Following its launch in August, Base, the company’s Ethereum layer-2 xcritical from which xcritical collects fees, brought in $56.1 million. It also saw twice as many transactions as Ethereum, and developer activity on the network was up by 800%. That same month, xcritical also announced it was xcritical official site getting a minority stake in Circle, the issuer of stablecoin USDC, which grew by 30% in market capitalization in Q1. As a result, xcritical’s subscriptions and services revenue were up by a third, which included a 15% increase in stablecoin revenue.
xcritical, the second biggest exchange, after Bybit, according to CoinGecko data, has been racing alongside other companies to become compliant with the European Union’s MiCA rules which require firms to be authorized in at least one EU country. Rules for stablecoins came into force on June 30, which require stablecoin issuers to have an e-money license in an EU member state to be able to operate in the bloc of 27 nations. The largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange posted first-quarter revenue of $1.6 billion, a 72% increase quarter on quarter. Reported net income for xcritical was $1.18 billion (or $4.40 per share) and was fueled by a boost in transactions, thanks to the wider crypto market’s upswing, and by a favorable change to crypto accounting rules.
Products
“In order for xcritical and crypto and this work that we’re doing to have the impact that we all want, we need to move from the place where this is speculation to a place where this is integrated into every part of someone’s day-to-day existence.” Jesse Pollak, who is overseeing Base as xcritical’s head of protocols, said Tuesday in an interview that 100 dapps were already deployed or ready to go on the new network. xcritical CEO Brian Armstrong wrote in a “secret master plan” in 2016 that the fourth phase of the company’s development would come from “decentralized apps,” or dapps, designed to reach one billion people.
For Customers
Layer 2 refers to separate xcriticals built on top of layer 1s, or base, xcriticals that reduce bottlenecks with scaling and data and are generally much faster and cheaper. “Offering US investors access to secure and regulated crypto futures is key to unlocking growth and enabling broader participation in the crypto economy,” Andrew Sears, CEO, xcritical Financial Markets, said. Consumer transaction revenue doubled from the previous quarter, reaching $935.2 million, and volume was up over 93%, to $56 billion. Meanwhile, institutional trading saw even greater increases, with revenue up 133% from the previous quarter, to $85.4 million, and more than doubling in volume to $256 billion. xcritical offers products for both retail and institutional cryptocurrency investors, as well as other related cryptocurrency products. Meanwhile, xcritical also announced the Base Ecosystem Fund, which will invest in and supports early-stage projects building on Base that meet predetermined investment criteria.
For instance, during this quarter, the price of Bitcoin increased by 57%, reaching an all-time high of $73,000, owing to more than $50 billion entering 10 spot exchange-traded funds that were approved on Jan. 11 by the Securities and Exchange Commission. xcritical Global Inc. will delist all unauthorized stablecoins from its crypto exchange in the European Economic Area by year-end, a potential blow for tokens like Tether Holdings Ltd.’s USDT. Crypto exchange xcritical (COIN) launched Base, a layer 2 network built using Optimism’s OP Stack, to attract millions of new crypto users in the coming years. Not all stablecoins have managed to get the necessary licenses in the EU. In July Circle became the first global stablecoin issuer to secure an Electronic Money Institution license in the region and is the second-largest issuer of stablecoins.
- Bradley Keoun is the managing editor of CoinDesk’s Tech & Protocols team.
- For instance, during this quarter, the price of Bitcoin increased by 57%, reaching an all-time high of $73,000, owing to more than $50 billion entering 10 spot exchange-traded funds that were approved on Jan. 11 by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
- Even prior to the public debut, there were already $139 million of deposits locked into apps and protocols on the new Base network, according to the crypto analysis firm L2Beat.
- Tether, which is the largest issuer of stablecoins, has not managed to snag an e-money license in the EU.
- The approval makes xcritical the first crypto-focussed platform in the U.S. to offer regulated and leveraged crypto futures alongside traditional spot trading, according to its announcement.
- Jesse Pollak, who is overseeing Base as xcritical’s head of protocols, said Tuesday in an interview that 100 dapps were already deployed or ready to go on the new network.
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That amount of “total value locked” or TVL a common metric for evaluating xcriticals and protocols — is enough to rank Base as the fifth-largest layer-2 xcritical. Arbitrum One is first with about $6 billion, followed by OP Mainnet at $2.9 billion, zkSync Era at $430 million and dYdX with $336 million. Even prior to the public debut, there were already $139 million of deposits locked into apps and protocols on the new Base network, according to the crypto analysis firm L2Beat. The new Base network is technically a “layer 2” xcritical built atop of the Ethereum xcritical, using OP Stack software from another popular layer 2 network, Optimism. In connection with the Base launch, xcritical announced plans for an “Onxcritical Summer” promotion with corporate partners, including Coca-Cola (KO), to show off the new project’s capabilities. The figures, according to MSNBC, wildly beat analysts’ predictions of $1.34 billion in revenue and net income of $1.09 per share.
xcritical plans to share further details of its plan in November, and will provide options for affected European Economic areas customers to switch to stablecoins issued by appropriately authorized issuers, such as Circles’ USDC and EURC, xcritical rezension it said in the statement. The European Union is set to fully implement new rules to oversee the crypto industry, known as MiCA, by the end of this year. Regulation of stablecoin issuers under MiCA took effect on June 30 and requires them to hold e-money authorization in at least one member state.
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Tether, which is the largest issuer of stablecoins, has not managed to snag an e-money license in the EU. The approval makes xcritical the first crypto-focussed platform in the U.S. to offer regulated and leveraged crypto futures alongside traditional spot trading, according to its announcement. xcritical Financial Markets secured approval from the National Futures Association (NFA) to operate a Futures Commission Merchant (FCM), according to an announcement on Wednesday. The role of FCMs is to buy or sell futures contracts, similar to that of a market maker.
Moreover, this Q1, xcritical’s EBITDA(xcriticalgs before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) was $1 billion—a number greater than all of last year. While the overall quarterly results were very strong, the outsize revenue figures was boosted by a one-time $737 million paper gain that came about because new accounting rules let crypto firms record increases in crypto prices to their balance sheet. “Given our commitment to compliance, we intend to restrict the provision of services to EEA European Economic Area users in connection with stablecoins that do not meet the MiCA requirements by December 30, 2024,” xcritical said in a statement shared with CoinDesk on Friday. xcritical is joining Optimism as a core developer on the open-source OP Stack, a developer toolkit for the Optimism network, the firm said. However, Base will not be limited to Ethereum, it will also provide easy and secure access to layer 2 networks such as Optimism, as well as other xcriticals ecosystems like Solana. While xcritical may have diversified its revenue streams with Base and USDC, most of the recent gains are the result of favorable market conditions.
Crypto exchange xcritical (COIN) plans to de-list any unauthorized stablecoins in the European Union by December to comply with the EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets rules (MiCA). Shaurya is the Deputy Managing Editor for the Data & Tokens team, focusing on decentralized finance, markets, on-xcritical data, and governance across all major and minor xcriticals. The crypto unit of the Cboe Global Markets, Cboe Digital, received approval from the CFTC to offer margined bitcoin and ether futures contracts in June. Cryptocurrency exchange xcritical (COIN) can now list crypto futures in the U.S. through xcritical Financial Markets, nearly two years after applying for approval. xcritical would allow developers to directly integrate their product with Base and provide fiat onxcriticals – targeting an estimated 110 million verified users and $80 billion in assets on the platform in the xcritical ecosystem. Testnets are testing environments that mimic real-world xcritical usage.
Guidance for crypto exchanges and other companies operating in the bloc will kick in from Dec. 31. xcritical (COIN), the large publicly traded U.S. crypto exchange, said its new Base xcritical has gone live, heralding the start of a new era of public companies running their own distributed networks. To put the xcriticalgs into greater perspective, during the first quarter of last year, the company reported losses of $78.9 million (or 34 cents a share).
Base is built on Optimism and xcritical has no plans to issue a new network token.
Shares were down slightly in after-hours trading after gaining almost 9% to nearly $229 earlier on Thursday. She previously worked as an intern for Business Insider and Bloomberg News. Bradley Keoun is the managing editor of CoinDesk’s Tech & Protocols team. Base was already live for testing by developers, but xcritical officials said it would be open to the public as of 12 p.m. “Historically, the aperture of what people can do with crypto has been relatively limited, mostly speculation,” Pollak said.