PayPal-backed cryptocurrency firm Talos is becoming the latest unicorn in the industry, reaching a $1.25 billion valuation following new funding. Talos has raised $105 million in Series B funding round led by a major global growth equity firm, General Atlantic, according to an announcement released on May 10. The funding will help Talos extend its institutional-grade digital asset platform as well as accelerate the firm’s expansion into the Asia-Pacific region and Europe. The raise featured major firms in both the traditional finance and the crypto industry, including Ken Fox’s private equity firm Stripes, BNY Mellon, Citi, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, …

SpongeBob and Warhammer mobile game scores Polygon partnership Free-to-play mobile games publisher Tilting Point has entered a multi-year partnership with Polygon Studios to launch 10 Web3 games over the next two years. Polygon Studios and Tilting Point plan to help native Web3 game developers scale their games alongside free-to-play developer partners, as well as studios that want to bridge from Web2 to Web3 gaming. The first three titles in the works are interstellar strategy game Astrokings from Korean developer AN games, which Tilting Point acquired earlier this year, virtual slot game The Walking Dead: Casino Slots, based on the AMC …

JD Vance has won the Ohio Republican Senate primary election, making him the GOP’s candidate in the highly anticipated Senate race against Democrat Tim Ryan. Both parties are trotting out crypto-friendly candidates. The Guardian reported that Vance may have been pushed to victory on Tuesday by a last-minute endorsement from former President Donald Trump on April 23, helping him beat out presumed front-runner, the former state treasurer Josh Mandel. Both Vance and Mandel are crypto supporters, with Mandel famously tweeting, “Ohio must be a pro-God, pro-family, pro-Bitcoin state.” Vance has disclosed Bitcoin (BTC) holdings valued at up to $250,000, which …

Swiss privacy startup Nym Technologies announced it has secured $300 million in commitments from venture capital partners in support of the NYM Innovation Fund. Nym intends to issue grants to developers and incentivize them to build on top of Nym's decentralized infrastructure. This funding comes a couple of weeks after its native token NYM launched on major crypto exchanges, including OKX and Huobi. At the time of publication, the NYM token traded at an average price of $0.92, and its 24-hour trading volume has witnessed a spike since the fund's announcement. The day that NYM was first listed on April …

The crypto space witnessed phenomenal growth in 2021. Buzzwords like nonfungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized finance (DeFi) and the Metaverse broke through to the mainstream and culminated in the crypto market peaking at over $3 trillion in November of 2021. NFTs redefined arts and how they are acquired. DeFi revolutionized how we lend and borrow. The Metaverse birthed an alternate universe that we could all live and work in virtually. Play-to-earn (P2E) games paid gamers to do what they love. Decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, also had their moment to shine. One of the most out-of-the-blue crypto headlines of 2021 is …

Cryptocurrency markets remain caught in a macro-based downtrend, with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) showing further signs of weakness at the end of April. But, venture capital activity in the crypto and blockchain sectors is the strongest it has ever been, offering further evidence that major investors are looking beyond immediate price action and ignoring divisive bull/bear narratives. The latest edition of VC Roundup highlights the growing excitement surrounding Web3 gaming, decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain infrastructure. bloXroute secures $70M from major investors Blockchain distribution network provider bloXroute has raised $70 million in funding to continue developing scalable infrastructure services …

If you’re looking at the price of Bitcoin (BTC), it’s hard to be bullish these days. The flagship cryptocurrency has once again broken below $40,000, with analysts foretelling of a much bigger decline in the weeks ahead. Unfortunately, many new investors forget to treat crypto as an exponential asset class and, therefore, let short-term price fluctuations weaken their conviction. Do you want to know who’s conviction in digital assets hasn’t waivered amid the latest downtrend? Venture capitalists (VCs), i.e., investors whose sole purpose is to uncover the most promising startups they think are poised for greatness. This week’s Crypto Biz …

Dragonfly Capital, a prominent venture capital corporation operating in the cryptocurrency sector, has announced its third funding round, valued at $650 million. The figure surpasses its two prior rounds of $100 million in October 2018 and $200 million in December 2020. The $650 million raise saw participation from Tiger Global, KKR, Sequoia China and Invesco, among others, and arrived at slightly higher than the $500 million initially declared to the Securities and Exchange Commission in a Form D filing in January. The introduction of Dragonfly Fund III was coupled with a pledge to distribute financial support to projects at seed …

“Web3” used to be an empty industry buzzword that described the next iteration of the internet. In 2022, Web3 is still an annoying buzzword, but at least the blockchain community is trying to assign it real-world utility. This week’s Crypto Biz newsletter features several major funding rounds dedicated to building the Web3 economy. After reading through the stories, you can decide whether we’re actually getting closer to defining Web3. Oh, and remember all the buzz surrounding Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, or SPACs? A crypto-focused SPAC just closed an initial public offering on the Nasdaq, raising $115 million in the process. …

Ethereum scaling solution Polygon has launched a new network for Web3 development, pledging $100 million to early users who can help fast-track adoption. The Polygon Supernet chain gives developers the ability to build their projects in a customizable environment without hosting or operational costs, the company announced Friday. Developers will be able to deploy their projects on either a Supernet Sovereign Chain or Supernet Shared Security Chain — the former is managed by a single validator, which reduces maintenance costs, whereas the latter offers an easier path to decentralization with professional validators staking Polygon (MATIC) tokens to validate the network. …

Blockchain security firm CertiK has raised $60 million in funding from SoftBank Vision Fund II and Tiger Global, further cementing its unicorn status after raising a combined $290 million over nine months. The raise comes at a time when the blockchain community is leading growth around Web3 application development and creating new use cases for virtual ecosystems, especially in gaming, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized finance (DeFi). “When development moves at breakneck speed, mistakes happen,” CertiK’s vice president of marketing Monier Jalal explained to Cointelegraph in a written statement. He continued: “With current Web3 development, security most often is an …

Proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain Kadena has launched a $100 million grant program to encourage Web3 development on its platform, potentially opening the door to more use cases for the layer-1 protocol. The grant program is an extension of Kadena Eco, an initiative designed to grow the Kadena ecosystem through the development of gaming, metaverse, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized finance (DeFi) and Web3 projects. Stuart Popejoy, Kadena’s founder and CEO, said his firm will be deploying “treasury resources” to strengthen the long-term sustainability of the protocol. Web3 participants need to recognize its potential to revolutionize participation in various fields. https://t.co/pf6seKA2hc — Cointelegraph …