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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, Wyoming low-key led the way in crypto. Avanti Financial received approval for a bank charter from the Wyoming State Banking Board, and Two Ocean Trust can now act as a qualified custodian of digital assets after receiving a “no action” letter from the Wyoming Division of Banking. Certainly not flashy news, but very impactful for institutional adoption (which has still barely begun) and laying the groundwork for future innovation 🤠
Go Deeper on Avanti → Avanti’s Blog Post, Coindesk
Go Deeper on Two Ocean → Forbes, No Action Letter, Press Release
Now, let’s catch up on what else happened last week in crypto💨
10 New Funding Rounds
2 Tokens to Watch
2 pieces of Macro News
New Funding Rounds 😎
Seed
Nansen raised $1.2MM led by Mechanism Capital and Skyfall Ventures, with participation from Robot Ventures and Fabric Ventures among others. Nansen is a blockchain analytics platform.
DeFi Dollar raised $1.2MM led by Divergence Ventures, Standard Crypto & Accomplice, with participation by MetaCartel Ventures, Parafi Capital, Coingecko, and many others. DeFi Dollar is a stablecoin that indexes other stablecoins to stay near the $1 mark. Meta, right??
Notional raised $1.3MM, with participation by Coinbase Ventures, 1confirmation and Polychain, among others. Notional allows users to lend and borrow crypto at fixed rates. P.S. Go Badgers 🦡
Stablehouse raised $2.18MM led by Dragonfly Capital and Liberty City Ventures. Stablehouse is a stablecoin focused exchange. A number of the links at the bottom of their homepage don’t work, so it’s hard to provide you more info 😣
Figment raised $2.5MM in what looks like a seed extension, led by Bonfire Ventures. Figment is a blockchain infrastructure and services provider.
Nansen raised $1.2MM led by Mechanism Capital and Skyfall Ventures, with participation from Robot Ventures and Fabric Ventures among others. Nansen is a blockchain analytics platform.
DeFi Dollar raised $1.2MM led by Divergence Ventures, Standard Crypto & Accomplice, with participation by MetaCartel Ventures, Parafi Capital, Coingecko, and many others. DeFi Dollar is a stablecoin that indexes other stablecoins to stay near the $1 mark. Meta, right??
Notional raised $1.3MM, with participation by Coinbase Ventures, 1confirmation and Polychain, among others. Notional allows users to lend and borrow crypto at fixed rates. P.S. Go Badgers 🦡
Stablehouse raised $2.18MM led by Dragonfly Capital and Liberty City Ventures. Stablehouse is a stablecoin focused exchange. A number of the links at the bottom of their homepage don’t work, so it’s hard to provide you more info 😣
Figment raised $2.5MM in what looks like a seed extension, led by Bonfire Ventures. Figment is a blockchain infrastructure and services provider.
Not sure what to call it
Talos had their 2018 raise announced by Notation Capital. Talos is a crypto trading platform for institutions with a star-studded cap table that includes Castle Island, Arianna Simpson, Founder Collective, Initialized, and Coinbase Ventures 🤩
RAI Finance raised $1.5MM, led by crypto funds GBIC and Alphabit. RAI is a Polkadot based automated market maker.
Roll tacked on $1MM from Fabric Ventures, William Mougayar and others. Roll enables anyone to create a personal digital currency. Check out one example: $FIRST by Harrison First.
Talos had their 2018 raise announced by Notation Capital. Talos is a crypto trading platform for institutions with a star-studded cap table that includes Castle Island, Arianna Simpson, Founder Collective, Initialized, and Coinbase Ventures 🤩
RAI Finance raised $1.5MM, led by crypto funds GBIC and Alphabit. RAI is a Polkadot based automated market maker.
Roll tacked on $1MM from Fabric Ventures, William Mougayar and others. Roll enables anyone to create a personal digital currency. Check out one example: $FIRST by Harrison First.
Token sale
Funds
IDEO CoLab announced a $21MM early-stage fund. To date, IDEO has invested in, or helped incubate, dozens of blockchain startups including Near Protocol, Optimism, River Financial, and Messari.
IDEO CoLab announced a $21MM early-stage fund. To date, IDEO has invested in, or helped incubate, dozens of blockchain startups including Near Protocol, Optimism, River Financial, and Messari.
Tokens to Watch 🔐
Zcash - Tokenized bitcoin on Ethereum was a leading story the other week. Now Zcash, a cryptocurrency that has been around since 2016, is getting the same treatment from a company called Wrapped. Keep an eye on whether Zcash gets utilized to a proportional degree. If so, expect even more assets to get tokenized for use on Ethereum.
AAVE - Last week, the Aave community gained governance control of the Aave Protocol. Let’s not lose sight of how cool this is! Try to imagine Lyft, for example, turning over decision-making power to their users this explicitly. And this is the norm in crypto 🤓
Macro News 💳
Spend crypto to earn crypto: Coinbase announced that soon, U.S. residents can use their crypto debit card to spend and earn-back crypto. While “just” a product release, this continues the steady drumbeat of developments pushing crypto towards mainstream adoption.
Go Deeper → Coinbase blog, Decrypt
$30MM+ drained from DeFi protocol: Harvest Finance, an automatic yield-generating protocol created by an anonymous team, was exploited and had $30MM+ drained. Now, there is a $1MM bounty for the first person to reach out to the exploiter. Be wary when engaging with protocols built by anonymous teams with questionable code audits, lest you anger Kraken CEO Jesse Powell 😡
Go Deeper → Harvest’s Post-Mortem, The Daily Gwei, Coindesk, Decrypt
