The Crypto Roundup: 10 June 2024

Latest price and news from the crypto space

Latest price from our hand picked list of digital assets

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said in a national address on Thursday that the recently passed law making bitcoin legal tender in the country will take effect on September 7.

Wall Street giant Citigroup is set to help its richest clients bet on cryptocurrencies as part of a new digital asset group inside its wealth management unit. The bank’s move comes as investor demand for digital assets keeps soaring.

Prominent VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has launched a $2.2 billion cryptocurrency-focused fund, called the “Crypto Fund III.” It’s a16z’s third and largest crypto venture fund.

Sponsored: Launched in 2019, the Canadian SportX platform has become one of the most popular online sports and crypto betting platforms, with superior security features and betting options. Unlike some competitors, all bets can be placed from a web3 wallet such as Metamask with funds held in an escrow contract which protects all funds and guarantees payouts with zero delays.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

Bitcoin to Become Legal Tender in El Salvador in September
Citigroup Joins Other Banks Offering Wealthy Clients Access to Crypto
Andreesen Horowitz Launches $2.2 Billion Crypto-Focused Venture Fund
Sponsored: Exciting Rewards Through Sports, Crypto Betting & SX Native Token On SportX DApp

Bitcoin to Become Legal Tender in El Salvador in September

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said in a national address on Thursday that the recently passed law making bitcoin legal tender in the country will take effect on September 7.

The government is set to use the Chivo e-wallet, which will be preloaded with $30 of bitcoin to everyone who downloads it. The $30 in BTC will be sent to a user’s wallet once they verify their identity with the app’s face recognition software.

The law was passed by a supermajority in El Salvador’s legislature on June 9, with 62 members voting in favor of the bill and 19 opposing it. Three abstained. The law will see bitcoin become legal tender in the country, which means merchants must accept it along with the U.S. dollar.

Citigroup Joins Other Banks Offering Wealthy Clients Access to Crypto

The effort will be led by Alex Kriete and Greg Girasole. In a memo, Citigroup’s global head of capital markets for its private bank Iain Armitage and Rob Jaminski, who oversees the bank’s investment management arm globally, wrote:

"Given the exciting new developments we are seeing around cryptocurrencies, tokenization, and other advances powered by blockchain technology, we are pleased to announce the formation of the Digital Assets Group,"

The new group will help Citigroup’s clients invest in cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and non-fungible tokens, as well as central bank digital currencies.

It’s worth noting Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have already launched their own internal initiatives to help their rich wealth management clients gain exposure to the cryptocurrency market.

Andreesen Horowitz Launches $2.2 Billion Crypto-Focused Venture Fund

Prominent VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has launched a $2.2 billion cryptocurrency-focused fund, called the “Crypto Fund III.” It’s a16z’s third and largest crypto venture fund.

In a blog post Katie Haum and Chris Dixon, the partners who will lead the fund, wrote:

"The size of this fund speaks to the size of the opportunity before us: crypto is not only the future of finance but, as with the internet in the early days, is poised to transform all aspects of our lives.”

The firm’s first cryptocurrency-focused fund in 2018 ushered in $300 million of LP commitments, while its second fund closed in April 2020 after bringing in about $515 million. A16z is well-known in the crypto space for investing in Coinbase in 2013.

The firm dropped its Coinbase position after the cryptocurrency exchange’s public debut. Estimates suggest the venture capital fund made so much off of its Coinbase bet it may have banked enough to repay its last two funds totalling $4.5 billion.

Comparing Top Compound Borrowers With Flipside Crypto

As we can see in the graph below featuring the top 50 borrowers on Compound by USD, the gap between the top 10 “whales” and the rest of the borrowers is vast. As Twitter user @alib425 points out, the difference between the top borrower and even the third-highest borrower is nearly $100 million USDC. That’s equivalent to an 8.5% gap — much larger than the 2.7% gap between the top two.

Exciting Rewards Through Sports, Crypto Betting & SX Native Token On SportX DApp

Launched in 2019, the Canadian SportX platform has become one of the most popular online sports and crypto betting platforms, with superior security features and betting options. Unlike some competitors, all bets can be placed from a web3 wallet such as Metamask with funds held in an escrow contract which protects all funds and guarantees payouts with zero delays.

SX Token

The SX token is the native to SportX ERC-20 governance token, which provides reduced betting fees, governance participation to holders and different staking options. Throughout the past several weeks, the SX token has been gaining momentum with regular periods of price increases. In contrast to the current cryptocurrency market crash and price devaluation of most of the cryptocurrency leaders, the SX token remains stable.

SX Bet Mining

The bet mining represents the earned SX tokens that are awarded only on winning bets to discourage wash trading. All calculations on the amount of earned tokens are made on a weekly basis by adding up the profits (return-stake) for every bet. All earnings are automatically transferred to the user`s account, with zero decreases on winnings from the losing bets.

Crypto Betting & Sports Betting

For all sports fans, SportX has prepared a series of exciting events along with the newly added feature that enables bettors to make price predictions on BTC and Ethereum markets.

To stimulate further participation and reward all platform users for their winning bets, SportX has organized one of their biggest events to date - their Summer Tournament, which includes a variety of sports events with different reward pools and betting conditions. For additional information on the Summer Tournament and each of the events that runs as part of the tournament, please visit SportX website.