Shalini Nagarajan

Billionaire Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund made a timely crypto trade last year.&nbsp;



The venture capital firm sold most of its cryptocurrency holdings before last year’s market crash, pulling in $1.8 billion from the trade, the Financial Times <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/0a1d5597-7145-4035-987b-ff033bba3d75" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a> on Thursday. 



The fund, known to invest in groundbreaking technologies, built a position in crypto over time. It made its first bitcoin investment in 2014, and a majority of its crypto holdings were made up of the original cryptocurrency, partners of the fund told <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/04/a-peek-inside-founders-fund-as-it-closes-on-5-billion-across-two-new-funds/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TechCrunch</a> in March last year.



Founders Fund, which has $11 billion in assets under management, sold a big chunk of its crypto at the end of March 2022, a source told the FT. <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com/assets/btc">Bitcoin</a> traded around $41,976 at the time, down around 40% from its all-time high.



That well-timed trade was made before the crash of algorithmic stablecoin <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/terrausd">TerraUSD</a> (UST) in May, which marked the start of the crypto market carnage.&nbsp;



A representative for Founders Fund didn’t return Blockworks’ request for comment by press time.&nbsp;



Notably, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/peter-thiel">Thiel</a> made a pro-bitcoin <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko6K82pXcPA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">speech</a> just a month after his fund reportedly sold most of its crypto. He said the rise in bitcoin’s price was an implication that the “central banks are bankrupt” and that it signaled “the end of the fiat money regime.” He also spoke out against bitcoin’s critics, calling billionaire investor Warren Buffett “Enemy No.1” and a “sociopathic grandpa from Omaha.” 



When bitcoin was hovering near $60,000 in 2021, Thiel <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/8c2365?irclickid=x39ws9U0hxyNRNpRHdUyETowUkAw7l1EZ2nJy40&amp;irgwc=1&amp;utm_source=affiliate&amp;utm_medium=cpa&amp;utm_campaign=10078-Skimbit+Ltd.&amp;utm_term=businessinsider.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a> said that it was a sign the US political system was not stable. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know that you should put all your money into bitcoin at $60,000 a bitcoin right now,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But surely the fact that it is at $60,000 is an extremely hopeful sign.&#8221;



Separately, Thiel <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-21/thiel-says-he-was-underinvested-in-bitcoin-price-may-rise" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a> at an event in Miami, in October 2021, that he felt he was “underinvested” in bitcoin. He also suggested he had some hesitation in investing in it because he thought “the secret was already known by everybody,” then added that “I think the answers are still to go long” on bitcoin. 



Crypto wasn’t the only investment Founders Fund offloaded. Between 2020 and 2022, the fund had eight other big exits including Airbnb and Palantir, a move that allowed it to return about $13 billion to investors, the FT reported.



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Selling the Top: Peter Thiel’s VC Firm Made $1.8B From Crypto

<div id="highlights-block_62c53fa4831b6" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Bullish delayed its plan to go public via a merger, pushing back the deal&#8217;s termination date to December</li>
 <li>Investors including Block.one, Peter Thiel and Alan Howard together injected $10 billion in funding the exchange last year</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish is yet another firm dealing with pressure stemming from the crypto market liquidity drought.



The Gibraltar-registered company has laid off less than 30 employees, <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/155859/bullish-com-cuts-jobs-crypto-exchange" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Block</a> reported on Tuesday, citing a source familiar with the matter. The exchange employs more than 395 people, according to its <a href="https://bullish.com/about-us/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">website</a>, meaning that the layoffs represent a 7% cut to its workforce.



A company spokesperson confirmed the job cuts according to the report, adding that Bullish is still hiring for product, engineering and other strategic roles.



The downturn in cryptocurrency markets has led to a <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/crypto-industry-layoffs-may-have-unintended-consequences/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">series</a> of firms cutting back on expenses or letting go of employees, including <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/coinbase-latest-crypto-firm-to-cut-costs-amid-market-downturn/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Coinbase</a>, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/cryptocurrency-lender-blockfi-set-to-cut-staff-by-a-fifth/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BlockFi</a>, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/crypto-com-cutting-5-of-workforce-amid-digital-asset-downturn/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Crypto.com</a>, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/coinbase-backed-vauld-cuts-workforce-by-30-seeks-to-halve-exec-pay/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Vauld</a>, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/gemini-joins-growing-list-of-crypto-exchanges-cutting-staff-amid-downturn/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Gemini</a> and <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/cosmos-developer-ignite-sees-mass-exodus-and-layoffs-as-ceo-exits/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ignite</a>. Some commentators expect market volatility and ensuing financial challenges to continue for the foreseeable future.



“I think there probably is some meaningful pain in the short term,” Noah Hamman, CEO of AdvisorShares, told Blockworks. “We think it will work itself out, but some companies won&#8217;t make it through. But then we feel it&#8217;s almost like a refresh…a little bit cleansing,” he added.



Bullish, a unit of blockchain software firm Block.one, has offices in Hong Kong, New York, Washington DC, Virginia, Singapore, Gibraltar and the Cayman Islands.&nbsp;



The exchange, launched in 2021 with <a href="https://bullish.com/news/press-releases/launch-of-new-cryptocurrency-exchange-bullish/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$10 billion</a> in funding, originally targeted only institutional investors. But it later expanded services, including automated market making, lending and portfolio management, to retail users. Among its backers are Peter Thiel’s Thiel Capital and Founders Fund, British hedge fund manager Alan Howard, Galaxy Digital and Japanese investment bank Nomura.



In July last year, Bullish said it planned to <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/bullish-plans-to-go-public-through-spac-merger/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">go public</a> via a merger with Far Peak Acquisition Corporation, a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC). That deal hasn’t closed yet, and the termination date was recently <a href="https://bullish.com/news/press-releases/bullish-and-far-peak-acquisition-corp-announce-extension-of-outside-date-for-business-combination-june-2022/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">extended</a> to Dec. 31, 2022. Bullish said it paid Far Peak an extension fee of $2.5 million and expects the deal to close in the third quarter this year.



If the deal goes through as intended, Bullish will become a publicly-listed company and will trade on the New York Stock Exchange.



Bullish didn’t immediately return Blockworks’ request for comment.



This story has been edited to correct the number of employees laid off.



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Bullish Joins Rival Crypto Exchanges in Cutting Workforce: Report

Ben Strack

<div id="highlights-block_62bf2533b47ae" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Metamask operations lead set to join the BitDAO ecosystem</li>
 <li>Abra and Bitpanda cut jobs while Kraken still on the hunt for talent</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



The global head of business development for <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/9869818Z:US" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Citadel Securities</a> is set to lead the company’s joint venture focused on increasing investor access to crypto, Bloomberg News <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-28/citadel-securities-nazarali-leaves-to-run-firm-s-crypto-venture" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>.



Citadel Securities and Virtu Financial were in the process of building a cryptocurrency trading platform, a source familiar with the matter <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/citadel-securities-virtu-financial-building-crypto-trading-platform/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told Blockworks last month</a>. Jamil Nazarali is reportedly expected to become CEO of the platform.



Citadel Securities did not immediately return a request for comment.&nbsp;



Web3 gaming company Immutable hired a former global head of product design for payments at Facebook to lead the protocol’s product design.



Henry Cho will help the company build an API-only user experience that enables mainstream developers to build simply.&nbsp;



“Immutable will continue hiring the best talent across the globe to continue building our vision of enabling the next billion players to truly own their in-game items,” Immutable co-founder Robbie Ferguson said in a Twitter post.



Andrei Serjantov joined crypto startup Nym as its chief financial officer. He is set to develop the company’s multi-purpose mixnet that helps enable privacy for any application, as well as the underlying finances of its NYM token.



Serjantov joins Nym from French banking group BNP Paribas, where he worked for 16 years. He was most recently the company’s head of electronic credit trading and head of flow credit quantitative research.



“As the bear market rages on, all eyes are on crypto to prove its worth,” Serjantov said in a statement. “Skeptics assume people join crypto to make a quick buck and scam the typical user, but those working through the bear market have something more to prove.”



The former operations lead for self custodial wallet MetaMask is set to join the BitDAO ecosystem to accelerate the adoption of Web3 gaming.



Jacob Cantele is now head of product strategy for BitDAO’s <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=RahCDqBPLaBstxmOiHGQa1CDZiEMesp8Rq0nyXTHCEpKTcTSFrZNgyb-TjJRHcgYqG_b2Y9OQw4S5FdLSsh8dg==" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Windranger Labs</a> and head of product for the <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/Tracker?data=8VFB9yNCFXlRwlXlNa_pyfLRfykSOvleobU6PPWrNw6gy8oJY0kZWyRKlngn5dRx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Game7</a> DAO. 



Before working at MetaMask, Cantele led product for the Panvala grant funding DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), one of the earliest grant DAOs in the Web3 ecosystem.&nbsp;



NFT marketplace Magic Eden hired Joseph Doll to the role of general counsel.



Doll previously served as a corporate associate for Fenwick &amp; West, where he structured, negotiated and executed equity and token funding.



Web3 Ventures appointed Zach Rosen to its advisory board as the company gains Rosen’s expertise in software engineering and investment banking.&nbsp;



Rosen is a co-founder of Brydge, a startup that enables decentralized applications to deploy on one chain and accept payments from others. He said in a statement that he would leverage his network and background within the Web3 space to help identify and evaluate crypto projects for Web3 Ventures’ platform.



Crypto trading and lending platform Abra reportedly laid off about a dozen employees this week as market turbulence continues. Abra CEO Bill Barhydt <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/155209/abra-becomes-latest-crypto-firm-to-cut-jobs" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told The Block</a> that the job cuts — representing about 5% of the company’s workforce — were done “purely as a cost-saving measure.”



An Abra spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment. &nbsp; &nbsp;



In case you missed it, crypto exchange Bitpanda <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/bitpanda-to-slash-nearly-30-of-workforce-citing-recession-threat/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">is letting go about a third of its workforce</a>. The company, backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, wrote in a <a href="https://blog.bitpanda.com/en/way-forward" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">letter to employees</a> that it wants to cut down its headcount from more than 1,000 to 730 as it seeks to improve its financial health.



Meanwhile, crypto exchange Kraken posted more than 600 new job ads in the United States in the last seven days, according to a June 29 study by <a href="https://cryptojobslist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Crypto Jobs List</a>. The Kraken listings account for nearly 20% of the new American crypto job ads over the span.



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Latest in Crypto Hiring: Former Facebook, BNP Paribas Pros Join Space

<div id="highlights-block_62b999ed17c35" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>“Nobody knows when the market sentiment will change,” Bitpanda told employees</li>
 <li>Bitpanda is struggling to keep up with the crypto industry’s pace, the firm admitted</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Bitpanda is letting go of about a third of its workforce as the firm looks to navigate a period of turbulent markets and uncertainty.



The Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange said in a <a href="https://blog.bitpanda.com/en/way-forward" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">letter to employees</a> that it wants to cut down its headcount from more than 1,000 to 730, citing a need to improve its financial health against the effects of an anticipated recession.



“Over the past few months, the market sentiment has dramatically changed, fuelled by geopolitical tensions, rising inflation and concerns about the imminence of a recession,” Bitpanda said in the letter.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“There’s lots of uncertainty in the financial markets right now and, while we do know that the industry is cyclical, nobody knows when the market sentiment will change.”</blockquote>



Bitpanda admitted to facing challenges in keeping pace with the crypto industry’s growth. The company also said it has rescinded new offers as the roles it was previously hiring for are no longer available. It now plans to focus on safety and compliance, user experience, education and community.



&#8220;Move fast and break things&#8221; has been the motto of many companies looking to adapt [in] the Web3 space, Sheraz Ahmed, managing partner at STORM Partners, told Blockworks. “Now we can&#8217;t be acting surprised when the latter happens after the former,” he said.



The Vienna-based firm joins a <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/crypto-industry-layoffs-may-have-unintended-consequences/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">series of other crypto firms</a> looking to cut costs by slashing staff. Coinbase, one of the best-known exchanges, recently said it would <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/coinbase-cut-workforce-ceo-wary-of-potential-recession/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cut 1,100 jobs</a> due to expectations of a recession. <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/coinbase-backed-vauld-cuts-workforce-by-30-seeks-to-halve-exec-pay/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Vauld</a>, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/cryptocurrency-lender-blockfi-set-to-cut-staff-by-a-fifth/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BlockFi</a>, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/crypto-com-cutting-5-of-workforce-amid-digital-asset-downturn/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Crypto.com</a>, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/gemini-joins-growing-list-of-crypto-exchanges-cutting-staff-amid-downturn/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Gemini</a>, BitMEX, Buenbit and Bitso have all recently announced layoffs during a difficult period for the industry.



Record inflation and commodity shortages due to Russia’s war in Ukraine have created production challenges all over the world. David Malpass, head of the World Bank, said on Sunday that some countries will find it especially <a href="https://fortune.com/2022/06/27/world-bank-david-malpass-us-global-recession-inflation-interest-rates/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">hard to avoid a recession</a>.&nbsp;



Economists at Goldman Sachs see an increased risk of a US recession. In a research note dated June 22, the bank said it now estimates a 30% probability the US economy enters a recession over the next year, up from a previous estimation of 15%. Additionally, it sees a 25% conditional probability of a recession in the second year if one is avoided in the first.



Bitpanda last raised $263 million in a Series C round at a <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/crypto-exchange-bitpanda-valuation-spikes-242-to-4-1b-in-five-months/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$4.1 billion valuation</a> in August 2021. The company said it was the first Austria-based firm to pass the billion dollar valuation mark.



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Bitpanda To Slash Nearly 30% of Workforce, Citing Recession Threat

Sam Reynolds

<div id="highlights-block_61a61d973642e" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Institutional exchange Bullish, backed by Peter Thiel and Galaxy Digital, launches in Gibraltar today as institutional interest in digital assets continues to climb</li>
 <li>The exchange launched with deep pools of crypto liquidity thanks to the backing from controversial EOS developer Block.one, and already plans to go public via a SPAC</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Bullish, an institutional exchange backed by some of the biggest names in traditional finance as well as Block.one of EOS fame, launched today in Gibraltar.



The exchange was <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/biggest-names-in-macro-back-new-10b-digital-asset-exchange-bullish/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">first announced</a> back in May and caught the attention of many, given the names attached to it like Peter Thiel, Galaxy Digital, global investment bank Nomura, and fund manager Alan Howard, as well as the significant capital commitment from Block.one in the form of 164,000 bitcoins, 20,000,000 EOS tokens, and $100 million in cash.



Gibraltar, not a well known destination for the digital assets industry, was chosen because the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission’s “principles-based approach” sets the outcomes that it intends to achieve, leaving the ‘how’ to achieve compliance up to the regulated firms,” said Anthony Smith, the exchange’s head of compliance.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Bullish is unique insofar as it integrates its own internal automated market-makers (AMM), a defining aspect of decentralized exchanges, but will do so in a regulated environment. In a release, Bullish said that it is initially making available $3 billion of its over $10 billion on the balance sheet to its liquidity pools.



“What sets us apart is that the Bullish exchange is designed to integrate a regulated and compliant exchange, operating a high-performance central-limit-order-book matching engine. This is combined with Decentralized Finance (DeFi)-derived liquidity pools to enable automated market-making (AMM) capabilities and yield earning opportunities,” Michael Lau, Head of Institutional Clients, told Blockworks via email. 



In the future, Bullish users will be able to stake their assets via Bullish Earn to provide liquidity to the exchange’s AMM in exchange for yield. However, no details on the staking and yield arrangement have been released.&nbsp;



Lau added that Bullish plans to draw materially on its own digital assets and dollars to facilitate liquidity, something that many decentralized and centralized exchanges would find “hard to replicate” simply because they don’t have the war chest.&nbsp;



For now, Bullish is only available to non-US residents, and it doesn’t have a timeline as to when that will change. The exchange isn’t providing a full list of its institutional customers yet, but says that a non-U.S. affiliate of Virtu Financial and Hong Kong based liquidity provider <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/amber-group-raises-100-million-series-b-as-defi-booms/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Amber Group</a> are among the first to be onboarded.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/shutterstock_1073747786-1024x537-1.jpg" alt="Gibraltar" class="wp-image-11918"/><figcaption>Gibraltar; Source: Shutterstock</figcaption></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The EOS legacy</h3>



Despite having some of the biggest names in TradFi attached to the project, many industry observers are skeptical of Bullish given its connections to EOS and Block.one. Block.one launched EOS in 2016 as an ‘Ethereum Killer’ and raised approximately $4 billion via an ICO in 2018. But despite the impressive funds available to it, EOS has never really gone anywhere. None of the major DeFi protocols listed on <a href="https://defipulse.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DeFi Pulse</a> are on the chain, and there’s only one Dapp based on EOS — a game called UpLand — on DappRadar’s top-25 list. In the era of Solana and Polkadot, EOS just isn’t a competitive proposition.



This mega-ICO attracted the attention of regulators, and the SEC <a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2019-202" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">fined</a> Block.one in 2019, the company behind EOS, $24 million for selling unlicensed securities.



That’s not the only negative attention EOS has gotten in recent history. In August, forensic financial analysis firm <a href="https://www.integrafec.com/post/eos-ico" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Integra FEC</a>, posted a 14-page paper levelling some serious allegations that the EOS ICO was “pumped up” from wash trading. The paper identifies 21 wallets that during the ICO made whale-sized purchases of EOS and then dumped them on exchanges less than an hour later, a process the paper identifies as “recycling.” For its part, Block.one commissioned the law firm Clifford Chance LLP to test the Integra FEC claims. With help from PwC, Clifford Chance LLP said that it “found no evidence of any arrangements between Block.one and third parties by which third parties bought tokens on Block.one’s behalf.”



Meanwhile, token holders were disappointed both by the regulatory scrutiny on Block.one and the underperformance of EOS. The Crypto Assets Opportunity Fund (CAOF), along with investor Johnny Hong, had accused Block.one of failing to sufficiently decentralize EOS and not due proper legal due diligence in the process of launching the EOS crowd sale in order to &#8220;capitalize on the investor fervor for cryptocurrencies.&#8221; The resulting class action lawsuit <a href="https://b1.com/press/announces-settlement-of-class-action-lawsuit/?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=corporate_news&amp;utm_content=settlement" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">was settled in June 2021</a> for $27.5 million.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Is a SPAC’ed Bullish another crypto macro proxy?</h3>



Bullish <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/bullish-plans-to-go-public-through-spac-merger/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">previously announced</a> its intention to go public through a SPAC back in July. This was a surprising move considering that the exchange had yet to launch. Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s founder and CEO, suggested that one reason why there was an expedited push for a SPAC despite Bullish being nothing more than a website, at the time: the market wants listed macro proxies for crypto more than it wants another exchange.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">15) But anyway, maybe this is all besides the point. Bullish seems to be comparing itself to Bakkt and Coinbase, but maybe that&#39;s not really what it is. Maybe Bullish is really another MicroStrategy.&mdash; SBF (@SBF_FTX) <a href="https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1413688840489816065?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 10, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Bankman-Fried (admittedly, a Bullish competitor) concluded, after reviewing the exchange’s pitch deck, that their fees are higher than what the market can support, and their growth projections are optimistic. Still, the value of Bullish’s holdings has increased to nearly $9 billion since this SBF summer tweet, plus $6 billion in additional crypto assets could make for an interesting listed crypto play for investors that can only hold listed companies, and are willing to pay a premium for them.



“Maybe Bullish is really another MicroStrategy,” rather than a competitor to Coinbase or Bakkt, SBF concluded. That may be the reason why so many significant players in TradFi are lending their names to the project despite the EOS albatross.



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