Crypto Exchange WOO To Buy Back SharesFrom 3AC To ‘Clear Uncertainty’
Taiwan-based crypto exchange WOO Network has reportedly reached a settlement with 3AC liquidator Teneo to buy back the shares and tokens acquired by the hedge fund as part of WOO’s Series A funding round in November 2021.
The firm stated that it wanted to “clear the uncertainty” and that it plans to increase the ownership of all other shareholders proportionally. It also stated that it would be sending the 20 million repurchased crypto tokens to a burn address.
While WOO declined to disclose the total value of the repurchased shares and tokens, it had raised a total of $30 million in its Series A back in 2021.
Jack Tan, co-founder of WOO, stated,
“We are pleased to clear the uncertainty related to 3AC from the WOO ecosystem. We proactively collaborated with the liquidators to secure a fair deal to repurchase our shares and both vested and vesting tokens from 3AC’s estate. The past 18 months have seen a concentration of bad news hit our industry from large-scale failures to more overzealous regulators. A thorough cleansing of the system has taken place and we are looking forward to rebuilding with our partners and team.”
3AC was WOO’s largest investor in its series A round, purchasing equity along with 25 million WOO tokens, the remainder of which were set to vest over the next 12 months, according to the statement.
Grocery Chain Trader Joes SuesUnaffiliated Crypto ProjectThat’s Using Its Name
U.S. supermarket chain Trader Joe’s is reportedly suing decentralized exchange (DEX) Trader Joe for federal trademark infringement. Interestingly, this is the grocery chain’s second attempt at shutting down the DeFi platform.
Last year, Trader Joe’s filed a complaint with the U.N.’s World Intellectual Property Organization (WPO). However, WIPO ruled in favor of the DeFi platform at that time after the founder Cheng Chieh Liu asserted that the DeFi platform was named after his brother.
In its new lawsuit, the grocery chain is seeking all profits from the Trader Joe DeFi platform as damages, plus additional payments to “adequately compensate” the brand.
Additionally, it also wants further damages to compensate the company for its “erroneous” loss last year in the United Nations’ court.
Trader Joe is one of the most popular decentralized exchanges, starting on the Avalanche network before expanding to BNB Chain, Arbitrum and Ethereum. It holds over $77 million in various tokens across chains and processed over $25 million in trades in September.
The complaint filed last week with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California alleges the DEX “committed fraud” to muddle its origin story to win legal proceedings over the domain name.
“To salvage their case, Defendants concocted a false story. In the WIPO proceeding, Defendants obscured the true beginnings of the ‘Trader Joe’ name and falsely claimed that the platform had been named for the co-founder’s brother,” the filing says.
The grocery chain is seeking damages and demanding a trial by jury.
The price of JOE< the native token of Trader Joe, was down 4.5% in the past week, and traders may continue to react to legal proceedings.
JPMorgan Debuts Blockchain Collateral Settlement In BlackRock-Barclays Trade
According to a Bloomberg report, JPMorgan Chase & Co. has carried out its first live blockchain-based collateral settlement transaction involving BlackRock and Barclays.
Specifically, BlackRock used JPMorgan’s Ethereum-based Onyx blockchain and its Tokenized Collateral Network (TCN) to turn shares in one of its money market funds into digital tokens.
These tokens were then transferred to Barclays Plc as collateral for an over-the-counter derivatives trade between the two institutions.
Tyrone Lobban, head of Onyx Digital Assets at JPMorgan, said that using the bank’s blockchain network meant the collateral meant the collateral moved almost instantaneously, compared with over the course of a day.
At scale, the technology will increase efficiency by freeing up locked capital so that it could be used as collateral in ongoing transactions.
Through the application, the bank wants to eventually let clients use other assetsas collateral, including equities and fixed income, according to Ed Bond, head of trading services at JPMorgan.
“Institutions on the network can use a wider scope of assets to meet any collateral requirements they have on the back of trading,” Bond said in an interview.
Now the application is live, and the bank has a pipeline of other clients and transactions, he added. JPMorgan tested TCN using an internal transaction last May.
Using the technology will make it easier for financial institutions to use their shares in money-market funds as collateral because they won’t have to redeem them for cash, as they currently do when using traditional processes. That would make the transactions faster and potentially reduce risks during times of market stress.
“Money market funds play an important role in providing liquidity to investors in times of high market volatility,” Tom McGrath, deputy global chief operating officer of the cash management group at Blackrock said in a statement. “The tokenization of money market fund shares as collateral in clearing and margining transactions would dramatically reduce the operational friction in meeting margin calls when segments of the market face acute margin pressures.”
JPMorgan also runs a system called JPM Coin, which enables wholesale clients to make dollar and euro-denominated payments through a blockchain network.
The bank has used it to process around $300 billionfrom its launch until June this year. In addition, the company runs a blockchain-based repo application, and is exploring a digital deposit token to accelerate cross-border settlements.
Many of JPMorgan’s biggest rivals are also pushing ahead with blockchain and digital-asset projects.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. unveiled its digital asset-platform in November, saying clients can use it to issue financial securities in the form of digital assets in areas such as real estate. The Wall Street firm, along with Banco Santander SA and Societe Generale SA, helped the European Investment Bank issue a digital bond last year using blockchain technology.
Asset managers, such as Franklin Templeton, have also been experimenting with ways to process transactions for their funds using blockchain technology.
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