Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook said he owns some crypto as "part of a diversified portfolio," but is not planning for the tech company to follow Tesla’s example by investing in Bitcoin or other tokens. Speaking at the New York Times’ DealBook Online Summit on Nov. 9, Cook said he would not use the company’s roughly $200 billion in cash on hand to invest in cryptocurrencies. He also did not intend to accept crypto as a means of a payment for Apple products “in the immediate future.” “It’s not something we have immediate plans to do,” said Cook. “I …

As global leaders discuss what needs to be done to address the concerns surrounding climate change at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland, businesses throughout the world are looking to achieve carbon neutrality. Environmental impact has been a hot topic in the crypto sector with renaming it as being a top priority. Earlier this year, electric car maker Tesla started accepting Bitcoin (BTC) payments and invested $1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency, only to drop BTC payments a few months later over concerns surrounding the “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal.” Tesla & Bitcoin …

Cryptocurrencies have quickly emerged as one of the hottest investment vehicles of the past decade, gaining traction first from retail traders, as seen in 2017, and now from institutional investors. From being a domain of bedroom coders to a growing financial sector with over $2 trillion in market capitalization, the crypto space has seen a sudden surge in value and continues to attract huge interest from investors. While crypto assets have proven to be valuable, volatility remains a top concern, especially for institutional players. Sure, any investor can buy some cryptocurrencies and profit from their rising value. However, investing in …

Blockchain platform Telos raised $8 million in funding led by ConsenSys and Polygon investor John Lilic. The funding was secured right before the launch of Telos’ Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) platform, ending the company’s ongoing streak of bootstrapped initiatives. Telos aims to redirect the recently secured capital on the platform’s development and marketing in addition to improving the liquidity of the ecosystem “without needing to resort to TLOS token sales in the event of a prolonged bear market over the next year.” According to Telos chief architect Douglas Horn: “While this [bootstrapping] preserved our identity as an egalitarian, self-governing community, …

The Watr Foundation, in partnership with blockchain platform Algorand, recently launched a project to provide ESG scoring for different commodities with a special focus on climate change. While the project has a clear environmental focus, the platform will also include labeling for everything from how a company treats its workers to the number of people participating in an asset's ecosystem by gender. Watr Foundation council president Maryam Ayati said in a statement: “We believe this next iteration on resource models should be co-created in mutually-owned profit models. It is a privilege and comfort to be collaborating with the pioneers of …

Market surveillance firm Solidus Labs completed a $15 million strategic round led by Liberty City Ventures on Friday. GSR and Exor Seeds also participated in the financing. This follows the company's $20 million Series A that concluded in May. Solidus' investors also include former CFTC Chair Christopher Giancarlo and former SEC commissioner Troy Paredes. The company hired former CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger as it’s VP of Regulatory affairs in July. Solidus CEO Asaf Meir said: "This strategic round will allow us to serve more clients sooner and address many new use-cases in the DeFi and NFT risk frontiers, which require …

A Shiba Inu token holder who invested thousands of dollars in the memecoin in February has partially cashed out to become a stay-at-home dad. According to a Nov. 4 report from Fortune, a 35-year-old supermarket warehouse manager identified only as Rob invested $8,000 into Shiba Inu (SHIB) when the price was roughly $0.0000001 — giving him an allocation of 800 billion tokens. In May, when the token price surged significantly to reach a then all-time high of more than $0.00035, Rob cashed out part of his holdings to deposit $500,000 into his bank account. The SHIB holder still has more …

The increased popularity of Ethereum (ETH) has proven to be a double-edged sword. Its use has positioned the technology as valuable and great in potential, although also triggering increased congestion, making transactions slow and expensive. As a result, new blockchains have emerged as a way to decrease costs common to the industry. One of these is Solana (SOL) -- an exchange developed to transact at speeds greater than 50,000 transactions per second for less than $0.0001 per transaction -- a significant improvement from what users have noticed on Ethereum. That said, concerns around the use of old blockchain infrastructure extend …

Mythical Games announced the conclusion of a $150 million fundraising round. The company conducted the raise at a $1.25 billion valuation on Thursday, which was led by global venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Mythical said it plans to use this new infusion of capital to help integrate NFTs into games. Andreessen General Partner Arianna Simpson said in a statement: “Co-Founders John, Jamie, and Rudy have a wealth of experience in the gaming world, and have built a world-class team to support their vision. We’re thrilled to partner with them to bring NFT gaming to an even larger stage.” Other investors …

Google’s parent company Alphabet has made a $1 billion equity investment in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group, the exchange responsible for many crypto derivatives products. In a Nov. 4 notice to investors, the CME Group announced the $1 billion investment from Alphabet in addition to a 10-year strategic partnership with Google Cloud aimed at accelerating the exchange’s move to the cloud and changing the way global derivatives markets operate. Google made the investment through the company’s nonvoting convertible preferred stock. "Through this long-term partnership with Google Cloud, CME Group will transform derivatives markets through technology, expanding access and creating efficiencies …

Kevin Durant, a two-time NBA champion, has launched a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) to look at collaborating with technology-driven businesses, including cryptocurrency enterprises. The firm was established in conjunction with Durant's business associate Rich Kleiman. Durant, who was an early Coinbase backer, isn't done exploring the sector yet. His new SPAC company is planning to invest in crypto and blockchain-related businesses. The new SPAC, Infinite Acquisition Corp., which was formed on Nov. 3 according to its SEC filing, seeks to raise $200 million in its initial public offering. A SPAC is a company that was formed to combine with …

Data suggests that some low-paid members of the workforce are quitting their jobs after making life-changing crypto gains. Analytics firm Civic Science posted survey results (weighted according to U.S. census data) on Nov. 1, which shows that 4% of 6741 respondents aged 18 and over had quit their jobs in the past year due to “financial freedom” earned by investing in crypto assets. Civic then cross-referenced the 4% figure with data from 1,201 respondents based on their annual income who had quit their jobs due to crypto gains. Almost two thirds of those who had quit their jobs due to …