UBS Issues USD 50 Million Tokenized Debt Securities for Asia Pacific
2022-12-19
UBS has closed the first tokenized debt transaction for Asia Pacific investors, underlining its commitment to expand regional investment opportunities. UBS AG London branch issued USD 50 million in digital fixed rate security tokens (‘digital securities’) using blockchain technology to a series of high net worth and global family and institutional wealth investors across Hong Kong and Singapore.
BX Swiss: Test Trades in Swiss Francs via a Decentralized Public-Blockchain.
2022-12-13
Together with major Swiss banks, the Swiss stock exchange BX Swiss is taking the financial market infrastructure for tokenized securities to the next level. In a test, trades on BX Swiss were settled for the first time directly in Swiss francs via a decentralized public-blockchain.
The test was conducted as part of a proof of concept under the auspices of the Capital Markets Technology Association (CMTA). In the process, structured products were issued by the Swiss banks Credit Suisse, Pictet and Vontobel in tokenized form as ledger-based securities on the Ethereum test blockchain and subsequently traded via the BX Swiss trading platform.
In a further step, the trades were settled directly on the blockchain via a globally unique mechanism. For this, the CMTA created an additional
Relai Partners Checkout.com to Enable Instant Bitcoin Purchases
2022-10-20
Swiss Bitcoin investment app Relai has partnered with global payments provider Checkout.com to enable its users to buy the cryptocurrency via Visa, Mastercard and Apple Pay in real time through its self-custodial wallet.
The partnership with Checkout.com is expected to allow users to have constant access to instant liquidity while also ensuring that they have full say over what happens to their assets.
Founded in 2020, Relai currently serves over 40 countries in Europe, has over 100,000 app downloads, 30,000 active users, and CHF 6 million in monthly volume.
The startup last raised a CHF 2.5 million Series A round in mid-2021 and recently made the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Awards 2022.
Checkout.com is a London-based payments solutions provider with a US$40 billion valuation. The company
Portofino Technologies Raises US$50M to Scale Its HFT Crypto Infrastructure
2022-09-20
Digital asset trading technology provider Portofino Technologies has raised over US$50 million in equity funding from Valar Ventures, Global Founders Capital and Coatue to scale its technology across the full crypto infrastructure value chain.
The company, founded by former Citadel Securities executives Leonard Lancia and Alex Casimo, builds high-frequency trading (HFT) grade technology for institutions and Web3 projects that require digital asset liquidity.
Portofino says that it has traded billions of dollars across centralized and decentralized cryptocurrency venues and hired a team of 35 HFT specialists globally in the past year.
Leonard Lancia, CEO and Founder at Portofino said:
“This is only the start for Portofino. In Web3, every action is a transaction and we’re building the
Press Communication in the Metaverse: Rent a PR Cooperates With Zreality
2022-09-13
Access to the metaverse is complex and expensive, which is why it is so far used almost exclusively by large companies. The Zurich and Verbier-based PR agency Rent a PR, which has been providing on-demand public relations and communications consulting for five years and has been accepting Bitcoin payments since 2019, is setting another milestone with cooperation and press conferences in the metaverse.
Hackers Tap Cross-Chain Bridges Vulnerabilities; Whopping US$2B Worth of Crypto Stolen
2022-09-02
Hackers and cybercriminals are exploiting vulnerabilities found in cross-chain bridge protocols to siphon billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies out of wallets and smart contracts, a new report by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis claims.
A total of 13 separate cross-chain bridge hacks have been recorded so far, netting criminals about US$2 billion, according to the firm. Most of these attacks took place this year, showing that the trend is proliferating and becoming a top security risk in the crypto industry.
Attacks on bridges account for 69% of total funds stolen in 2022 so far, totaling around U$1.4 billion, estimates Chainalysis. The biggest single event was the US$615 million haul snatched from the Ronin bridge in March 2022. Ronin is an Ethereum sidechain developed for