News linked to this event type.
Odaily News UK-listed company Quantum Blockchain has announced a placement of 142,857,142 new shares at a price of 0.35 pence per share, raising £500,000. Additionally, the company announced the establishment of a new Bitcoin mining subsidiary named BlocKeeper. The new funds will be used to accelerate its research and development in AI-driven Bitcoin mining. (Yahoo Finance)
According to The Information, AI company DeepSeek is conducting its first external funding round since its founding, targeting a valuation of over $10 billion.
Odaily News According to market sources: AI company DeepSeek is seeking its first funding round, with a valuation exceeding $10 billion.
Odaily News: Digital banking platform for businesses, Slash, announced the completion of a $100 million Series C funding round. The round was led by Ribbit Capital, with participation from Goodwater Capital and Khosla Ventures. The post-money valuation is approximately $1.4 billion, bringing the total funding raised to $160 million. Slash claims to serve over 5,000 business clients, offering services including corporate accounts, virtual accounts, stablecoin payments, expense management, bookkeeping automation, and real-time payments. The company stated that the new funds will be used to accelerate product iteration and advance its strategy of positioning the "bank account as the command center for corporate finance."
According to CoinDesk, Payward, Kraken’s parent company, announced the acquisition of digital asset derivatives platform Bitnomial for up to $550 million in cash and stock. The deal values Payward at approximately $20 billion. Bitnomial is the first crypto-native platform in the U.S. to hold all three key regulatory licenses: a Designated Contract Market (DCM), a Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO), and a Futures Commission Merchant (FCM). Following the acquisition, Payward will instantly obtain all regulatory authorizations required to operate a full derivatives business in the U.S., significantly accelerating its path to compliance compared to building such capabilities organically. Post-integration, the combined platforms will launch spot margin, perpetual futures, and options products for U.S. customers. Through Payward Services’ B2B infrastructure, these regulated U.S. derivatives offerings will be made available to banks, fintech firms, and brokers via a single API. This acquisition marks Payward’s second major deal following its $1.5 billion acquisition of NinjaTrader in 2025. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2026.
According to Bloomberg, SpaceX has accelerated its employee stock option vesting schedule to April (originally scheduled for May) to alleviate employees’ liquidity expectations ahead of its IPO. The company expects to file its public IPO application as early as May and aims to price the offering in mid-June, targeting a valuation exceeding $2 trillion—potentially making it one of the largest IPOs in history.
According to GlobeNewswire, Bitcoin mining company and HPC data center operator TeraWulf Inc. (NASDAQ: WULF) announced on April 16 the completion of a public offering of common stock, issuing 54.51 million shares at $19.00 per share, including the full exercise of the underwriters’ over-allotment option (an additional 7.11 million shares), raising approximately $1.036 billion in total. TeraWulf stated that the proceeds will be used for the construction of its Hawesville data center campus in Kentucky, repayment of the outstanding balance under its bridge credit facility, future site acquisitions, and general corporate purposes. Morgan Stanley served as the sole book-running manager, with BofA Securities, Citigroup, TD Cowen, and Wells Fargo Securities acting as joint book-running managers.
According to The Block, Jim Esposito, President of Citadel Securities, stated on Thursday at the Semafor World Economic Forum in Washington, D.C., that the firm is “fully capable” of providing liquidity to prediction markets—but explicitly expressed no interest in sports-event contracts. Instead, he emphasized the value of prediction markets for hedging geopolitical risks, citing the U.S. midterm elections this November as “one of the greatest risks facing investors’ portfolios.” Esposito noted that as platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket continue to grow rapidly, the prediction market is poised for sustained expansion—naturally drawing Citadel Securities into the space. Notably, Zhao Peng, CEO of Citadel Securities, participated last year in Kalshi’s $185 million funding round.
According to LedgerInsight, bond tokenization platform BlockInvest has announced the completion of a €4 million strategic funding round, with Italy’s UniCredit Bank participating and acquiring a 16% equity stake in the company. BlockInvest is set to assist UniCredit in issuing Italy’s first natively digital mini-bond, as well as the first blockchain-based tokenized structured note for wealth management clients, while building a solution that combines the programmability of digital ledgers with financial…
According to official announcements, Pumpcade—a live-stream prediction market and meme coin issuance platform—has secured $5 million in seed funding. Investors include Jump Crypto and Foundation Capital. Pumpcade is a Solana-based platform for instant meme coin creation and trading, integrated into the Pump.fun chat system and enabling one-click prediction market creation during live streams. Earlier, on April 2, Pump.fun led a $1 million pre-seed round for Pumpcade.
According to an official announcement, cryptocurrency futures exchange KieDex has raised $3.5 million in funding, led by Marqel Capital. The company stated that the funds will be used to build the KieDex platform and develop a next-generation cryptocurrency futures exchange focused on fast, secure, and incentive-driven trading experiences. Supporting partners include Hidden Street Capital, Caviar, CSP DAO, Solulu Club, Rocket, TPC, Devmons, and TATATU.
According to GlobeNewswire, Diginex—a Nasdaq-listed digital asset financial services company—has announced that it has signed a definitive share purchase agreement to acquire Resulticks Global Companies Pte Limited, an artificial intelligence company, for a fully stock transaction valued at $1.5 billion. As disclosed, Resulticks is a provider of real-time AI-powered customer intelligence solutions, generating approximately $150 million in revenue in 2025. Diginex will leverage Resulticks’ AI data capabilities to expand its offerings in customer intelligence and enterprise-grade agent solutions. The acquisition is expected to close within 30 to 45 days, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.
Odaily News According to CoinGlass data, index-based contracts have been generally active over the past 4 hours. Among them, the HK50 contract on the Gate platform saw a position increase of up to 2647.1%, ranking first across the entire market.Gate pioneered the global index perpetual contract, using mainstream global indices and volatility indices as underlying assets, introducing market sentiment indicators into the crypto derivatives trading system. While maintaining the advantages of USDT settlement and 7×24 hour trading, it provides users with trading choices that are closer to the global macro market. Simultaneously, Gate has fully deployed a traditional finance trading zone covering stocks, metals, foreign exchange, indices, and commodities, continuously building a multi-asset contract system covering mainstream TradFi assets, and creating the industry's most comprehensive index and traditional financial asset contract trading zone.
According to Crunchbase, financial compliance startup Spektr has announced a $20 million Series A funding round, led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Northzone, Seedcamp, and PSV Tech. To date, the company has raised a total of $26 million. Spektr primarily provides AI Agent–based compliance services—including risk assessment and sanctions list monitoring—to cryptocurrency wallet service providers such as Phantom, as well as traditional financial institutions.
According to MarketWatch, Allbirds—the “tech bro” sneaker brand—announced this week a $50 million convertible bond financing agreement to fund its AI transformation, triggering a sharp rise in its stock price. However, several industry insiders have issued warnings regarding this move: Matt Domo, CEO of FifthVantage, stated that Allbirds’ AI transformation appears more like a tactic to prop up its sluggish stock price. Investors should be wary of “AI washing”—a phenomenon where companies exaggerate or even fabricate their AI capabilities for marketing purposes. Moreover, it is not unprecedented for enterprises to pursue aggressive transformations to capitalize on trending technologies; from late 2017 to early 2018, numerous companies attempted to ride the blockchain wave. Jason Schloetzer, Associate Professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, noted that this initial $50 million financing round “pales in comparison to the actual investment required to become such a service provider.” Yet, viewed more optimistically, the influx of numerous new entrants into the AI space may also reflect the market’s “enduring enthusiasm” for growth.
On-chain lending platform Votre has raised $3.75 million in seed funding, led by a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator, with participation from MaC Venture Capital, Druid Ventures, and angel investors from Goldman Sachs, Harvard University, and OrangeDAO. Founded in 2025, Votre operates a non-custodial crypto lending platform on Coinbase’s Base Layer 2 network, enabling users to borrow USD—settled the same day—using Bitcoin as collateral, with loan sizes ranging from approximately $25,000 to $5 million. The funds will be used to scale technical infrastructure, increase platform capacity, enhance liquidity management tools, and strengthen risk and compliance systems.
According to GlobeNewswire, Solv Protocol announced a strategic integration with Utexo to launch a native Bitcoin yield solution built on the RGB protocol and the Lightning Network. This solution enables atomic swaps between native BTC and USDT—without wrapping, cross-chain bridges, or custodians. It emphasizes self-custody, privacy protection, and final settlement, aligning with Tether’s prior announcement of natively issuing USDT on an RGB-compatible Lightning Network. Additionally, Solv participated as a strategic angel investor in Utexo’s $7.5 million seed funding round, led by Tether.
According to The Block, Tether has confirmed its participation in the previously announced $134 million private financing round of publicly listed Stablecoin Development Corporation (SDEV). SDEV positions itself as a vehicle offering public-market investors exposure to the stablecoin sector, with core holdings including the Sky Protocol governance token SKY and the stablecoin USDS. As of March 31, SDEV held approximately 2.15 billion SKY tokens, representing roughly 9.15% of the total supply. This financing was completed in January and included the deposit of 943.6 million SKY tokens, along with $25 million in cash and $51 million in stablecoins, which were used to acquire an additional ~1.17 billion SKY tokens.
Odaily News: Sharon Yeshaya, Chief Financial Officer of Morgan Stanley, stated that tokenization and on-chain finance will become key evolutionary directions for its wealth management business.The company envisions a "tokenized world," where client assets and liabilities can flow as efficiently as capital through blockchain infrastructure, thereby reshaping asset allocation, lending, and cash management methods.Unlike viewing crypto as an independent business, Morgan Stanley plans to embed on-chain capabilities into its core service system, including investment advisory, financing, and liquidity management, to drive an upgrade of the overall financial architecture.This strategy is being gradually implemented through initiatives such as the digital asset pilot with ZeroHash and products like Bitcoin ETFs. Although the crypto business currently accounts for a small portion of the overall system, its position within the future wealth management framework is rapidly rising.
Odaily News Bitcoin Core developer Jameson Lopp stated that compared to potential future quantum computing attacks, he would prefer to "freeze" approximately 5.6 million long-dormant BTC from the network rather than letting them be acquired by attackers. These bitcoins have not moved for over 10 years and may be permanently lost, valued at around $420 billion at current prices. If future breakthroughs in quantum computing lead to the private keys of old addresses being cracked, these assets could be transferred again, potentially triggering severe market volatility or even a crisis of confidence. Although the community recently proposed BIP-361, the proposal is still in its early stages and is not a formally promoted solution, but rather more like a contingency plan for an "extreme risk." (CoinDesk)