A group of cryptocurrency investors who banded together as ConstitutionDAO, and raised $47 million to buy a rare, first-edition copy of the U.S. Constitution at a Sotheby’s auction has lost the bid - what happens to the money is now up to the members of the DAO.

Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform Acala has won Polkadot’s first parachain auction following a seven-day auction in which it received over 32 million DOT tokens from 81,218 contributors.

Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini has announced that it has brought in external capital in its first funding round, raising $400 million at a valuation of $7.1 billion. The round was led by Morgan Creek Digital and saw participation from 10T, ParaFi, NewFlow Partners, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and others.

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Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Crypto Group Loses Bid to Buy Copy of U.S. Constitution
• Acala Wins Polkadot’s First Parachain Auction
• Crypto Exchange Gemini Valued at $7.1 Billion in Funding Round
• Crypto Market Movers – WAX, CRO, SAND
• Sponsored: Crypto.com - The World’s Fastest Growing Crypto App

Crypto Group Loses Bid to Buy Copy of U.S. Constitution

A group of cryptocurrency investors who banded together as ConstitutionDAO, and raised $47 million to buy a rare, first-edition copy of the U.S. Constitution at a Sotheby’s auction has lost the bid, and what happens to the money is now up to the members of the DAO.

The rare copy of the U.S. Constitution sold for $43.2 million. The group stopped short of making the winning bid as they needed to account for costs associated with “proper care and maintenance” of the document.

ConstitutionDAO wrote in its frequently asked questions section the funds would be redeemable, minus a transaction fee. A contributor to the DAO, Alice Ma, has said that the organization will “for sure” provide everyone “an option for a refund.” Some investors, Ma said, have revealed they want to keep their funds in the DAO’s wallet.

On social media, some members discussed what to do with the funds, with some suggesting they should be saved for future auctions. The next steps will now be determined by members of the DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization.

A DAO is an internet-native organization with no central leadership, in which decisions are made from the bottom-up by its stakeholders. DAOs are organized around specific rules enforced by blockchain technology.

Acala Wins Polkadot’s First Parachain Auction

Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform Acala has won Polkadot’s first parachain auction following a seven-day auction in which it received over 32 million DOT tokens from 81,218 contributors.

The funds are worth roughly $1.27 billion and will see Acala distribute over 100 million ACA tokens to its community of contributors. A total of 24.1 million LCDOT tokens are going to be distributed to Acala Network backers. LCDOT is a liquid token that represents locked DOT.

Acala is looking to build a decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem on Polkadot, with plans to launch an automated market maker, liquid DOT staking, and a decentralized stablecoin called aUSD. It’s also optimizing interoperability with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

Polkadot is a blockchain network often described as a “blockchain of blockchains,” as it allows users to launch and operate their own blockchains on top of the main Polkadot blockchain. This main blockchain, called the relay chain, does not support smart contracts, but other blockchains connected to it can support them.

Crypto Exchange Gemini Valued at $7.1 Billion in Funding Round

Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini has announced that it has brought in external capital in its first funding round, raising $400 million at a valuation of $7.1 billion. The round was led by Morgan Creek Digital and saw participation from 10T, ParaFi, NewFlow Partners, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and others.

Until this point, the company’s co-founders, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, had funded the exchange by themselves. The funds are set to help Gemini build a more decentralized metaverse.

Sachin Jaitly, General Partner of Morgan Creek Digital, was quoted saying:

“[The Winklevoss twins’] vision for the role of crypto in redesigning money, the financial system, art, and the Internet, and their track record of incubating and scaling innovative technologies, gives us confidence in Gemini’s ability to continue to be an industry leader.”

In an interview with Forbes, Cameron Winklevoss contrasted a decentralized model of a metaverse with the path of Meta, formerly known as Facebook, which rebranded to focus on the metaverse last month.

Crypto Market Movers – WAX, CRO, SAND

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 7-day period. Some of these are well-known cryptocurrencies with more liquid trading pairs, so we’ll be focusing on these over low-cap cryptos that may have higher percentage changes.

WAX (WAXP) - WAX is a purpose-built blockchain and protocol token that has a convenient way to create, buy, sell, and trade virtual items anywhere in the world and it is designed to be the platform for video gaming and e-commerce dApps. It will also be fully backward compatible with EOSIO.

Crypto.com Coin (CRO) - Crypto.com Coin (CRO) is the native token of the Crypto.org Chain and of the Cronos network. The Crypto.org Chain was created to build a network of cryptocurrency projects, and develop merchants’ ability to accept crypto as a form of payment. Cronos is an EVM-compatible network that aims to “massively scale the DeFi and decentralized application ecosystem.”

The Sandbox (SAND) - The Sandbox is a community-driven platform where creators can monetize voxel ASSETS and gaming experiences on the blockchain. SAND holders will be also able to participate in the governance of the platform via a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), where they can exercise voting rights on key decisions of The Sandbox ecosystem.

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