airtel Payments Bank, a FASTag issuer, has collaborated with Park+ to enable FASTag-based smart parking solution at Varanasi's Lal Bahadur Shastri Airport. The FASTag-based smart parking solution enables automatic cashless payments at airport parking, making vehicle movement in the parking zone frictionless and time efficient.

The outlook for the crypto industry is bright. As a matter of fact, the present isn’t even all that grim, Bryan Pellegrino, CEO of cross-chain interoperability protocol LayerZero, told Cointelegraph at the Collision conference in Toronto. “2015 was basically unbearable. […] Nobody cared; there was nothing. This really doesn't seem that bad to me,” Pellegrino said.

An intense price melt-up in Bitcoin Cash (BCH) that started just over a week ago has continued on Thursday.

Asset manager Fidelity is expected to file with the U.S. securities regulator for a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund, joining other big money managers seeking to launch bitcoin ETFs, the Block reported on Tuesday citing a source familiar with the matter. In the past two weeks, BlackRock, WisdomTree, Invesco, VanEck, and Bitwise have filed new applications with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for spot bitcoin ETFs, sending the price of bitcoin to a more than one-year high of over $31,000 on June 23. Fidelity declined to comment. The Boston-based financial firm is also part of a consortium that includes market makers Citadel Securities and Virtu Financial, retail broker Charles Schwab, and venture capital firms Paradigm and Sequoia Capital, which recently launched a crypto exchange called EDX Markets.

Following the sudden crash of FTX exchange, many firms tied to the platform also suffered, and many more who had invested in the platform concluded that their investments were the wrong move. 

The bid for the first Bitcoin (BTC) spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States is gaining traction following BlackRock’s recent application, with both former applicants and new players seeking permission from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to list a crypto ETF.

American venture capitalist Alfred Lin, a partner at Sequoia Capital, stood up for the firm’s multimillion-dollar investment in the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX. 

Stablecoin issuer Circle and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital were reportedly among the top 10 depositors at the collapsed crypto-friendly Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in March.

Bitcoin is grabbing attention once again, as it has witnessed a remarkable surge of over 11% in the past week.

EDX Markets, a newcomer to the cryptocurrency exchange landscape, has made a notable entry with backing from prominent financial institutions such as Citadel Securities, Fidelity Investments, and Charles Schwab. The company recently unveiled the launch of its digital asset market on June 20, marking its official entry into the industry.

Venture capital firm Sequoia announced an impending split that will see the company break into three distinct partnerships serving the United States, China, and Asian markets separately. 

LayerZero Labs, the development firm behind cross-chain messaging platform LayerZero, has announced a record-high $15 million bug bounty in partnership with the crypto-focused bug bounty platform Immunefi.

Crypto-focused investment firm 10T Holdings is launching a new digital-asset startup investment fund seeking to raise $200 million from investors.

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Blockchain development firm LayerZero Labs has raised $120 million in a Series B funding round for its interoperability protocol, valuing the firm at $3 billion.

Cross-chain messaging protocol developer LayerZero Labs has raised another $120 million, according to an Apr. 4 announcement. The company plans to use the capital to increase its headcount and expand its reach into the Asia-Pacific region. The company had previously raised $135 million in March 2022.

Amid multiple ongoing investigations, FTX continues to move funds. Addresses related to the failed crypto exchange reportedly transferred around $145 million in stablecoins to various platforms. 

Last week, another major quake shook crypto markets. Silvergate Bank — a crypto-fiat gateway network for financial institutions and a significant on-ramp for cryptocurrencies in the United States — shut down operations due to liquidity problems.