The BioMedWire Podcast

With the coronavirus spreading as much disruption as infection, the Wild West Crypto Show zeroed in on financial developments in the crypto space (cryptos and global finance). This week, hosts Drew Taylor and Brent Bates had well-known crypto crusader Litecoin Lisa back on the show. Litecoin Lisa reported that it was her 70-year-old mother who introduced her to crypto. Another familiar face on the show was Jonathan Keim, communications director of CryptoCurrencyWire.

Keim started things off with the news that Grayscale Investments has announced its strongest quarter ever, with half a billion dollars raised in first quarter 2020 (http://ccw.fm/2nqHJ). Grayscale Investments, currently the world’s largest digital currency asset manager, raised $503.7 million across its family of products, which marked the firm’s largest inflow of capital for a single quarter. The lead product continues to be shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. Grayscale says most of the capital inflow, amounting to around 88%, has come from institutional investors.

Keim’s ensuing update was encapsulated in the headline ‘BitGo Continues Expansion of Services, Launches Dashboard for Managing Digital Asset Portfolio Across Wallets and Exchanges’ (http://ccw.fm/SyZp9). BitGo, the digital asset trust and security company, recently announced the acquisition of Lumina, a comprehensive crypto-native financial platform.

The first phase following the acquisition – integrating the products of the two companies – has been completed, which means that BitGo’s range of services to institutional investors has been expanded. Users will now have a dashboard for managing, accounting and tracking the entirety of their digital asset holdings and activities across wallets, exchanges and service providers.

Finally, Keim broke the news that Portis Wallet, one of the leading wallet solutions for decentralized finance, has been acquired by ShapeShift (http://ccw.fm/DiG5s). The Israeli start-up is now enhancing its noncustodial software wallet to give customers a seamless experience in crypto-to-crypto trading, as well as enabling the instant purchase of bitcoin, ethereum and USDC from a debit card. ShapeShift is one of the world’s leading self-custody crypto platforms. The acquisition merges two companies with a shared vision: the creation of an open financial system in which self-sovereignty is easy and accessible.