💐Bitcoin and the Beautiful and Serene Bhutan

[BlockchainAsia #61] Bhutan and Bitcoin mining, SBI, Sony Group, Double Jump.Tokyo, Edge Matrix, UXLINK, Borderless Capital, HUMA Finance, WSPN, TrendX

Sep 26, 2024

Welcome back to BlockchainAsia, I'm Coco. In this newsletter, I’ll share recent deals and developments worth noting. For those following the U.S., I recommend checking out the recent DeFi hearing in Congress, a recap of the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium, and a story about Silvergate Bank by Nic Carter.

The Tiger Nest Monastery at Bhutan | Photo credit: Jorge Monje

My husband and I became friendly with Jorge Monje, a hotel's general manager, while on vacation. The hospitality business has taken him worldwide, including to the Kingdom of Bhutan. Jorge, an excellent photographer, showed us many photos he took when he served as a GM at a hotel there. We were taken aback by Bhutan's beauty: its nature, serenity, and the smiles on people's faces.

This country is relatively isolated from the outside world and requires a special visa to visit. Not many people have heard about it, yet lately, it has been making headlines.

The Kingdom of Bhutan government holds 30,011 bitcoins (equivalent to 1/3 of its GDP). Among governments, only the U.S., China, and U.K. hold more.

Bhutan has been quietly working on Bitcoin mining. Back in May 2023, BitDeer and Bhutan’s investment arm Druk Holding & Investments teamed up to raise $500mm to develop green mining in Bhutan by tapping into its abundant hydroelectric power. My post

Good for Bhutan!

Deals

Japan’s Double Jump.Tokyo, a Web3 gaming company, raised $10M led by SBI Investment and participated by Sony Group. The company develops its Web3 games on Oasys gaming blockchain, which raised $20M in 2022.
EMC (Edge Matrix), an L1 blockchain that supports AI + Web3, raised $20M led by Amber Group and P2 Ventures. EMC was incubated by Future3 Campus. I interviewed Future3 Campus founder DY back in March.
AI-driven multilingual crypto investment opportunity tracking platform TrendX raised $5M.
SocialFi infrastructure UXLINK received a strategic investment from Animoca Brands. Other existing backers include Sequoia, UOB Venture Management and HashKey Capital.
Foresight Ventures and Bitget purchased $30M worth of TON tokens from some whales.
Huma Finance, an income-backed lending protocol, received funding, $10M in equity and $28M in RWA tokens, from both U.S. and prominent international investors including HashKey Capital and TIBAS Ventures, the venture arm of Turkey’s largest private bank.
Fintech company WSPN (Worldwide Stablecoin Payment Network) a provider of stablecoin infrastructure raised $30M in its seed round.
Borderless Capital launched its third DePin Fund of $100M with LPs including Peaq, the Solana Foundation, Jump Crypto, and IoTeX.
TON launched a $40M venture fund for early-stage startups.

New podcast episode

Earlier this month, I welcomed back Jupiter Zheng as a guest on my podcast to discuss digital asset valuation. This episode is a follow-up to our conversation from February. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I highly recommend checking it out.

Developments

Hong Kong’s largest online brokerage firm Futu Securities starts offering BTC and ETH trading for its 22M users.
Three largest Japanese banks MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho plan to launch a new cross-border banking system that will use blockchain and stablecoins to replace the legacy systems and integrate with SWIFT.
Hong Kong’s Legislative Council Member Johnny Ng calls for regulators to create a legal framework for DAOs after a landmark court case in Hong Kong. Not long ago he proposed to include Bitcoin in Hong Kong’s financial reserve.
Singapore’s DBS, partnered with Chinese company Ant Financial, launched treasury tokens on a permissioned blockchain for faster treasury and liquidity management.
Indonesia’s Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (The Financial Services Authority) released a development roadmap for Fintech and crypto. The regulation of crypto will be shifted from Indonesia’s commodities regulator to OJK starting January 2025.
Tether directly owns $81B, or about 1% of US T-bills, not trivial but no big deal?
Hut8 developed a new-generation ASIC miner in partnership with Bitmain.
China’s CBDC has done more than $1T transactions in value, bypassing USDT and USDC.
Binance launched MiCA regulated EURI stablecoin.
Russia started the trial of using crypto for cross-border payment on Sept. 1.

What is happening in the U.S.?

The Financial Services Committee of the House hosted a hearing entitled “Decoding DeFi: Breaking Down the Future of Decentralized Finance”
A great recap of the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium
An investigative report about Silvergate Bank by Nic Carter

Thank you for reading,

Coco

I am Coco Kee, author of BlockchainAsia, host of BlockchainAsia Podcast, Co-founder of Kee Global Advisors, and a dog lover with a Goldendoodle.

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