Funding round
Weekly Report: Russia’s largest bank can now issue digital assets, Optimism raises $150 million
Optimism aims to invest in hiring following the conclusion of a Series B funding round A FinCEN rep has said it is impossible to move large scale amounts of funds via crypto to avoid sanctions Meta could be legally charged for allowing misleading crypto ads on Facebook that falsely portrayed support by celebrity figures in Australia Sberbank has been licensed to issue and exchange virtual assets in Russia GameStop fans will by the end of July exchange NFTs for free on the retailer’s marketplace Ethereum L2 scaling solution Optimism raises $150M in a Series B funding round Optimism, an Ethereum layer two scaling solution, has completed a $150 million Series B funding round co-led by giant venture capital firms Paradigm Capital and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) at a $1.65 billion valuatio...
Hong Kong-based Hex Trust concludes an $88M Series B funding round
Hex Trust intends to expand into Europe and the Middle East It will also invest in its proprietary crypto platform Hex SafeTM Asia-based institutional crypto custodian Hex Trust has completed an $88 million Series B funding round led by Animoca Brands and Liberty City Ventures at a $300 million valuation. Of the raised capital, $61 million constituted primary capital, while $27 million was from secondary investors. Several other investments firms, including Sino Global Capital, Terra, CoinList, Protocol Labs, Morgan Creek, Primavera Venture Partners, Ripple, BlockFi, LeadBlock Partners, and Eterna Capital also participated in this round. According to CEO and co-founder of Hex Trust, Alessio Quaglini, investors’ interest in this raise surpassed the initially anticipated numbers. The C...
ConsenSys notches a $7 BN valuation after completing a $450 M Series D raise
The funds raised will be converted to ETH, used to support the adoption of Infura, a revamp of MetaMask and ConsenSys’ expansion efforts ConsenSys also revealed that MetaMask now has 30 million active monthly users Blockchain and Ethereum–focused firm ConsenSys today announced the conclusion of a $450 million raise. The recently–concluded funding round, led by ParaFi Capita, has seen the valuation of ConsenSys grow more than twofold to $7 billion, a significant swell from the last financing in November 2021. The raise saw the involvement of previous investors such as Third Point, TRUE Capital Management, and Marshall Wace, with newer investors including Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Anthos Capital, Microsoft and Sound Ventures also in play. Notably, celebrities including rappers 2...
Magic Eden completes $27M raise, aims to conquer the Solana NFT space ahead of OpenSea
Paradigm Capital led the NFT marketplace’s Series A raise Magic Eden is investing in Solana for its low costs and better performance than Ethereum Solana-based NFT marketplace Magic Eden has closed a $27 million Series A funding round. The raise was led by investment dealer Paradigm Capital, with contributions from Sequoia Capital and Solana Ventures. Backed financially by the raise, Magic Eden intends to expand the breadth of products and services that it offers users. A bet on Solana – the cheaper, better-performing alternative Magic Eden aims to be the first mover to gain a real hold on the Solana NFT market space before OpenSea does. The latter is easily the most dominant marketplace in the NFT business, bragging the lion’s share. Though OpenSea suffered a 50% downturn in t...
Weekly Report: BitDAO makes bold bet with $633 million allocation
Here are some of the interesting headlines you might have missed in the cryptocurrency sector this week: Rarify gets a $10 million boost in a funding round led by Pantera Capital Rarify, an infrastructure firm that provides businesses and institutions with a platform to natively incorporate non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has completed a $10 million funding round. The raise, which now puts the firm’s valuation at $100 million, was led by asset management company Pantera Capital, with the involvement of other investors including Slow Ventures, Greycroft, Protocol Labs, Hyper, and Eniac Ventures. By providing infrastructure to support enterprise-scale NFT integration, Rarify helps companies jump into the NFT scene with ease. According to the firm’s co-founder Revas Tsivtsivadz, the firm aims to ...
South Africa-based crypto exchange VALR completes a $50M Series B funding round
The raise was completed at a $240 million valuation with participation from big names like Pantera Capital The exchange will use the capital to add more products, expand into other markets, and hire more people In what is the largest ever raise by an African crypto firm, crypto exchange VALR, has today announced it completed a $50 million Series B funding round led by Pantera Capital. Several other institutional investors were involved, including Coinbase Ventures, Third Prime, Alameda Research, Distributed Global, and Fidelity Investments’ affiliate Avon Ventures. Following the raise, VALR has a $240 million valuation. VALR launched in June 2019 and has previously concluded a Series A funding round of $3.45 million back in July 2020 at a valuation ten times less than the current. Th...
Weekly Report: Crypto market maintains recovery run into the weekend
Key takeaways: The crypto sector has bounced back and seen some calm after Thursday’s crash that was set off by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Animoca Brands’ Yat Siu believes BitsCrunch will play a significant role in the metaverse future NGO founded to support Ukraine military sees more than $5.3 million in crypto donations US court fines BitMEX founders who pleaded guilty to money laundering Coinbase forecasts that Ethereum staking rewards will rise significantly post-merge Terra’s native token LUNA leads altcoins in the market rebound Thursday morning’s news of Russia invading Ukraine sent the market hurtling, with many of the top cryptocurrencies nosediving. The crypto sector has since made a comeback and conserved the uptrend. Bitcoin (BTC) is up 1.08% in ...
Amber Group completes $200M Series B+ funding round featuring Temasek Holdings
Amber Group extended its Series B funding as a special effort to bring Temasek around the investors’ table The raised funds will support global expansion and grow its OpenVerse and WhaleFin products According to a press release shared on Monday, leading digital asset platform, Amber Group confirmed that it had completed a $200 million Series B+ funding round led by Singapore-based investment firm Temasek Holdings. The raise also saw participation from other investors, including Tiger Global Management, Sequoia China, Coinbase Ventures, and Pantera Capital. The round’s completion at a $3 billion valuation represents three times as large as the valuation the firm reached in June 2021, the last time when capital was raised. It also brings the sum raised by Amber Group since its in...
Maverick Protocol closes $8M strategic fundraising led by Pantera Capital
The investment round featured several VC firms that will have a significant role in the network’s planned mainnet launch The funds obtained will be used to advance the proprietary Automated Liquidity Placement algorithm and strengthen Maverick’s position in the DeFi derivatives space Decentralised derivatives protocol Maverick on Tuesday announced it had successfully completed an external funding round netting $8 million. The fundraising was led by California-based crypto-focused fund Pantera with participation from other names, including Circle Ventures, Coral Ventures, Altonomy, Tron Foundation, Gemini Frontier Fund, Jump Crypto, LedgerPrime and Spartan Group. Maverick intends to use the funds to release its Automated Liquidity Placement model and open asset-listing function ...
Polygon raises $450 million from token sale to fund Web 3 development
The Ethereum secondary scaling solution gave out MATIC tokens to the participating investors at a discount The blockchain founders intend to dole out the funds across its scaling products and in building Web3 applications The blockchain scalability platform Polygon has announced the completion of a private token sale through which it was able to net $450 million. The raise doesn’t come as a surprise as TechCrunch disclosed at the end of last year that a number of venture capital firms were looking to provide financial muscle to Polygon. Venture funds are shifting focus to scaling projects and Web3 The token sale led Sequoia Capital India, featured over 40 investors in and out of the blockchain space. Some notable names include SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Tiger Global, Accel, Dragonfly Capital,...
Reddit co-founder’s VC raises $500 million, targets investment in crypto
The internet entrepreneur told Wall Street Journal that a significant fraction of the funds would be injected into crypto Elsewhere, Bahamas-headquartered FTX exchange yesterday revealed it had closed a $400 million in a Series C funding round 776 Management, the venture capital firm founded by Reddit co-creator Alexis Ohanian, has secured a $500 million raise across two of its funds. Wall Street Journal shared earlier today that the firm plans to allocate a sizeable portion of the funds into cryptocurrencies. In addition to blockchain ventures, the firms will also allot the funds to projects in other niches like climate and space exploration. “I’m proud to announce @sevensevensix has raised $500M for our two newest funds, bringing our total AUM to $750M. We’re just ...
Monthly Report: SEC’s campaign against Bitcoin Spot ETFs continues
January has been a rough month for the cryptocurrency market. Many crypto coins have bled in the last three weeks erasing gains from the broader market rally at the end of last year. Meanwhile, the larger crypto ecosystem has seen several developments this month. However, no direct crypto ETF has been approved in the US and odds for one being given the green light within Q1 of 2022 are long. Here is a breakdown of this and other important headlines in January, from regulations to crowdfunding. The US SEC is yet to approve a Bitcoin spot ETF The SEC’s preference for ETFs that track Bitcoin futures rather than the digital asset itself has remained unchanged. Citing a failure to reach the standards of a surveillance-sharing agreement, the SEC said on January 20th that it would not accep...
