First Mover Americas: Goldman Leads Blockchain Firm Fnality Raise of $95M

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Fnality, a fintech firm building tokenized versions of major currencies collateralized by cash held at central banks, has raised $95 million in Series B funding led by Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas. DTCC, Euroclear, Nomura and WisdomTree participated in the round, which also saw further commitment from a number of institutions that backed Fnality’s $63 million fundraise back in 2019: Banco Santander, BNY Mellon, Barclays, CIBC, Commerzbank, ING, Lloyds Banking Group, Nasdaq Ventures, State Street, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. and UBS.

Traders invested in XRP futures lost some $7.26 million in the past 24 hours as prices moved wildly following false rumors of a BlackRock (BLK) exchange-traded fund (ETF) filing. XRP prices jumped to 73 cents from 65 cents in 25 minutes after a tweet that suggested the financial behemoth had filed for an XRP ETF in the U.S. state of Delaware. Some crypto news firms reported on the filing as fact, which also helped amplify prices. Blackrock (BLK) confirmed it is not attempting to launch an XRP ETF. Blackrock has previously filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch spot bitcoin and ether ETFs. Prior to those SEC filings, were filings for a Delaware entity to act as the corporate vehicle for the product. Paperwork submitted Monday mimicked those forms, but was not in fact filed by the asset management giant.

A U.S. judge ordered the end of an automatic stay on proceedings between bankrupt crypto firms FTX and BlockFi, meaning the two can start negotiating a claims settlement. BlockFi, a lender, filed for bankruptcy in late November last year, in part because of the ripple effects of the sudden collapse of FTX earlier that month. That triggered the automatic stay, halting proceedings between the two. BlockFi had an estimated $355 million frozen on the crypto exchange's platform and was owed a further $671 million by FTX's sister company, Alameda Research. The stay has been modified to allow FTX debtors to make "arguments, defenses, counterclaims, setoffs, or otherwise ... with respect to the BlockFi claims in the FTX bankruptcy proceeding," according to a Nov. 13 court order by U.S. bankruptcy judge Michael Kaplan.