Michael McSweeney

Blockchain payments startup Fnalityhas raised a new $95 million funding round.



Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas led the round. Euroclear, DTCC, WisdomTree and Nomura also participated.



The company is known for creating tokenized versions of major currencies, which are collateralized by cash held at central banks. So far, it has tokenized fiat currencies including US dollars, euros, British pounds, Canadian dollars, and Japanese yen.



According to the team, the primary goal of this funding is to facilitate the development of a global liquidity management ecosystem. This will support new digital payment models in both traditional wholesale financial markets, and the emerging sector of tokenized assets. Additionally, Fnality aims to establish a round-the-clock global liquidity management network, which will play a role in the implementation of these new digital payment models.



“We’re so excited about our second round of funding, securing the backing of @GoldmanSachs , @BNPParibas , @The_DTCC and many more to continue developing the first 24/7 global payments and liquidity management ecosystem for wholesale finance,” the firm <a href="https://twitter.com/fnality/status/1724405567119135210">said</a> in a post on X.



Fnality previously raised $63 million in 2019 from a clutch of banking firms, back when the project’s first iteration was known as the Utility Settlement Coin. Its stated goal was to create a system for wholesale payments across a range of major currencies, including USD, EUR and JPY, among others.&nbsp;



Some of the investors in that earlier round — including BNY Mellon, Barclays, Santander and Nasdaq’s venture arm, among others — also took part in the Series B funding round.&nbsp;



&#8220;Our Series B funding round represents the financial sector’s desire for a central bank money backed blockchain-based settlement solution that bridges the gap between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralised finance (DeFi) in wholesale markets,” Rhomaios Ram, Fnality’s chief executive, said in a statement.



Wholesale payment refers to transactions between financial institutions. This area has attracted interest from distributed system developers and investors, including <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/jpmorgan-blockchain-payments">JPMorgan</a>.



Central banks have explored the use of digital currencies, though not necessarily blockchain-based, for wholesale payments applications.&nbsp;



The Bank of International Settlements recently published the results of a wholesale CBDC trial in conjunction with Singapore, Switzerland and France.&nbsp;



Read More: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bis-cbdc-project-mariana-concludes">Wholesale CBDCs and automatic market makers could be the perfect pair, BIS finds</a>



“In the tested experimental setup, central banks are able to manage their wCBDC without necessarily operating or controlling the underlying infrastructure. Commercial banks can use the wCBDCs to engage in instant FX trading and settlement, avoiding credit and settlement risk and improving efficiency,” the BIS paper noted at the time.



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Goldman, BNP Paribas lead Fnality’s $95M round

Ben Strack

<div id="highlights-block_62bf2533b47ae" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Metamask operations lead set to join the BitDAO ecosystem</li>
 <li>Abra and Bitpanda cut jobs while Kraken still on the hunt for talent</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



The global head of business development for <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/9869818Z:US" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Citadel Securities</a> is set to lead the company’s joint venture focused on increasing investor access to crypto, Bloomberg News <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-28/citadel-securities-nazarali-leaves-to-run-firm-s-crypto-venture" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>.



Citadel Securities and Virtu Financial were in the process of building a cryptocurrency trading platform, a source familiar with the matter <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/citadel-securities-virtu-financial-building-crypto-trading-platform/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told Blockworks last month</a>. Jamil Nazarali is reportedly expected to become CEO of the platform.



Citadel Securities did not immediately return a request for comment.&nbsp;



Web3 gaming company Immutable hired a former global head of product design for payments at Facebook to lead the protocol’s product design.



Henry Cho will help the company build an API-only user experience that enables mainstream developers to build simply.&nbsp;



“Immutable will continue hiring the best talent across the globe to continue building our vision of enabling the next billion players to truly own their in-game items,” Immutable co-founder Robbie Ferguson said in a Twitter post.



Andrei Serjantov joined crypto startup Nym as its chief financial officer. He is set to develop the company’s multi-purpose mixnet that helps enable privacy for any application, as well as the underlying finances of its NYM token.



Serjantov joins Nym from French banking group BNP Paribas, where he worked for 16 years. He was most recently the company’s head of electronic credit trading and head of flow credit quantitative research.



“As the bear market rages on, all eyes are on crypto to prove its worth,” Serjantov said in a statement. “Skeptics assume people join crypto to make a quick buck and scam the typical user, but those working through the bear market have something more to prove.”



The former operations lead for self custodial wallet MetaMask is set to join the BitDAO ecosystem to accelerate the adoption of Web3 gaming.



Jacob Cantele is now head of product strategy for BitDAO’s <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=RahCDqBPLaBstxmOiHGQa1CDZiEMesp8Rq0nyXTHCEpKTcTSFrZNgyb-TjJRHcgYqG_b2Y9OQw4S5FdLSsh8dg==" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Windranger Labs</a> and head of product for the <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=8VFB9yNCFXlRwlXlNa_pyfLRfykSOvleobU6PPWrNw6gy8oJY0kZWyRKlngn5dRx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Game7</a> DAO. 



Before working at MetaMask, Cantele led product for the Panvala grant funding DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), one of the earliest grant DAOs in the Web3 ecosystem.&nbsp;



NFT marketplace Magic Eden hired Joseph Doll to the role of general counsel.



Doll previously served as a corporate associate for Fenwick &amp; West, where he structured, negotiated and executed equity and token funding.



Web3 Ventures appointed Zach Rosen to its advisory board as the company gains Rosen’s expertise in software engineering and investment banking.&nbsp;



Rosen is a co-founder of Brydge, a startup that enables decentralized applications to deploy on one chain and accept payments from others. He said in a statement that he would leverage his network and background within the Web3 space to help identify and evaluate crypto projects for Web3 Ventures’ platform.



Crypto trading and lending platform Abra reportedly laid off about a dozen employees this week as market turbulence continues. Abra CEO Bill Barhydt <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/155209/abra-becomes-latest-crypto-firm-to-cut-jobs" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told The Block</a> that the job cuts — representing about 5% of the company’s workforce — were done “purely as a cost-saving measure.”



An Abra spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment. &nbsp; &nbsp;



In case you missed it, crypto exchange Bitpanda <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/bitpanda-to-slash-nearly-30-of-workforce-citing-recession-threat/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">is letting go about a third of its workforce</a>. The company, backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, wrote in a <a href="https://blog.bitpanda.com/en/way-forward" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">letter to employees</a> that it wants to cut down its headcount from more than 1,000 to 730 as it seeks to improve its financial health.



Meanwhile, crypto exchange Kraken posted more than 600 new job ads in the United States in the last seven days, according to a June 29 study by <a href="https://cryptojobslist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Crypto Jobs List</a>. The Kraken listings account for nearly 20% of the new American crypto job ads over the span.



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Latest in Crypto Hiring: Former Facebook, BNP Paribas Pros Join Space

David Canellis

<div id="highlights-block_628b9282eb317" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>JPMorgan’s permissioned blockchain Onyx tokenizes US Treasurys for fast settlement within intraday repo markets</li>
 <li>BNP Paribas is the latest bank to join the network after rival Goldman Sachs began utilizing it last June</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



French banking giant BNP Paribas, the second-largest banking group in Europe, is now trading digital tokens on JPMorgan’s blockchain network for short-term asset loans.



JPMorgan’s blockchain system, Onyx Digital Assets, launched in December 2020 and has so far processed more than $300 billion in government bond transactions, according to a <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/f23c990a-913d-4613-8014-f61d35b6e09d" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a> from the Financial Times.



For now, Onyx deals specifically with the intraday repurchase (repo) market, which is valued at around $12 trillion. Banks can lend tokenized US Treasurys for a few days at a time without the assets leaving their balance sheets. This helps navigate liquidity demands imposed on institutions in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.



Borrowers can then exchange the tokens for liquid cash, boosting their available collateral for use within derivatives markets. Onyx is integrated with JPMorgan’s own digital payments token, JPM Coin, which debuted around the same time as its blockchain platform.



Deals on the permissioned blockchain network are settled by automated smart contracts. Onyx’s <a href="https://www.jpmorgan.com/onyx/onyx-digital-assets.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">website</a> boasts that the service enables “near instantaneous atomic exchange of collateral for cash.” Repo transactions can be “traded, settled, and matured within a day,” and trade terms can be as little as minutes.



BNP Paribas’ head of engineering Joe Bonnaud told the Financial Times the bank’s adoption of Onyx was more than exploration of a proof of concept. The bank, which managed $612 billion in assets at the start of the year, hopes the move will help utilize blockchain as trading and operations life cycles of markets evolve. Rival bank Goldman Sachs joined Onyx last June.



Permissioned (private) blockchains such as Onyx differ greatly from Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are permissionless (public) networks. Anyone with the right equipment can join and use permissionless blockchains — either as validators or regular users — while JPMorgan alone controls who validates Onyx transactions and ultimately decides which institutions can access its network.



BNP Paribas is among a consortium of French banks experimenting with a <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/french-central-bank-trades-oats-on-private-blockchain/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">permissioned blockchain project</a> of the French central bank, trading debt securities as part of research on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">JPMorgan is deep in blockchain, slowly wading into crypto</h3>



JPMorgan adopting blockchain — even a watered-down version of it — might be surprising to some, considering CEO Jamie Dimon’s repeated criticisms of bitcoin over the years.



Dimon has been one of the most vocal proponents of the “blockchain, not bitcoin” mantra, which became synonymous with crypto-weary institutional players in 2018 — labeling BTC “fool’s gold” and “worthless” as recently as October.



JPMorgan developed and sold open source enterprise blockchain platform Quorum to Ethereum giant ConsenSys in August 2020 for an undisclosed amount. Quorum enables companies and other entities to deploy their own blockchain networks validated by a single entity, hosted by Microsoft’s Azure cloud service. JPMorgan joined a $65 million ConsenSys funding round one year later.



Despite Dimon’s skepticism, JPMorgan quietly began offering its richest clients access to a half-dozen crypto funds last year, including a bitcoin fund operated by New York-headquartered finance unit NYDIG, four Grayscale Investment crypto funds, and one managed by Osprey.



JPMorgan also made a “strategic investment” in the San Francisco-based blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs in February. The company helps trace illicit crypto flows to aid in regulatory matters, similarly to Chainalysis and Elliptic.



The bank even established a &#8220;<a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/jpmorgan-enters-the-metaverse-with-virtual-decentraland-lounge/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">lounge</a>&#8221; (also named Onyx) in the blockchain-powered metaverse app Decentraland in the same month, the first major institution to do so.



As for what’s next, head of Onyx Digital Assets Tyrone Lobban told reporters JPMorgan was exploring institutional access to decentralized finance markets via Onyx, although details were not forthcoming.



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