Edition #6 - 25 FEB 2022
Kuna, the most popular crypto exchange in Ukraine, sees its 24h volumes triple overnight, with Tether, the 1:1 USD-pegged coin, trading at a 8-10% premium to the underlying.
gaming developments
Axie Infinity, the top gaming metaverse, tops $4 billion in NFT sales;
Unix Gaming, the popular P2E gaming guild, expands its ecosystem by introducing its in-house game development studio;
Alibaba, the Chinese conglomerate giant, started distributing NFT awards in its first blockchain game Ant Adventures;
Ever wanted to play chess with Magnus Carlsen? Animoca partners with the world champion to bring immersive chess experiences into the metaverse.
metaverses & vr
OpenSea NFT marketplace endures a phishing attack, resulting in customer losses in excess of $3 million;
Manchester City football club has started construction of the first football stadium in the metaverse, allowing fans to watch live sporting events in fully fledged VR;
NBA’s Top Shot is planning to auction NFTs granting annual VIP all-star event access;
Neon, a Solana NFT marketplace, and its NFT selling vending machines in New York.
zen portfolio highlight
This week we highlight our portfolio company Mars4, an upcoming triple-A survival VR game on Mars - a colony in an atmospheric, first-person struggle against the harsh realities of life on the red planet.
We are "over the moon" excited to share that Mars4 has secured a listing on KuCoin - a top 5 global centralised exchange.
Deposits start on February 27th at 12 PM UTC Trading of the MARS4/USDT pair begins on February 28th, 12 PM UTC
Find out more by engaging with vibrant Mars4 communities on Twitter, Discord and Telegram.
defi
Worldpay, in partnership with Crypto.com released its "Crypto for Payments" report this week: 60% of merchants are interested in accepting cryptocurrency based payments in the next year;
Stablecoin marketcap reaches $180 billion, up $9.5 billion in the last 30 days alone;
Maple Finance issues a record $100 million syndicated loan to Alameda Research;
Total value of assets under management across over 4,000 largest DAOs has gone down almost 30% to $7.6 billion over the last month;
Venezuela is considering bringing crypto ATMs back in a bid to curtail the never ending hyper inflation;
Coinbase posted its Q4 2021 earnings this week, with revenues of $2.5 billion exceeding analyst expectations by over 25%.
funding rounds
Amber Group, a market making platform, completed a $200 million raise at 3 billion valuation lead by Temasek, including Pantera Capital and Sequoia;
Helium, a decentralised wireless network, completed its Series D round of $200 million, valuing the company at $1.2 billion. The round included investments from Tiger Global and FTX Ventures amongst others;
InfStones, a crypto infrastructure provider, closed its Series B. The round totalled to $33 million at undisclosed valuation, with investments from Dragonfly Capital, Qiming Venture Partners and others.
A collection of 104 CryptoPunk NFTs was scheduled for sale this week by Sotheby’s, marking one of the largest NFT auctions to date with an estimated value of $30 million. The anonymous owner, going by 0x650d on Twitter, pulled the plug at the last minute, citing “rugging Sothebys”:
