Genesis / Bankruptcy Filing — Genesis Global Holdco filed for bankruptcy protection late Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The company suffered losses due to loans made to defunct borrowers Alameda Research and Three Arrows Capital. Genesis, owned by the crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group, also operates crypto asset manager Grayscale Investments and crypto news outlet CoinDesk, amongst other businesses — more
U.S. DOJ / Charges Bitzlato — Authorities seized crypto exchange Bitzlato and arrested its co-founder, a Russian national living in China. The DOJ said Bitzlato processed more than $700M in illicit funds and over $4.5B in volume since launching in 2018 — more
Visa / Alchemy Pay — Visa listed Alchemy Pay as an “Official Service Provider” and marks progress for Visa’s on+off ramp and recently launched NFT checkout service. Alchemy Pay is now able to process fiat payments to purchase crypto for Visa cardholders in more than 170 countries — more
Three Arrows Founders / New Crypto Exchange — The founders of the defunct crypto hedge fund, Three Arrows Capital, have reportedly joined forces with CoinFLEX to start a new crypto exchange called GTX. They are aiming to raise $25M for GTX, which will provide “an avenue to liquidity that current crypto creditors lack.” — more
Woori Bank / Metaverse Branch — The fourth biggest commercial and corporate bank in South Korea, Woori Bank, announced plans to launch a metaverse banking branch in the first half of 2023. The bank also plans to offer 3D virtual training to its employees in the metaverse — more
Coinbase / Pauses Business in Japan — Coinbase paused its operations in Japan citing current market conditions as the cause of the announcement. Coinbase Japan customers have until Feb. 16th to withdraw their assets in either fiat or crypto — more
Nexo / SEC Charges — Nexo will pay $45M to state and federal agencies after being charged by the SEC for failing to register its retail crypto lending product known as Earn Interest. Nexo will pay $22.5M in penalties and agreed to cease the Earn Interest product to U.S. investors and pay an additional $22.5M to state agencies for similar charges — more
Filecoin / Lockheed Martin — Filecoin Foundation will deploy the interplanetary file system (IPFS) in space aboard a Lockheed Martin satellite. The Filecoin network aims to launch a decentralized file system in space this year — more
TaxBit (🤝) / Tactic Acquisition — Crypto tax and accounting platform TaxBit acquired Tactic to expand its corporate accounting offerings. Terms were not disclosed, but Tactic raised over $13M in total funding to date — more
Yves Saint Laurent / NFT and Metaverse Trademarks — Yves Saint Laurent, a French luxury fashion house founded in 1962, recently filed trademark applications for NFT-backed media, marketplaces featuring branded virtual goods, and numerous virtual cosmetic products — more
South Korea / Metaverse Seoul — South Korea launched a metaverse replica of its capital city called Metaverse Seoul — a virtual space that will enable citizens to take their avatars to the tax office, access youth counseling, or check out books from an immersive library. In future phases, the metaverse will expand to include real estate and on-chain foreign investor services — more
Sleepagotchi (🤝) / $3.5M Raised — Sleepagotchi, a mobile app that uses game-like interactions and social elements to help users improve their sleeping habits via digital collectibles, raises round from 6th Man Ventures, Collab+Currency, Shima Capital, 1kx, DeFi Alliance, Sfermion, Emoote, and LCA Game Guild — more
Ulvetanna / $15M Raised — Ulvetanna, a startup aimed at accelerating ZK tech by supporting web3 networks with reliable and cost-efficient proof generation, raises round co-led by Bain Capital and Paradigm, with participation from Jump — more
Intella X / $12M Raised — Intella X, a web3 gaming platform, raises round in advance of its launch later this quarter. The platform is backed by Polygon, Animoca Brands, Magic Eden, Planetarium, Big Brain Holdings, Crit Ventures, JoyCity, Pearl Abyss, XL Games, Wemix and Global Coin Research — more
Metahood / $3M Raised — Metahood, a platform building the “Zillow of the metaverse”, raises seed round led by 1confirmation, with participation from Volt Capital, Flamingo DAO, and Neon DAO (🤝) — more
Syky / $9M Raised — Syky, the digital fashion startup founded by Ralph Lauren’s former chief digital officer Alice Delahunt, raises Series A round led by led by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s VC firm Seven Seven Six, with participation from Brevan Howard Digital, Leadout Capital, First Light Capital, and Polygon Ventures — more
HashKey / $500M Raised — HashKey Capital, the investment arm of financial-services firm HashKey Group, closes its third fund with $500M in committed capital. The fund will invest in crypto and blockchain initiatives around the world with a focus on emerging markets — more
Createra / $10M Raised — Createra, a user-generated content (UGC) metaverse engine enabling creators to create + distribute MetaFi games, raises Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) to “continue its pursuit of building the largest Gen Z-focused metaverse platform.” — more
Sortium / $7.75M Raised — Sortium, a company bringing together AI and web3 to create immersive games and virtual experiences, raises seed round with crypto hedge fund Arca among the investors. The funding was revealed in a filing with the U.S. SEC but other investors in the round were not specified — more
Psychic VR Labs / Strategic Round — Psychic VR Labs, a Japan-based platform building XR infrastructure, raises strategic investment from Animoca Brands Japan, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands — more
Obol Labs / $12.5M Raised — Obol Labs, a startup providing security for PoS blockchains, raises Series A co-led by Pantera Capital and Archetype, with participation from BlockTower, Nascent, Placeholder, Spartan, and IEX — more
House of Blueberry / $6M Raised — House of Blueberry, a digital fashion business building interactive metaverse entertainment, raises seed round led by Makers Fund and continued participation from Everblue Management. House of Blueberry has sold over 20 million digital assets across platforms such as Roblox, The Sims, and Second Life under its own brand since 2012 — more
MoviePass / Seed Funding — MoviePass, a platform aimed at enhancing the exploration of film and the moviegoing experience, raises seed round led by Animoca Brands, with participation from Claritas Capital, Emerald Plus, Gaingels, Harlem Capital, PKO VC, and Sandhill Angels — more
Art Blocks (🤝) NFT Faithful Partied in Marfa as FTX Collapsed / Sander Lutz — “The world’s No. 2 cryptocurrency exchange had just filed for bankruptcy, its boy genius CEO had resigned, and millions upon millions of dollars were disappearing from his company’s wallets in real-time with no explanation. But hundreds of miles from the noise of urban financial panic, in an old cattle feed mill in the West Texas desert, dozens of crypto culture makers bobbed their heads and waved their hands to a synchronized display of vibrating squiggles.” — more
2022 Electric Capital Developer Report / Electric Capital — “We are 14 years into the creation of open-source crypto. In the first 7 years, 1,000 monthly active developers wrote code. In the last 7 years, crypto gained over 22,000 monthly active developers. There are now 23,343 crypto monthly active developers in crypto.” — more
The State of NFT Markets [December 2022] / ConsenSys Research Team — “NFT trading activity in December 2022 continued its upward trend at $318M of monthly volume, up ~35% from prior month. The increase in activity is also reflected in average NFT prices, which have been rising since September lows despite the price of ETH being relatively flat. This suggests NFT floor prices (denominated in ETH) are rising.” — more
Next Gen Onchain Gaming with User-Generated Logic / Curio Research — “We believe that the next level of gaming lies in the ability of players to shape the rules and mechanics through user-generated logic (UGL) in smart contracts. By breaking free from the constraints of game physics and traditional user-generated content, UGL will pave the way for a new era of gaming, where players can collaborate, innovate, and create in ways never before imagined.” — more
Decompiling AI Generated Art / Conlan Rios — “If you’ve been following art or tech news this past year then your feeds have likely been dominated by the advent of AI Generated Art. I’m not talking about those psychedelic Google DeepDream images depicting familiar paintings covered in eyeballs, but by art so well made that it can be shocking and almost unsettling to hear that a computer dreamed it up.” — more
AI and the Big Five / Ben Thompson — “The story of 2022 was the emergence of AI, first with image generation models, including DALL-E, MidJourney, and the open source Stable Diffusion, and then ChatGPT, the first text-generation model to break through in a major way. It seems clear to me that this is a new epoch in technology. To determine how that epoch might develop, though, it is useful to look back 26 years to one of the most famous strategy books of all time: Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma.” — more
What I Talk About When I Talk About Bridges / 0xJim — “Over the past 2 months, I fell in love with the interoperability problem. I spoke to nearly every project in the space, and decided to summarize my 200+ hours of research into an article. Here’s what I learned.” — more
Mona (🤝) / New Platform + Expanded Marketplace — Mona, a 3D world-building platform and web3 social network for the metaverse, launched a new platform / website and updated marketplace interface. Throughout 2023, Mona will expand its social offerings to include social profiles for creators — more
Zebedee (🤝) x Viker / Play-to-Earn Mobile Games — Zebedee, an in-game payments infrastructure provider, partnered with mobile game studio Viker to launch two new play-to-earn games, Bitcoin Chess and Bitcoin Scratch. Both Bitcoin Chess and Bitcoin Scratch (a digital scratch card game) are now available on iOS and Android — more
the402 (🤝) / Lens Protocol Integration — The402, the platform for crypto-enabled livestreaming, announced its integration with the composable and decentralized social graph, Lens Protocol. Streamers on the402 can now token-gate livestreams, chats, and video-on-demand for their Lens follower base — more
Rarible (🤝) / Polygon Marketplace Builder — Rarible now offers a self-service builder tool that enables artists and creators to easily launch a Polygon NFT collection and design their own custom community marketplace for free. The no-code service also allows builders to customize numerous marketplace options, including royalty fees — more
CoinTelegraph / Article NFTs — CoinTelegraph announces readers can now search for iconic crypto articles and mint them into NFTs. Collectors can build out their own “Historical Collections”, participate in secondary markets, and gain access to future hodler benefits — more
Uniswap / StarkNet (🤝) Deployment — New proposal has been put forth to deploy Uniswap v3 onto StarkNet mainnet. StarkNet is a permissionless ZK-rollup that inherits security from Ethereum mainnet. StarkNet runs CairoVM, a virtual machine optimized for generating zero-knowledge proofs about L2 state transitions — more
DeFi Protocol Frontier / Wallet Extension Live — DeFi protocol Frontier launched an in-browser wallet extension allowing users to transact staked assets and NFTs on 35 different blockchains, including Aptos and Sui. The wallet enables users to interact with dApps from within the wallet interface — more
Justin Aversano / Quantum Art (🤝): Everyday is a Gift — “For each day of the year from September 22nd, 2012 - September 21st, 2013, I photographed people celebrating their birthday with a Polaroid camera. The dated Polaroids represent everyone who shares that day of birth. This project recognizes equality of all living beings through the depiction of a primal phenomenon, which is mortality.” Minting Jan. 26th, 365 pieces, 0.365 ETH — more
LOREM x Bright Moments (🤝) / Foundation: BOXED — “BOXED is a collection of 100 unique artworks minted on the Ethereum blockchain. The project will premier at the Bright Moments Berlin gallery on January 26th, where collectors will have the opportunity to reveal their art work in real life.” Minting live now, 0.5 ETH — more
Anna Lucia, Anna Carreras and Aaron Penne / Verse: Generative Abstraction PART III — “Artists are using algorithms and codes to create formal ideas of abstraction in their compositions, pushing the boundaries of the movement and inviting viewers to appreciate the works for their aesthetic effects and compositions alone … By exploring the intersection of art and technology through the works of these innovative artists, this exhibition invites the viewer to consider the ways in which these fields interact and influence one another.” — more
Kena Rose, Genzo and Cheryl Yie / Async Art (🤝): remnants — “Remnants of our experiences are always around us and shape the way we see ourselves and how we live our lives. In her latest project, Kena Rose is exploring the different remnants of a relationship and how the individuals see and experience the disintegration of their love. With generative lyrics, each unique version of the song will reveal a hopeful or a sad ending to the situation.” — more
Christine Hall x Chris Maddern / fxhash: Adjacent — “Coming to #fxhash on Friday, 1/20, in collaboration with Chris Maddern. Limited reserve for: Tema & Tendencies holders, The Floor App (🤝) community, and folks who drop their address & RT!” — more
Maria Shen / 4th Annual Developer Report Recap
Ryan Watkins / NFTs Synonymous with Crypto
Solana / Developer Numbers in 2022
Dirt (🤝) / Founder Pass Public Sale
Luca Tomescu / Crypto-enabled Livestreaming with the402 (🤝)
0xCygaar / Primer on delegate.cash (🤝)
delegate.cash (🤝) / Discussion on the 100 PROOF Podcast
Blur / $BLUR Token Drop Feb. 14th
punk9059 / Blur Aggregator Volume
Delphi Digital / NFT Perp Trading Volume
Polygon / PoS Network Upgrade
Blackbird / Crypto Wallets x Identity Graphs
Naval / Simple AI Analogy
Greg Brockman / ChatGPT API Soon™️
🤝 = Collab+Currency Portfolio Company
Curated by @Collab_Currency x @_cutbank
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