Katherine Ross

The Texas State Securities Board issued an emergency cease and desist against Plutus Financial, Plutus Lending, Abra Boost — doing business as Abra — and CEO William Barhydt.



The cease and desist ordered the named parties above from “offering securities in Texas through an offer containing a statement that is materially misleading or otherwise likely to deceive the public&#8221; as well as stopping them, &#8220;from engaging in any fraud in connection with the offer for sale of any security in Texas.&#8221;



The securities commissioner is <a href="https://www.ssb.texas.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/ENF_23_CDO_1873_NOH_Actions.pdf">claiming</a> that Barhydt and Abra “made offers of investments in Abra Earn in Texas containing statements that were materially misleading or otherwise likely to deceive the public.”



An investigation into Abra Earn had started in 2022, with the letter saying that “Abra announced it would cease selling investments in Abra Earn in October 2022.”



However, in October 2022, Barhydt, Plutus Financial, Plutus Lending and Abra Boost “began offering and selling investments in Abra Boost, a digital asset depository account, to accredited and institutional investors in the United States.”



In March 2023, Barhydt was interviewed by state securities regulators, when “parties collectively operating as Abra were collectively insolvent or nearly insolvent.”



The cease and desist claims that Plutus Financial, Plutus Lending and Barhydt violated the Securities Act and “engaged in fraud.”



Abra, back in September of 2022, had <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/abra-launching-first-us-regulated-crypto-bank">plans to launch as the first regulated crypto bank</a> in the US. It had planned to launch in the US in the first quarter of 2023.&nbsp;



However, last December, Abra made <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/abra-shakes-up-senior-staff-crypto-push">personnel cuts across executives and other divisions</a> following the collapse of FTX and a source told Blockworks that it had become difficult to “raise new money and get new capital into the company.”



Abra and Barhydt did not immediately respond to requests for comment.&nbsp;



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Abra, William Barhydt named in Texas State Securities Board cease and desist

Michael Bodley

Abra is reshuffling several of its business lines as the company <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/abra-launching-first-us-regulated-crypto-bank" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">with aspirations to become the US’ first regulated crypto bank</a> has taken a hard look at cost-cutting as a buffer against the bear market, according to three sources familiar with the matter.



The measures undertaken by Abra’s top executives include a relatively measured number of personnel cuts across the firm’s sales, trading and research divisions, sources said. Still, they’re significant in the sense that they include senior personnel departures.&nbsp;



Michael Maizels, Abra’s head of research, was among those laid off within the last couple of months, as was Robin Malik, a head of over the counter (OTC) trading at the firm. There’s no indication any of the terminations were related to performances, sources said. The moves appear to be related to difficult crypto market conditions and the need to cut costs accordingly.&nbsp;



Maizels and Malik both declined to comment. Sources were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive business dealings.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“[The layoffs were] more of a cost-efficiency cutoff, where people weren’t getting business, for whom there was no work to be done — not performance-related at all,” a source said. 
</blockquote>



Generally, sales professionals are among the first to go when a crypto company makes the call to conduct layoffs in a bear market. That’s typically because current and potential customers tend to dial down their digital asset activities in down markets, so sales people have far fewer calls to make.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Abra wanted a chief investment officer&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>



CEO Bill Barhydt and Abra’s senior executives in December installed Robert Wallden as the firm’s head of institutional asset management. Though Wallden has a solid resume —&nbsp;including stints at BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and Gelber Group — he also has a background in sales, two sources said.&nbsp;



The New York-based Wallden, who most recently held the title of director of credit and trading platforms origination for Abra, appears to have some trading experience, per his LinkedIn. But both sources dubbed his selection as a curious pick, given his prior sales experience. Wallden did not reply to a request for comment.



Abra made a first-time <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-startup-abra-enters-institutional-asset-management-business%5C" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">push</a> into institutional asset management early in 2022, building off what had been one-off trading strategies for individual clients. The general idea at the time was to port opportunities to deliver crypto yield that had been developed on the credit side of the business to the emerging trading and money-running side.



The more recent moves, one source said, may stem from Abra’s plan to put in place what would have been a newly created position: chief investment officer. That role, for which interviews have been conducted, would have created a new structure designed to connect Abra’s trading, credit and asset management divisions. The heads of each would report to the chief investment officer, who would be tasked with corresponding oversight and determining how capital is allocated to each unit.



Such a setup would have simplified and consolidated internal communication, the source said.&nbsp;



That effort appears to have stalled internally, possibly due to the expense of bringing on a chief investment officer in the current market, the source added.



Barhydt declined to comment on individual employees. He did not return an additional request for comment regarding a prospective chief investment officer.&nbsp;



Regardless, such a hire would represent a change in how Abra has historically structured its hierarchy, according to two sources.&nbsp;



“There is definitely some restructuring going on,” one of the sources said.



Barhydt said his firm has expanded trading operations over the course of the fourth quarter to include over the counter (OTC) crypto capabilities, structured products and derivatives.&nbsp;



“Our trading business is doing great,” Barhydt said in a text message.



Abra “did layoffs earlier in the year as a purely cutting measure,” Barhydt said. Sources said the sales staffers were laid off at some point earlier in 2022, with the other cuts occurring recently.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Barhydt’s big crypto bank ambitions&nbsp;</h3>



The push for a chief investment officer, if there is still one in the works, started gaining steam around the same time Barhydt <a href="https://www.abra.com/blog/abra-bank-and-abra-boost/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a> Abra’s ambitions to become a bank in September, one source said. The plan is to create two entities: Abra Bank in the US and Abra International, designed to serve non-US customers.



Abra at the time dubbed the US component of the effort as what “will be the first regulated bank in the US that will enable our customers in the US to deposit and bank with digital assets, and access global fiat on and off ramps.”



“A lot of it had to do with the way the economy is right now and how difficult it is to raise new money and get new capital into the company,” the source said. “Priorities have been realigned.”



Abra is known among industry participants as a credit specialist with a roster of institutional clients. Barhydt told Blockworks the company has “won many institutional deals in the current quarter,” adding that the trading division has “grown significantly this quarter.”



And the company doesn’t seem to have been stung especially hard by the demise of Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research and FTX. In a Nov. 10 <a href="https://www.abra.com/blog/a-message-from-our-ceo-bill-barhydt-regarding-ftx/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement</a>, Barhydt said Abra&#8217;s “retail, lending and private crypto wealth management businesses don&#8217;t have any exposure to Alameda and have no material exposure to FTX or the FTT token.”



“Abra did use FTX for some trading activities,” Barhydt said at the time. “We moved most assets off of FTX and hedged our exposure on those that remain.”



The chief executive attributed the firm’s ability to “manage risk so effectively” to stringent risk management practices when it comes to lending.&nbsp;



“Every lender suffers losses,” Barhydt said then. “The key is to practice sound risk management to minimize the impact of losses while maintaining a reasonable level of profitability.”



Still, three sources said it’s clear there has been a top-down push to reevaluate how Abra approaches trading.&nbsp;



“All of this has sort of cascaded,” one of the sources said. “When you line up the chess pieces, it all makes sense that the whole point was to overhaul trading. Would this have happened if the industry hadn’t reeled?…That I don&#8217;t know.”



All three sources referred to Abra undertaking a “restructuring.”



“Abra hasn’t restructured anything,” Barhydt said. 



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Abra Shakes Up Senior Staff as Crypto Bank Plans Near, Sources Say

Jack Kubinec

<div id="highlights-block_631f818f93ea8" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Abra Bank will launch in the US during Q1 2023, with an international bank to follow</li>
 <li>“As a regulated licensed bank, it&#8217;s no longer my opinion [that matters] on transparency and public disclosures,” Abra’s CEO told Blockworks</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Abra, the crypto exchange and lending platform, is launching the first US regulated crypto bank, the company said Monday.



The move, in the eyes of industry participants, is a bullish indicator that somewhat shakes off the sector’s bear market woes — plus the pending trips of crypto lenders <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/7-critical-events-in-the-celsius-bankruptcy-case/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Celsius</a> and <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/voyager-to-liquidate-assets-at-auction/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Voyager</a> to bankruptcy court. 



Abra’s move positions the company in what has been a yearslong arms race within crypto to create the first US regulated interest-bearing crypto account — offering consumers crypto exposures with legal safeguards.



All customer deposits into Abra Bank are set to be converted into stablecoins that accrue interest similarly to traditional banks. The bank will allow customers to transfer funds into over 100 cryptocurrencies. Abra also <a href="https://about.americanexpress.com/newsroom/press-releases/news-details/2022/Abra-announces-Abra-Crypto-Card-on-the-American-Express-Network/default.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">partnered</a> with American Express in June to launch a crypto credit card.



Abra Bank’s services — asset custody, lending and staking — are already offered by a variety of other crypto firms, but Abra Bank’s regulatory guardrails make it stand out from competitors, according to Abra CEO Bill Barhydt.



“As a regulated licensed bank, it&#8217;s no longer my opinion on transparency and public disclosures. The banking laws take over and require disclosures on assets, liabilities and risk management processes,” Barhydt told Blockworks.



Abra’s maneuver comes amid Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings for Celsius and Voyager Digital, two companies that operated as ersatz banks offering high yields before going belly-up. Voyager Digital infamously <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/fdic-slaps-bankrupt-lender-voyager-over-deposit-insurance-claims/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">misled</a> customers to believe the crypto lender was FDIC insured. Abra is looking to make good on that premise.



In the US, insured banks <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/banking_12779.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">must</a> prove to regulators they have enough assets available to support their risk profile. Abra has completed this process and plans to launch sometime before the second quarter of 2023.



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Abra Launching First US Regulated Crypto Bank

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

<div id="highlights-block_61e1b5c3c0707" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>The company has been informally offering trading strategies to institutional clients — the hire is an effort to solidify that business</li>
 <li>Abra’s CEO hinted that the company’s first institutional funds could be in the works</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Abra is getting into the institutional crypto asset management business.



The crypto wealth manager is looking to hire its first head of trading strategies, who would be tasked with building out a team and the trading infrastructure to invest in a variety of different strategies.



Abra on a one-off basis has already been offering customized trading strategies to institutional clients, CEO Bill Barhydt told Blockworks. The thinking behind the new position is to formalize and expand that pipeline — with a focus on investments that drive yield enhancements.



Strategies in the mix include basis trades and arbitrage opportunities, and the idea is to build on yield enhancement opportunities that Abra has already developed on the credit side of the business.&nbsp;



Ben Liams, the company’s vice president of trading and credit markets, said ideal clients include digital assets engineering and financial firms looking for “yields that might be difficult to access in typical credit and lending arrangements.”



“This has been done on a very limited basis,” Liams said.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“Given the fast growth of our platform, this is definitely something where creating a unified platform for those kinds of opportunities inside Abra — we anticipate the need would grow.”</blockquote>



The new head of trading strategies will also be responsible for monitoring risk, both when it comes to asset management and coordinating with the lending side of the business.



Barhydt said Abra isn’t now engaging in proprietary trading with client money, but may in the future consider prop trading with the company’s own balance sheet.&nbsp;



The Abra head also said the company is considering starting institutional funds that would run client money — potentially in making its high-yield crypto products available via a fund format.



“There’s a huge opportunity to open up that model beyond just retail investors to institutional clients, including family offices,” he said.



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<hr class="wp-block-separator">

Crypto Startup Abra Enters Institutional Asset Management Business

Sam Reynolds

<div id="highlights-block_614129973e5c5" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Abra launched a full suite of financial products including lending earlier this year </li>
 <li>The company says it will use the proceeds of the round to expand its product team</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Digital Asset Summit 2021, New York City — Abra announced today that it has closed a $55 million Series C round, bringing the company’s total funds raised to $85 million. 



Abra began as a custodial wallet, but now bills itself as a wealth management platform having launched&nbsp; borrowing, trading, and remittance services earlier this year.&nbsp; In a release, the company said that its assets under management has grown to $1 billion and its 155,000 customers have processed nearly $4 billion in transactions since its inception.



“Cryptocurrencies, NFTs and DeFi are now top of mind for almost all investors. The crypto asset class is growing exponentially, even outpacing the early commercial Internet itself. Our vision of crypto-centric banking is coming to life in front of our eyes, and Abra is excited to serve as a leader in the space,” said Abra CEO Bill Barhydt in a statement. “I’m proud of what the Abra team has accomplished, and we look forward to continuing to scale our platform and serve our customers as their trusted and compliant crypto banking platform.”



Abra says it plans to use the funds to expand its global product team.



On stage at the Digital Asset Summit, Barhydt said more funding rounds are likely as the company is &#8220;growing like weeds&#8221; and has &#8220;hundreds of thousands of consumers on the retail side.&#8221;



In addition, he said that Abra &#8220;Earn&#8221; accounts will be launched soon in New York.



In 2019, <a href="https://siliconangle.com/2020/07/13/crpyto-firm-abra-settles-regulators-offering-unregistered-swap-transactions/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Abra was fined</a> $300,000 by both the SEC and CFTC for offering unregistered swap transactions on securities. As part of the agreement with regulators, Abra has agreed to stop offering tokenized stocks and similar futures services. The company claimed that it was largely run out of the Philippines, and thus not under the jurisdiction of US law, and also that it blocked US users.



A record amount of money continues to <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/crypto-venture-funding-is-at-an-all-time-high-this-is-where-the-money-is-going/">pour</a> in the digital asset space. In fact, As of mid-June, an all-time high of $17 billion has been invested into crypto projects in 2021 as Blockworks previously reported.



Already this week, Amberdata announced it had <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/citi-leads-15m-investment-into-digital-asset-company-amberdata/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">raised</a> $15 million in a Series A funding round led by Citi. Separately, layer-2 solution Immutable <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/layer-2-solution-immutable-closes-60m-series-b-round/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">closed</a> a $60 million Series B co-led by BITKRAFT Ventures and King River Capital.



This story was updated on September 15, 2021, at 10:12 am ET.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



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