Hashdex Secures $26M From Coinbase, SoftBank
- The funding round was led by Valor Capital, and was joined by the VC arm of Coinbase and SoftBank.
- The fresh $26 million will help Hashdex expand abroad, and increase its team by as many as 75 members.
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In a bid to expand its services abroad, Brazilian crypto asset manager Hashdex secured $26 million in a new funding round, Bloomberg reported on 12 May.
According to the publication, the funding round was led by venture capital (VC) firm Valor Capital, and was also joined by the VC arm of crypto exchange Coinbase, Coinbase Ventures, and SoftBank. The Rio de Janeiro-based firm is one of the largest crypto asset managers in Latin America, with around 4 billion reals (almost $764 million) under management. Former Microsoft executive and CEO of Hashdex, Marcelo Sampaio, said in a statement:
“Investors are still getting to know crypto and we see room to offer more products in Brazil”
The company plans to use the newly acquired funds to expand beyond Brazil, as well as increase its crypto offering. The $26 million will also be used to boost Hashdex’s team from the current 25 members, to as many as 100, by the end of this year.
The regulated Brazilian fund manager partnered with NASDAQ back in September 2020 to launch the first cryptocurrency exchange-traded fund (ETF) on the Bermuda Stock Exchange (BSX), named the “Hashdex Nasdaq Crypto Index Fundo de Indice”. The two entities also created the NASDAQ Crypto Index (NCI), which consists of six cryptocurrencies, including BTC, ETH, BCH, LTC, LINK, and XLM.
Brazil is one of two countries — the other being Canada — to have approved a crypto-based ETF. While the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has received several Bitcoin ETF proposals, none have been approved so far. The most recent application was from the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), which on 10 May filed Form 19b-4 in an attempt to list Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust Bitcoin ETF.
- A little over $13 million in altcoins were sent to crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase in the past 24 hours, which is in accordance with a September court order.
- The court ordered a phased liquidation process, which allows the bankruptcy estate to sell $3.4 billion worth of digital assets over a certain period of time.
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- Coinbase’s Base blockchain was made available to the public on Wednesday, featuring over 100 dApps and services as part of its ecosystem.
- In order to show its capabilities and promote its mainnet partners, Base has also launched an event called “Onchain Summer” that will allow users to mint exclusive NFTs on the network.
- During an interview with FT, CEO Brian Armstrong said that before the lawsuit a SEC staff member had said that all crypto except BTC was security, and should be delisted.
- When asked how he came to that conclusion, the SEC staff member reportedly said “we’re not going to explain it to you, you need to delist every asset other that Bitcoin”.