FC Barcelona receives $132 million investment for blockchain and NFT initiative; Custodia Bank will offer Bitcoin custody service; Curve Finance promises to repay investors
Spanish giant FC Barcelona has received $120 million in investment from Libero Football Finance AG and Nipa Capital B.V. for its web3 venture Barça Vision.
In exchange for the capital, Barcelona sold a 29.5% stake in Barça Vision’s holding company Bridgeburg Invest, according to an August 11 announcement. Barça Vision describes itself as a startup focused on integrating all digital content.
Libero is a company in Germany that provides financial advice to football clubs. Nipa Capital is a venture capital firm in the Netherlands. The acquisition is subject to approval by FC Barcelona shareholders. The deal is expected to close in the last quarter of the year.
Barcelona partnered with Chiliz in February 2020 to create Ethereum-based tokens. In August 2022, Chiliz announced the acquisition of a 24.5% stake in FC Barcelona’s digital content creation arm Barça Vision for $100 million.
In May, Barcelona launched its first NFT collection with Plastiks. It was emphasized that the collection called “Unleash Your Passion” will contribute to the removal of 35,000,000 waste plastics.
Custodia Bank will offer Bitcoin custody service!
US-based crypto-friendly bank Custodia Bank announced that it has started accepting dollar deposits for its customers in certain states. In addition, the bank stated that it will soon launch Bitcoin custody services. The financial institution now also offers US government money market fund services to its clients.
Caitlin Long, CEO of Custodia, stated that they have received the regulator’s approval to receive customer funds, and that the bar is very high for banks to start this activity, but the company has exceeded this threshold.
As it is known, there are many regulatory criteria in the crypto industry. Long also drew attention to this factor and said that the need for regulated banks continues.
Stating that Custodia has always believed that the custodians in this sector will ultimately be banks, Long expressed his happiness that they received regulatory approval.
Crypto custody services are gaining popularity among banks
With the introduction of cryptocurrencies into people’s lives, technology elements such as digital assets, blockchain, Web3 and artificial intelligence have rapidly gained popularity over time.
While some countries are trying to use stablecoins and CBDCs as well as fiat currencies widespread, local traditional banks continue to move to expand their range of services to crypto assets.
Curve Finance promises to repay investors
Curve Finance, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform for stablecoin lending, announced that it will refund its users.
Following the breach that resulted in a loss of $62 million, Curve Finance has promised to refund its users.
According to a post published by Curve Finance, progress has been made in ongoing investigations and approximately 79 percent of funds have been successfully recovered. The platform also pointed out that the proportion of each negatively affected user’s share will be assessed.
This assessment also aims to ensure a fair distribution of funds. As it is known, the breach in Curve Finance occurred on July 30th. In the incident, hackers exploited vulnerabilities in the version history of Curve Finance’s Vyper developer.
The person behind the attack focused his attention specifically on versions 0.2.15 to 0.3.0 of the Vyper developer. It turns out that the hacker fully understood the vulnerabilities in past versions of Vyper. Identifying these vulnerabilities required considerable skill and significant resources, as emphasized by experts in the field.
