Peter Thiel News

Crypto-focused venture capital investors have advised their portfolio companies to withdraw funds from Silicon Valley Bank, which is struggling to reassure clients after moves to shore up its balance sheet spooked investors. The warnings arise as startups in the industry look for viable banking options.

The second largest publicly-listed holder of Bitcoin, crypto mining firm Marathon Digital Holdings has offloaded some of its Bitcoin for the first time in two years. 

The names of up to nine million FTX customers are set to remain confidential for at least three more months following the latest ruling in FTX bankruptcy proceedings. 

Peter Thiel has made some fantastic bets in his career, from PayPal to Facebook to Palantir. FTX cannot be counted as one of them.

Peter Thiel has made some fantastic bets in his career, from PayPal to Facebook to Palantir. FTX cannot be counted as one of them.

PayPal's former leadership, also known as the "PayPal Mafia," have slammed the payments giant for its debanking policies of late, with one co-founder calling the freezing of funds “totalitarian,” while another compared it to an episode of Black Mirror.

In 2022, it’s no surprise that most assets are in a bear market. People have a variety of signals they look for when determining a good time to enter the market, and Cointelegraph Research’s Venture Capital Report for Q2 revealed that VC inflows stagnated at just above $14 billion last quarter, the same as Q1.

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Plum has become the latest fintech to dip its toes into digital assets, with plans to offer European customers crypto trading services in the coming weeks.

Disclaimer: The text below is a press release that is not part of Cryptonews.com editorial content.

ED) said on Friday it has attached assets worth Rs 370 crore belonging to a Bengaluru-based company linked to the instant loan apps case. The assets were parked in bank accounts, payment gateway balances, and wallets on the Flipvolt crypto exchange. Flipvolt is the Indian arm of Singaporean crypto lender Vauld.

A cryptocurrency lender backed by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures and Coinbase Global filed for protection against creditors in Singapore after pausing withdrawals.

Singapore crypto exchange Vauld Group is seeking a moratorium against its creditors — a move that would give the troubled lender more time to restructure its business after collapsing asset prices halted operations earlier this month.

Nexo, one of the larger crypto-lending platforms, has agreed in principle to acquire Singapore-based crypto services firm Vauld, the latest of a spate of deals as the market consolidates in the wake of a brutal downturn.

Nexo is likely to acquire Singapore-headquartered crypto exchange firm Vauld, pending due diligence, as both the parties signed an indicative term sheet today. “The completion of this transaction is pending due diligence — which both teams are working on as we speak. Vauld has strived to deliver long-term value to all customers, and we believe coming under the Nexo umbrella will significantly help achieve this,” co-founder and CEODarshan Bathija wrote on microblogging platform Twitter on Tuesday.

Beleaguered cryptocurrency lender Vauld has been thrown a lifeline from larger competitor Nexo, in a sign of mounting consolidation in the crypto market.

Vauld has suspended all deposits and withdrawals. The decision comes amid a broader volatility in the cryptocurrency market and as the platform faces financial challenges. Vauld is looking at a potential restructuring. “This is due to a combination of circumstances such as the volatile market conditions, the financial difficulties of our key business partners inevitably affecting us, and the current market climate,” said chief executive officer (CEO) Darshan Bathija in a statement on the company’s website on Monday. “All this has led to a significant amount of customer withdrawals over $197.7 million since June 12, when the decline of the cryptocurrency market was triggered by the collapse of Terraform Lab’s UST stablecoin, Celsius network pausing withdrawals, and Three Arrows Capital defaulting on their loans.”

A cryptocurrency lender backed by Peter Thiel and Coinbase suspended withdrawals, trading and deposits on its platform, citing volatile market conditions and financial difficulties facing key business partners.

With hype over the «buy now, pay later» trend fading, some investors are betting they've found the next big thing.

CDOs, which repackaged risky mortgage bonds to make them look safer than they were. “CDOs are nothing but a massive Ponzi scheme,” said the villain of a fictional account of the 2008 meltdown. How much more carnage will it take this time to know that blockchain-based lending is similarly reckless? The idea that one could ditch regulated intermediaries like banks and make far higher returns by lending digital assets was a key attraction of decentralized finance, or DeFi. But that was before the bloodletting began, triggered by the collapse last month of the cryptocurrency pair Terra-Luna. The appeal of changing money into TerraUSD, a stablecoin that promised 1:1 convertibility into dollars, lay in the near-20% yield on TerraUSD deposits. Withdrawal of funds from Anchor Protocol, the main DeFi lending application on the blockchain, crushed the coin, as well as Luna, its sister asset. Soon after, lenders Celsius Network and Babel froze deposits. BlockFi Inc., a Peter Thiel-backed lending platform, said it “fully liquidated or hedged all the associated collateral” of a large client believed to be Singapore-based Three Arrows Capital, a troubled crypto hedge fund. BlockFi is reducing headcount by 20% just as Coinbase Global Inc., the largest US-based digital asset exchange, lays off 18% of its workforce. There’s no end in sight to the crypto winter. Of the $252 billion of investor funds tied up in DeFi protocols last December, less than $75 billion remain.

In the history of dangerous naivety, the decentralized finance mania of 2021 will hold its own against the 2007 boom in collateralized debt obligations. It took a financial crisis for the world to wise up to CDOs, which repackaged risky mortgage bonds to make them look safer than they were. “CDOs are nothing but a massive Ponzi scheme,” said the villain of a fictional account of the 2008 meltdown. How much more carnage will it take this time to know that blockchain-based lending is similarly reckless?