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Neobank Juno Raises USD 3M from Polychain, Sequoia and Dragonfly

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Juno aims to provide a high-yield account for savings

Juno, a neo banking platform that leverages decentralized digital assets to provide customers a high-yield account for savings, has announced that the completion of a USD $3 million seed round. Investors include prominent firms such as Polychain Capital and Sequoia Capital’s Surge. The platform is set to launch in select markets next year and is taking a radical approach towards creating an open and global financial system for everyone, regardless of location or income.

Banks in developed countries – including the US, Europe, Japan, and Singapore – traditionally offer between 0.01% and 0.10% interest through checking and savings accounts. This interest will be distributed daily and will fluctuate regularly.  Clients will also be able to send and receive money anywhere in the world without intermediaries and at no cost. Additionally, the company plans to introduce a debit card with a partner bank in the future.

Juno is built on the Ethereum blockchain and uses Nuo protocol for its core functionality. Its main feature is to enable decentralized lending and borrowing of digital assets to earn a high yield on stablecoins such as USDC. Juno is leveraging these assets to build the next generation of global decentralized financial and banking services (DeFi).

Varun Deshpande, co-founder of Juno“Today, we are excited to unveil Juno – a neo banking platform that aims to provide everyone a high yield account for their savings. Our goal with Juno is to help create an open financial system for the world by providing equal opportunity and access, no matter where you are born or how much you earn. We are also delighted to partner with Polychain Capital, Sequoia Capital’s Surge and Dragonfly Capital on this journey as we build a new age banking platform from the ground up.”

Olaf Carlson-Wee, Managing Member, CIO of Polychain Capital – “We were early supporters of decentralized finance and stablecoin systems, both of which have continued to gain meaningful traction in the market over the past couple of years. We believe Juno is well-positioned to bring decentralized finance to the mainstream with their neo banking platform for digital assets. We are particularly impressed with the team’s focus on simple user experience, unlocking liquidity using smart contracts, and their Asia first strategy.”

Juno was founded in July 2019 by Varun Deshpande, Ratnesh Ray, and Siddharth Verma after creating the Consensys-backed Nuo protocol in 2018. Using Nuo smart contracts, lenders can supply crypto assets and earn daily interest, while borrowers can instantly access credit using their digital assets as collateral. Smart contracts allow for algorithm-driven pricing, disbursals, and collections, ensuring efficiency and transparency. Nuo protocol has grown organically to USD $25 million in deposits and USD $20 million in loans disbursed, making it the most popular DeFi app in Asia

The founders’ past ventures also include BeeWise, an alternate credit analytics platform acquired in 2017 by Aditya Birla Money. As a serial entrepreneur, Deshpande was the co-founder and CEO of TopTalent, a high-end recruitment platform as well as AVP marketing at Topper, a Fidelity-backed edtech platform in India. He holds a degree from BITS Pilani. Ratnesh Ray graduated from IIIT Allahabad and was the head of data science at TinyOwl, a Sequoia India backed foodtech app. Prior to that, he was a software developer at Toppr, where he helped create personalized tests and social features. Siddharth Verma was part of the early team at Arista Networks where he worked on their flagship product consisting of high-density switches. He was previously a software developer at Cisco and an alum of BITS Pilani.

The seed round also saw the participation of Dragonfly Capital, Consensys Labs, Astarc Ventures, Singapore Angel Network and notable angel investors Balaji S. Srinivasan (Ex-CTO, Coinbase and General Partner, a16z), Amrish Rau, Jitendra Gupta (CEO & MD, PayU India), and Loi Luu (Founder, Kyber Network), Nitin Sharma from Incrypt, Venu Palaparthi (CCO, Dash Financial), Rajesh Chelapurath (President, Ceera Investments), Brian Ma (Founder, Divvy Homes), Sanjay Mehta from Mehta Ventures, and Prashant Malik (Creator of Apache Cassandra).

Image by Nattanan Kanchanaprat from Pixabay

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Ethereum Price Outlook as the DXY Index Crash Continues

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Cryptocurrency prices remained in an upbeat tone on Thursday as the US dollar index continued its bearish move. Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency in the world, rose to $23,165, the highest level in months. Similarly, Ethereum has risen by more than 4% in the past 24 hours while BNB Coin and XRP surged to $307 and $0.41, respectively. 

US dollar index retreats

Cryptocurrencies have an inverse relationship with the US dollar index. For example, the DXY, which looks at the performance of the greenback vs other currencies, soared to a 20-year high of $115 in 2022. As that happened, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin plunged during the year.

The foundation of this relationship is the Federal Reserve. In most periods, the US dollar index tends to rise when the Fed is extremely hawkish and vice versa. And it was extremely hawkish in 2022 as it hiked interest rates by more than 400 basis points. 

Therefore, while the Fed has remained hawkish recently, the US dollar has dropped because of what the data is saying. Data published recently showed that America’s inflation is easing. The closely watched consumer price index dropped to 6.5% in December while core inflation fell to 5.7%. 

At the same time, other parts of the economy are showing that the American economy is indeed recoiling. Retail sales dropped sharply in December while many…

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XNO Token of Xeno NFT Hub listed on Bithumb Korea Exchange

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Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 25th January, 2021, // ChainWire //

Xeno Holdings Limited (xno.live ), a blockchain solutions company based in Hong Kong, has announced the listing of its ecosystem utility token XNO on the ‘Bithumb Korea’ cryptocurrency exchange on January 21st 2021.

Xeno NFT Hub (market.xno.live ), developed by Xeno Holdings, enables easy minting of digital items into NFTs while also providing a marketplace where anyone can securely trade NFTs.

The Xeno NFT Hub project team includes former members of the technology project Yosemite X based in San Francisco and professionals such as Gabby Dizon who is a games industry expert and NFT space influencer based in Southeast Asia.

NFT(Non-Fungible Token) technology has recently gained huge focus in the blockchain arena and beyond, making waves in the online gaming sector, the art world, and the digital copyrights industry in recent years. The strongest feature of NFTs is that “NFTs are unique digital assets that cannot be replaced or forged”. Unlike fungible tokens such as Bitcoin or Ether, NFTs are not interchangeable for other tokens of the same type but instead each NFT has a unique value and specific information that cannot be replaced. This fact makes NFTs the perfect solution to record and prove ownership of digital and real-world items like works of art, game items, limited-edition collectibles, and more. One of the ways to have a successful…

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Campden Wealth Partners with GDA Group to Enter Digital Asset Markets

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Blockchain conglomerate GDA Group joins as Campden Wealth’s newest Corporate Partner for 2021. Based in Toronto, GDA group provides access to all verticals of the crypto capital markets to institutions and private investors. The two institutions once operated on different verticals, so the partnership indicates a new era of portfolio allocation and asset diversification. Digital assets, including bitcoin, are becoming a vital component of modern investment strategies. GDA Group provides multiple avenues for digital asset exposure, including trading services through their institutional trading desk Secure Digital Markets, including non-recourse lending up to $100M through GDA Lending, and private placements through their capital markets arm GDA Capital

“Institutions have spent a decade on the sidelines, evaluating the risks of this burgeoning sector. Now, in less than 6 months we have seen billions in institutional and private capital enter the space,”  says James Godfrey, FX and International Banking Advisor to GDA Group. “Our relationship with Campden will illustrate the maturation of this industry and where we are headed next. New stakeholders will need experience, resources and insights to navigate this new market and evaluate upcoming opportunities.”

 “The Campden Community is constantly balancing the needs of wealth creation for the future, with wealth preservation…

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