UK Financial Giant’s Crypto Move, Solana’s Growth, Pudgy Penguins Get Physical + More News

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news. 
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Investments news

• One of the UK’s largest asset-management companies abrdn said it has concluded a deal to become the largest external shareholder in Archax, a UK-based yet-to-be-launched regulated digital securities exchange. The exchange aims to launch later this year.
• Mobile-first financial platform Structure.fi announced that it has officially launched in El Salvador. In the coming weeks and months, millions of people in emerging markets around the world will be able to utilize its service as the company prioritizes historically underserved populations, in countries like Mexico, Nigeria, and India, they said.
• Predictive blockchain monitoring and investigative platform Merkle Science announced the extension of over USD 19m to its Series A round, bringing the total raised to over USD 24m. The round was co-led by BECO Capital, Susquehanna affiliate Darrow Holdings, and K3 Ventures, with participation from new investors including Republic Crypto, Summer Capital, Aspen Digital, etc. The new investments will be used for expansion across the US and Europe, as well as for R&D in emerging segments such as analytics and forensics across NFTs, DeFi, and crypto bridge protocols. 

Blockchains news

• Since the Solana (SOL) Mainnet Beta network went live in March 2020, it’s grown into a network of over 3,400 validators across six continents, including over 1,900 consensus nodes, the team behind the project said. An average of 95 new consensus nodes and 99 RPC nodes have joined the network every month since June 2021, they added.

NFTs news

• Sales of Pudgy Penguin NFTs increased on Thursday after the project announced it would be licensing select NFTs to be made into physical toy collectibles. At the time of writing, the collection has seen ETH 264 (USD 493,941) worth of sales in the past 24 hours, a 115% increase from the previous day, according to OpenSea. The collection’s floor price went up almost 12% to ETH 2.68 (USD 5,014), according to NFT Floor Price.

Regulation news

• Ohio, USA, Board of Professional Conducts said that Ohio attorneys may hold cryptoassets in escrow when representing clients, Law360 reported. However, they must keep the funds segregated and ensure they’re not facilitating illegal activity.
   

Privacy news

• The Discord channel of sanctioned crypto mixed Tornado Cash may have been taken offline as users are not able to access it, according to a number of tweets.

Gaming news

• Play-to-earn (P2E) blockchain game Axie Infinity (AXS) has removed the smooth love potions (SLP) token rewards from its classic game mode to attract its users to a new game mode called Axie Infinity Origin. The team said that moving from classic to the new game mode will help “balance the SLP economy.”

Mining news

• Bitcoin (BTC) miner Core Scientific reported its financial results for the second quarter, including that: total revenue of USD 164m increased by 118%, compared with the same period last year, while a net loss increased by USD 858.3m and reached USD 861.7m. The increase in net loss was mostly due to a USD 840m impairment of goodwill, they added.