Today in Crypto: Binance.US Hopes to Raise Another $50M; Crypto Donors Doubled-Down on Funding in US Politics Through May

Crypto exchange FTX announced Tuesday (June 21) that it’s buying Embed Financial Technologies, which will give it Embed’s white-label brokerage services and application programming interfaces (APIs).

The acquisition will also include the subsidiary Embed Clearing. This will see the company expanding its financial services for U.S. customers, letting it route, execute, clear and custody all customer equities and options accounts with Embed.

According to FTX U.S. president Brett Harrison, the goal is to “provide a comprehensive trading application that spans all asset classes.”

“For equities and options trading this necessarily includes services such as clearing and custody, and our partnership with Embed showed us that they have built excellent technology and infrastructure to provide these services,” Harrison continued. “We’re looking forward to working together to integrate both our teams and our technology as we continue to build FTX Stocks.”

Meanwhile, political donations from crypto brokers, venture capitalists and investors surged in recent months, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

The donations hit $52 million through the end of May from the first 15 months of this midterm election cycle. The report said this saw a doubling of the amount put into donations from these companies.

Bloomberg noted that FTX co-CEO Ryan Salame donated $8 million in May to American Dream Federal Action, which has backed Republicans with $7.6 million. Additionally, his colleague, Sam Bankman-Fried, has donated $500,000 to the Senate Majority PAC, which supports Democrats.

In other news, Reuters reported Tuesday that Celsius’s decision to stop taking withdrawals has hurt some crypto investors.

“I was probably earning $100 a week,” said Jeremy Fong, a 29-year-old civil aerospace worker quoted by Reuters. “That covered my groceries.”

Celsius made its decision last week to freeze withdrawals for all 1.7 million customers, due to what it said were extreme market conditions and the mass issues with the crypto market for the past month or so. As such, Fong has seen around 30% of his long-term crypto holdings cut down, which he said was “very uncomfortable.”

Finally, Binance.US is looking to raise $50 million in additional funding to help continue the exchange’s seed round, CoinDesk wrote Tuesday.

Binance.US is the American arm of the crypto exchange Binance. The raise will target “strategic partners,” the report said, and wouldn’t be a new Series A round.

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