Ukrainians are flocking to cryptocurrencies amid Russian invasion

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”:

Subscribe to Weekly Essentials

SUBSCRIBE