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LWIC is a weekly rundown posted on Mondays that covers the biggest news from the previous week:
- What companies raised money?
- What tokens got all the headlines?
- What macro news matters?
Welcome to a fresh week folks 👋
Last week, two Bitcoin trends continued to gain steam. First, more and more bitcoin is being put to use as “tokenized bitcoin” outside of the bitcoin blockchain. Over $1.5B of tokenized bitcoin is on Ethereum today, and other blockchains, like Polkadot, are starting to get in on the action. Second, Stone Ridge Holdings added $100MM bitcoin to its balance sheet as part of its treasury reserve strategy. They are the third large institution to announce their bitcoin holdings recently, joining two public companies: Microstrategy and Square. Expect to see more companies following suit, three’s a trend 🔥
Go Deeper → $10 billion money manager parks $100 million of treasury into bitcoin, Stone Ridge Reveals $115 Million Bitcoin Investment As Part Of Billion-Dollar Spinoff, CoinList mints largest ever single-day quantity of WBTC
Now, let’s catch up on what else happened last week in crypto💨
9 New Funding Rounds
2 Tokens to Watch
4 pieces of Macro News
New Funding Rounds 👻
Seed
Horizon Finance raised $1.3MM with participation from Framework Ventures and DeFiance Capital, among others. Horizon is a decentralized interest rate market
Zora raised a $2MM seed round led by Kindred Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and others. Zora is a marketplace to buy, sell and trade limited-edition goods that are launched as tokens.
Boardroom raised $2.2MM led by Standard Crypto with participation from Variant, CoinFund, Framework Ventures, Slow Ventures and many others. Boardroom is a governance management platform.
Archax raised $8MM from Alameda Research, Bridgetower Capital, and CoinFund among others. Archax is a FCA-regulated crypto exchange.
Series A
DODO, a decentralized exchange, announced a $5MM raise led by Pantera Capital, Three Arrows Capital, and Binance Labs. A cadre of folks participated in the round, including Coinbase Ventures, Galaxy Digital, and Framework Ventures. Just a few weeks ago DODO raised $5MM in a private token sale, and had raised a $600K Seed round in August 🐣
Mathwallet raised $7.8MM led by Alameda Research and Multicoin Capital. Mathwallet is a crypto wallet, as well as an exchange & decentralized application store.
Aave raised $25MM from investors Blockchain Capital, Standard Crypto and Blockchain.com Ventures. Aave is a money market protocol with just over $1B locked.
Other
Wirex raised £3.7MM via crowdfunding. Wirex provides crypto payment solutions, most notably a multi-currency debit cards that offer up to 1.5% back in your BTC account.
Tokens to Watch 🪐
XLM - The Stellar blockchain’s token saw its price jump last week after it was announced that USDC, a popular stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar, is moving from the Ethereum blockchain to the Stellar blockchain. Big win for Stellar 👏
DOT - In addition to the announcement of PolkaBTC, I’ve noticed the VC money flowing into Polkadot-based startups like Purestake, Equilibrium, and Reef Finance. Nothing else to say for now, just watching to see what else the Polkadot ecosystem has up their sleeves 🧐
Macro News 🥰
Heath Tarbert ❤️ Ethereum: The CFTC Chairman heaped praise on Ethereum last week, saying “Let me just basically say how impressed I am by Ethereum, full stop, period.” This was a much-needed breath of fresh air for the Ethereum community which had a roller-coaster of a couple of weeks full of regulatory actions, hacks, in-group spats, and loads of other drama.
Go Deeper → Coindesk, The Daily Gwei
Coinbase making moves: Coinbase had a few product releases last week that are worth knowing about. First, there is Coinbase Commerce which enables merchants to accept cryptocurrency payments. Second, retail users can now purchase tokens via their Coinbase Wallet. Third, they updated their Compound “Earn” tutorial, which I highly recommend doing.
VC money flowed into crypto: According to The Block, $897.7MM was invested in 212 crypto & blockchain startups in Q3. Looking at data from Outlier Ventures, this is up from $200 million invested in 90 startups in Q2 😲 Now, that may be comparing apples to oranges a bit, but I’d guess it’s directionally correct - I wasn’t able to find The Block’s Q2-2020 analysis 😞
Institutional money flowed into crypto: Grayscale, a large digital currency asset manager with over 5.9B AUM, had a record-breaking quarter with over $1B of inflows. Approximately $720MM of that went to their Bitcoin Trust from institutional investors. Their Ethereum Trust also became an SEC reporting company. All further evidence of the growing institutional demand to invest in crypto.
Go Deeper → Grayscale 2020 Q3Digital Asset Investment Report
