Edition #9 - 18 MAR 2022
The law, signed by president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, establishes a legal market and regulatory framework for cryptocurrency and other digital assets in Ukraine. Total value of crypto donations to Ukraine reach $100 million.
gaming developments
A gaming survey, conducted by Balthazas in Philippines, found 32% of respondents willing to quit their day job to start playing P2E games full time;
Animoca Brands’ IP F1 Delta Time abruptly closed this week, leaving NFT holders with Animoca’s promises to replace their in-game assets in other metaverses;
HSBC buys land in The Sandbox to “connect with esports and gaming enthusiasts”.
metaverses & Adoption
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) released its “future of digital assets in sports” report this week: NFT uses for collectibles, season tickets and virtual access token will become “critical” over next 5 years;
PrivacyHQ NFT safety report: 1 in 2 NFT holders had lost access to their holdings, 90% have already experienced an NFT scam;
Yuga Labs, creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, buys CryptoPunk IP from Larva Labs in a major consolidation event of the industry;
Mutant Apes Yacht Club became the 5th NFT collection ever to cross $1 billion in trading volume;
Mark Zuckerberg confirms NFTs coming to Instagram;
American Express enters the metaverse by completing multiple patent and trademark filings.
zen portfolio highlight
This week we highlight our portfolio company Secretum, the world's first and only fully decentralized, encrypted and secure messaging and trading decentralized application (DApp), built on the Solana Blockchain. Secretum is on a mission to make decentralized messaging and digital asset trading seamless, built from scratch as the go-to solution for DeFi and the metaverse. Thanks to its state-of-the-art design, it enables users to trade digital assets peer-to-peer as easily as sending an SMS.
The team at Secretum has already completed an oversubscribed private funding round with participation from top VCs and is aiming for a public IDO in late April.
Find out more about Secretum’s highly anticipated launch and keep in the loop with the latest developments by joining their communities on Twitter, Discord and Telegram.
defi
Juno DAO, the governing entity of the Cosmos-based Juno Network, has voted in a proposal to manually change a user’s token balance, marking the first ever DAO case to enact confiscating of funds;
Fir Tree Capital Management, a hedge fund with assets under management in excess of $4 billion, is shorting stablecoin Tether (USDT), citing junk grade underlying holdings;
FlashLoans opens access to its DeFi arbitration trading tool to retail traders;
Agave and Hundred Finance protocols hacked for a collective $11 million.
funding rounds
ConsenSys, the developer behind MetaMask, closed its $450 million Series D round at a valuation of $7 billion. ParaFi led the round, with other investors including Temasek and SoftBank;
Lava Labs, a Web3 gaming studio, completed a $10 million Series Aat $100 million valuation. The funding was led by Dialectic, with Animoca Brands, Merit Circle and Dragonfly in participation;
Hex Trust, a crypto custodian firm, closed its $88 million Series B this week, with Animoca Brands and Liberty City Ventures co-leading;
Treehouse, a retail DeFi analytics firm, raises $18 million Seed at undisclosed valuation, with Binance, Lightspeed and Wintermute in round participation.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the US Congress in a heartfelt plea for help speech this week. Who would have thought that this would spawn one of the worst Peter Schiff punts to-date:
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