The third week of April has been exciting for the blockchain and cryptocurrency world. Perhaps the biggest news is that Japanese bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (NYSE: MUFG) has invested $6 million in a Series B funding round in blockchain analysis startup Chainalysis. Japan's largest bank backed the funding round, which brings Chainalysis' total Series B investments to $36 million. Chainalysis offers a cryptocurrency compliance tool called Chainalysis KYT that provides real time blockchain transaction analysis. The startup plans to use the capital to expand business in Asia and open a new office.
Here is the rest of the week in review:
Bolt Labs has raised a $1.5 million seed round led by Dekrypt Capital, Ripple Labs' investment arm Xpring, Lemniscap, and Access Ventures. Founded by Dr. Ayo Akinyele, Bolt Labs aims to bring privacy features to second-layer blockchain solutions like Bitcoin's (BTC) Lightning Network. The basic idea is to hide and protect information about wallet accounts, including payments recipients and senders, as well as funds transacted and held. Dekrypt Capital cofounder Howard Wu said privacy features are essential for cryptocurrency payments to gain adoption without supporting surveillance capitalism. Akinyele plans to launch the experimental Bolt testnet later this year.
The Coinnest exchange announced it went out of business. The South Korean crypto exchange, once the country's third largest, said it is no longer operating. Users need to withdraw funds from the exchange by April 30, and withdrawal fees have been reduced. Coinnest told Korea media that the reasons behind the closure were weakening trade volume and regulatory issues. Coinnest had a rough last year, with an executive being arrested and convicted for fraud. Coinnest also lost $5 million in an airdrop mistake in January due to computer error. Korean users still have many exchanges to choose from, including Upbit, Bithumb, and Coinone.
Crypto prices rose slightly to close at above $177 billion. For the majors, Monero (XMR) reentered the top 10 and posted modest gains alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH), but most majors were in the red, with Cardano (ADA) and Tron (TRX) posting heavy losses of 12% and 7%. In the top 100, the biggest losers are Bitcoin SV (BSV), down 20%, MetaHash (MHC), down 20%, and ABBC Coin (ABBC), down 17%. The biggest gainers are MonaCoin (MONA), up a whopping 84%, Particl (PART), up 30%, and Bitcoiin (B2G), up 27%. With some of the momentum from the last huge pump fading, it is possible that the crypto markets go back to another phase of low volatility.
The author owns a small amount of BTC.