PANews reported on January 16th that Slips, a social peer-to-peer esports platform, announced the completion of a $3.5 million seed funding round. The round was led by Las Olas Capital and Sunset Bay Capital, with participation from Andrew Schwartzberg, co-owner of Charlotte Hornets and Leeds United. Slips features a non-bookmaker user-to-user betting mechanism and has achieved 500% annual growth. The new funds will be used for technology upgrades, team expansion, user growth, and also for developing crypto payments, stablecoin withdrawals, and international market expansion.



BitGo’s move creates further competition in a burgeoning European crypto market that is expected to generate $26 billion revenue this year, according to one estimate. BitGo, a digital asset infrastructure company with more than $100 billion in assets under custody, has received an extension of its license from Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), enabling it to offer crypto services to European investors. The company said its local subsidiary, BitGo Europe, can now provide custody, staking, transfer, and trading services. Institutional clients will also have access to an over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk and multiple liquidity venues.The extension builds on BitGo’s previous Markets-in-Crypto-Assets (MiCA) license, also issued by BaFIN, and adds trading to the existing custody, transfer and staking services. BitGo acquired its initial MiCA license in May 2025, which allowed it to offer certain services to traditional institutions and crypto native companies in the European Union.Read more