CCM Blockchain Weekly – TradFi Continues to Make Crypto Moves (11.03.2022)

Blockchain founders, enthusiasts and financiers –

This is CCM’s Blockchain Weekly Newsletter. They say that a lot of the real building occurs during bear markets. And with this crypto winter, we’re seeing polar bears. Despite the downturn, traditional financial institutions “TradFi” continue to make waves in the crypto ecosystem. Today, we bring to you some notable projects:

Mastercard

• Mastercard has partnered with crypto trading platform Paxos to help banks offer crypto trading
• Mastercard introduced Crypto SourceTM, a new program enabling financial institutions to bring secure crypto trading capabilities and services to their consumers
• The payments giant will help banks follow crypto compliance rules, verify transactions, provide anti-money-laundering and identity monitoring services\

Visa

• Payments giant Visa filed two trademark applications to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) related to digital wallets, non-fungible tokens and the metaverse
• The move follows that of other large corporations and payment companies including American Express and the New York Stock Exchange
• Part of one of the applications applies for trademarks related to software for “management of digital transactions; use as a digital currency wallet and storage services software; use as a cryptocurrency wallet; and managing and verifying cryptocurrency transactions using blockchain technology," while another one is an application related to “providing temporary use of non-downloadable software for users to view, access, store, monitor, manage, trade, send, receive, transmit, and exchange digital currency, virtual currency, cryptocurrency, digital and blockchain assets, and non-fungible tokens (NFT)."

Moneygram

• Moneygram to enable users to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency via mobile app
• According to the company, users within select regions can now trade and store Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC)
• MoneyGram shared that this crypto addition to its app was made possible through its partnership with licensed crypto exchange and API-driven crypto-as-a-service provider, Coinme

Telefonica

• Telefónica, Spain’s largest telco, allows purchases with crypto, invests in local exchange Bit2Me
• The company activated purchases with crypto on its technology marketplace after adding a payment feature provided by Bit2Me
• The Spanish telecommunications company also has its own NFT marketplace on the Polygon blockchain that is initially integrated with MetaMask

JP Morgan

• JPMorgan executes first DeFi transaction on Polygon
• The banking giant carried out the transaction on Ethereum layer2 network Polygon because of its cheap transaction fees, and leveraged Aave Protocol's permissioned pool concept
• Project Guardian is an initiative of MAS with financial institutions such as JP Morgan, Marketnode, and DBS Bank Ltd. Its focus is on use cases for asset tokenization and DeFi

BNY Mellon

• BNY Mellon launches new digital asset custody platform
• The custodial lender earlier this fall received approval from financial regulators in New York to begin holding bitcoin and ether for certain customers
• Client demand for crypto was the key factor in launching a crypto custody offering

State Street

• State Street to develop digital custody in collaboration with Copper, sees ‘significant opportunity’ in tokenization
• The bank working on tokenizing funds and private assets in 2023 to improve efficiency and accessibility for clients
• Using distributed ledger technology to tokenize funds and private assets, for example, to improve efficiency and accessibility is something the company is working on for 2023

Goldman Sachs

• Goldman teams with MSCI and Coin Metrics to create digital asset classification system
• The new system will be called Datanomy, and seeks to give crypto participants a standardized way to view and analyze the digital assets ecosystem
• Crypto market participants will be able to track trends in different segments of crypto including Smart Contract Platforms and DeFi, and also screen various assets

In this issue we review:

• Some of the week’s biggest news
• Valuation and operating metrics for publicly traded companies
• The latest VC funding metrics
• M&A deal flow
• and often we’ll include deeper dives to help understand various aspects of the ecosystem

Please reach out with any comments / thoughts / questions. Would love to hear your feedback on how we can make this more useful to you.