Blockchain Bites: Avanti's Angel Round, Civil's Closure and a Data Breach

Data Breach
Coincheck has fallen victim to a data breach after attackers accessed one of its domain name accounts and used it to impersonate the cryptocurrency exchange. The Japanese firm said Tuesday that an unknown third party gained access to an account it held with domain registration service Onamae.com. An incident notice suggested the attackers then used its .jp domain account to send “fraudulent” emails to customers.

Hard Fork
Ethereum Classic completed its “Phoenix” hard fork, making the network fully compatible with Ethereum. The hard fork represents a major departure for Ethereum Classic, which is sticking with Proof-of-Work (PoW) while its sister chain moves to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and sharding.

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Mainnet
Matic, a sidechain scaling solution for Ethereum, began deploying its mainnet, which allows the network to run dapps and support asset transfers to and from the ethereum mainchain. The India-based Matic Foundation announced via a blog post that it had brought 10 nodes online and hopes to grow tenfold. 

Angel Round
Crypto bank Avanti raised a $5 million angel round led by the University of Wyoming Foundation with participation from Anthony Pompliano’s Morgan Creek Digital, Blockchain Capital, Digital Currency Group, Lemniscap, Madison Paige Ventures and others.

Civil Closure
Blockchain journalism startup Civil is shutting down, with its team moving to the employ of parent company ConsenSys. “This pivot led to closer coordination with ConsenSys and the team building solutions for identity and provenance tracking, which in turn started conversations about a strategic merger,” Civil CEO Matthew Iles said.

New IPO
Renewable energy services provider WPO has won approval from the French financial markets regulator to raise funding through an ICO. WPO will hold a sale of its GreenToken (GTK) with the expectation of raising €10 million ($11.2 million).

Quantitative Easing
Prices for bitcoin shot up 8% on Monday to a three-month high around $10,200, then quickly reversed on Tuesday, falling back to about $9,500. Some investors are looking ahead to Thursday’s European Central Bank meeting for fresh monetary stimulus that might underscore the cryptocurrency’s potential as an inflation hedge. 

CoinDesk Research: May 2020 Review
Bitcoin’s returns continue to outpace stocks, bonds and gold, and so does its volatility. Spot exchange volumes probed historic highs in May and bitcoin options markets passed a milestone and didn’t look back. Outperforming crypto assets a couple of use-specific crypto tokens that topped crypto returns for the month. Download the full report here.