On Thursday, BitDAO, one of the world's largest decentralized autonomous organizations with over $2.5 billion assets under management, and its partner Mirana ventures announced the creation of EduDAO with eight of the world's top universities including University of California Berkeley, MIT, Harvard and Oxford University. EduDAO is financed by the BitDAO treasury, and will allocate $11 million in funding each year project grants, research, and standalone product development with $33 million in initial capital. The funds will go to academic research for next-generation blockchain and Web 3 technologies. EduDAO is financed by the BitDAO treasury, and will allocate $11 million …

Dunamu, the operator of major South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Upbit, is progressing with blockchain development as its blockchain arm Lambda256 secured new funding. According to a Dec. 15 announcement, Lambda256 raised 70 billion Korean won ($60 million) in a Series B round, valuing the company at over $300 million. The firm is focused on enterprise-grade chains for businesses, building on its own blockchain protocol called Luniverse. The funding round included major venture capital firms and individual investors like tech giant Hanhwa Systems, travel tech startup Yanolja, bikes manufacturer Daelim, DSC Investments, Shinhan Venture Capital, KB Investments and SBI Investments. Dunamu …

On Wednesday, crypto-fiat gateway payments provider Ramp announced it had raised a $52.7 million Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital, NFX, Galaxy Digital, Seedcamp, Firstminute Capital, and angel investors. Ramp allows its partner brands to offer crypto-enabled services, claiming that it takes mere hours for developers to integrate their decentralized applications, or dApps, with its software. It has over 400 partners, including Axie Infinity, Mozilla, Opera Browser, Dapper Labs, Aave, Argent, Trust Wallet, and Zerion. The firm has regulatory approval in the U.S., U.K., and Poland. Current uses of Ramp include purchasing cryptocurrencies for storage in wallets directly …

Major cryptocurrency custody bank Anchorage Digital has closed a fresh funding round, bringing its valuation to over $3 billion. Anchorage Digital announced Dec. 15 that it raised $350 million in a series D round led by equity investment giant KKR. According to the announcement, this is the first time for KKR to directly invest in equity in a company in the crypto industry. The company invested through its Next Generation Technology Growth Fund II, which is dedicated to developing equity investment in the technology space. “As a pioneer in enabling institutional investors to access digital assets, Anchorage has built a …

On Tuesday, New York Digital Investment Group, or NYDIG, a financial institution specializing in Bitcoin financial services such as savings accounts, trading brokerage, 401(k)s, etc., announced it had secured a $1 billion equity investment led by WestCap. The funding places its valuation at nearly $7 billion. The firm has proved to be popular among institutional investors. Last year, Stone Ridge, a $10 billion asset manager, purchased 10,000 Bitcoin (BTC) via NYDIG's services. NYDIG is also set to bring BTC adoption to over 650 U.S. banks and credit unions, as well as launching BTC trading for 18 million U.S. banking customers. …

On Friday, Assembly, a decentralized layer one smart contract network built within the IOTA ecosystem, announced it had raised $100 million from private investors, including LD Capital, HyperChain Capital assembly, and Huobi Ventures. The project stated that the funds will be used to accelerate the development of decentralized finance protocols, nonfungible tokens, and play-to-earn crypto games. IOTA is a blockchain designed for facilitating internet-of-things transactions. Its proprietary technology consists of a system of decentralized acyclic graphs that can connect to one another in multiple vectors as opposed to in-series as with a regular blockchain. As a result, one new block …

Crypto startup Palm NFT Studio announced a Series B raise of $27 million on Thursday led by Microsoft’s venture fund M12. Palm NFT, cofounded by ConsenSys founder and Ethereum cofounder Joseph Lubin, provides strategic and technical services for creators to build NFT marketplaces. Other major backers include Griffin Gaming Partners, RRE, Third Kind Venture Capital, Sfermion, the LAO, Warner Bros., and SK Inc. According to the statement issued on their company blog, the raise will enable the team to scale the Palm NFT Studio’s technology platform and offer it to third parties looking to deploy NFT projects across movies, games, …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) return to sub-$50,000 levels has many market participants fretting over the legitimacy of their favorite price models. For venture capitalists and other smart money investors, the latest decline is nothing but noise. Instead, they see the emergence of an entirely new economy that is transforming business, redefining monetary value and pushing the internet to a new frontier. This week’s Crypto Biz newsletter highlights four major funding deals from the world of blockchain. Below is a concise version of the Thursday edition of our newsletter. 10T Holdings plans $500M crypto fund Earlier this week, equity fund 10T Holdings filed …

Terra (LUNA) faces the prospects of hitting $100 in the coming weeks as it paints a classic bull pennant structure. In detail, Bull Pennants appear as the price trends inside a Triangle pattern after a strong move upside. Many analysts see it as a sign of bullish continuation, i.e., they think the instrument would eventually break above the Triangle's upper trendline to resume its price rally higher. Additionally, the profit target of a Bull Pennant structure typically comes to be equal to the length equal to the size of the previous price rally, called Flagpole, when measured from the breakout …

Hong Kong venture capital firm Chiron Partners has launched a new ecosystem fund dedicated to Terra (LUNA), opening the door to new innovations for the layer-one decentralized finance, or DeFi, protocol. The Chiron Terra Fund I, also referred to as CTI, will deploy $50 million in capital to support innovative projects building on top of the Terra ecosystem. Projects at the intersection of decentralized finance and “metaverse-linked” nonfungible token platforms are eligible for support, the company announced Wednesday. Built using Cosmos SDK and Tendermint, Terra is a DeFi protocol that uses fiat-pegged stablecoins to power global payment systems. The native …

French crypto-friendly fintech startup Lydia has raised $100 million in a series C funding round, as per a report in TechCrunch. The latest capital raise reportedly helped Lydia attain unicorn status with a valuation of over $1 billion. The $100 million fundraise comes nearly a year after its series B funding round of $86 million in December 2020. The round was led by existing investors Tencent and Accel and also saw participation from Dragoneer and Echo Street. The fintech startup aims to use the fresh capital to expand its footprint in Europe. The firm hopes to onboard 10 million European …

Macro investor Dan Tapiero is launching another multimillion dollar fund intended to invest in mid- to late-stage companies in the digital asset ecosystem. According to a Notice of Exempt Offering of Securities filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, Tapiero and his 10T Holdings partners Michael Dubilier and Stan Miroshnik have given the regulatory body notice of a $500 million growth equity fund for crypto and blockchain firms. The filing shows the fund has not yet sold any of the original investment. The 10T DAE Fund 3.0 is the third to come from the growth equity firm …