Today in Crypto: El Salvador to Hold Bitcoin Meeting With 44 Countries; TerraUSD Backer Says It Spent Reserves

Japanese bank Nomura will be debuting a company to help institutional clients get more into crypto, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized finance, The Financial Times reported Monday (May 16).

Nomura reportedly plans to combine several digital asset services under one subsidiary, with a plan to have a staff of 100 by the end of 2023.

Meanwhile, Voyager Digital announced Monday that it has obtained subscription agreements from subscribers to get private proceeds for $60 million.

In its press release, Voyager said it will use those proceeds for what it calls “general corporate purposes.” Stephen Ehrlich, CEO and co-founder of Voyager, said this will help it deepen relationships with important leaders and add to its entry to Web3 and NFTs.

In other news, bitcoin mining company Bitfarms shares have risen 2% or so as of Monday premarket trading, Seeking Alpha wrote Monday.

This comes as Q1 earnings have been seeing EBITDA growth in spite of the way crypto has been falling as of late due to the fall of the UST stablecoin.

In more crypto-related news, CNBC reported Monday that investors have finally discovered where $3 billion in bitcoin bought by Terra had gone.

The Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) said it spent the bitcoin to try and save the collapsed UST coin. The foundation had accumulated over 80,000 bitcoin, worth near $3 billion as of last week.

LFG said in tweets that it had transferred 52,189 bitcoins to trade with “a counterparty” to try and keep the coin stable, and another 33,206 bitcoin were sold by Terra directly to attempt to keep the peg going.

Furthermore, Reuters also reported Monday that an affiliate of LFG said the company has been spending whatever it can to compensate some users who had lost money during the crash. LFG said it will start with the smallest holders. However, the company hasn’t found out the best way to do so.

In other news, blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs has hired Sujit Raman, an ex-Justice Department prosecutor who had been developing crypto framework for the government, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Raman’s appointment comes as the crypto industry is hiring more lawyers and facing more scrutiny.

In addition, crypto assets will now be subject to taxation in Portugal, which has been seen as a tax haven for the digital coins up to now, according to a Friday (May 13) report from ECO.

Currently, the law says that Finances can’t tax the income from these transactions. However, the government wants to make an adequate framework to deal with it.

Finally, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said on Twitter that 32 banks and 12 financial authorities will be meeting in the country to discuss bitcoin.

The intent is to talk about financial inclusion, digital economy, banking the unbanked and more. El Salvador became notable because it approved bitcoin as a legitimate tender for its whole country.