Crypto lending firm Celsius Network has expanded its $400 million Series B round from October to $750 million as a result of oversubscription in the firm’s capital raise. The company is now valued at $3.5 billion following the raise and CEO Alex Mashinsky told Cointelegraph he expects that figure to “double or triple” next year which would see it valued between $7B and $10.5B The firm previously closed the round on Oct. 12 amid a period of intense scrutiny placed on crypto lending firms from local regulators. Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky emphasized at the time that “it’s not $400 million. …

Cryptocurrency fintech startup MoonPay has closed its first-ever venture capital round, reaching $3.4 billion in post-money valuation. The firm officially announced Monday that it closed a $555 million Series A funding round led by prominent industry investors like American investment firm Tiger Global and tech-focused investment manager Coatue. Other participants included Blossom Capital, Thrive Capital, Paradigm, and the New Enterprise Associates venture capital firm. The raised capital is the first funding secured by MoonPay in 2.5 years since the company was founded in 2019 by two young entrepreneurs, Ivan Soto-Wright and Victor Faramond. The firm says it has processed more …

The Winklevoss twins’ crypto exchange Gemini will allocate capital from its $400 million funding round into building a “Gemini experience in different Metaverses.” Gemini announced that it had closed a $400 million equity growth funding round at a valuation of $7.1 billion on Nov. 18, marking the first time the firm had sought outside financing. Morgan Creek Digital led the round with participation from 10T, ParaFi, Newflow Partners, and Marcy Venture Partners to name a few. Notably, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) — which also partnered with Gemini to launch the first crypto trading services offered by a big …

European security startup Nym Technologies has announced a $13 million funding round coordinated by renowned crypto investor Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, and further participated by a venture capital firms Digital Currency Group, Tayssir Capital, Huobi Ventures, Hashkey and Fenbush. This third funding round represented their highest raise to date, following seed funding of $2,5 million in May 2019 and Series A raise of $6 million in July 2021 — Polychain Capital led the latter of which — according to financial data from Crunchbase. Nym Technologies is an open-source, decentralized infrastructure that aims to surpass the typical third-party privacy services offered …

Private bartering blockchain Anoma Network has raised $26 million (24 million Swiss francs) from some of crypto’s biggest venture funds as it seeks to reimagine the age-old practice of exchanging goods without using money. Anoma Network will use the proceeds to advance its proof-of-stake blockchain, which has been designed to facilitate private transactions using “asset-agnostic bartering.” Bartering refers to the exchange of goods and services for other goods and services without money as the intermediary. In the case of Anoma, traders have the ability to convert assets without the need for a base currency. (In traditional exchange markets, the base …

Israel-based StarkWare announced on Nov 16 via Twitter that it had raised $50 million in a Series C funding round, and that the firm’s valuation is now at $2 billion. Sequoia Capital was the lead investor, among other contributors. Seven months ago, StarkWare raised $75 million in a Series B funding led by Paradigm. We are excited to announce our Series C of $50M at $2B. A big thanks to our lead investor, @sequoia, our wonderful follow-on investors, and the dozens of ecosystem partners and collaborators who participated in this round, for their vote of confidence in our products and …

Blockchain infrastructure provider ConsenSys has reached a lofty valuation of $3.2 billion after closing a $200 million funding round, joining over a dozen other crypto-focused companies to reach coveted unicorn status this year alone. The $200 million financing round saw participation from several new investors, including Marshall Wace, Third Point and Think Investments, who contributed alongside existing investors such as Dragonfly Capital, Electric Capital, Spartan Group, Coinbase Ventures, HSBC, DeFiance Capital and Animoca Brands. ConsenSys also announced that Ethereum wallet and browser extension MetaMask has achieved roughly 21 million monthly active users, having more than doubled over the past four …

Developer group Oasis Foundation has launched a $160 million ecosystem fund to bootstrap promising projects building on top of Oasis Network, a privacy-enabled blockchain with a focus on decentralized finance (DeFi) and the so-called data economy. The fund was established to attract new developers to the Oasis Network so that they can build the next generation of decentralized applications that support DeFi, nonfungible tokens, data tokenization and the metaverse, Oasis Foundation announced Wednesday. Startups and existing projects building on Oasis Network are both eligible to receive grants, the Foundation confirmed. In addition to Oasis Foundation’s contributions, the ecosystem fund was …

On Tuesday, pSTAKE, a liquid staking protocol from decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Persistence, announced in a statement provided to Cointelegraph that it had closed a $10 million strategic funding round from venture capital firms. Tendermint, the core developer behind the Cosmos network, powers Persistence blockchain with its consensus engine. Liquid staking is the practice of users “double-dipping” with their crypto assets — i.e., allowing them to stake their crypto in one pool and use their staked assets to farm yields in a liquidity provider pool, or vice versa. The process enables higher compounded yields, as assets generate returns in two …

Marathon Digital Holdings, one of the largest Bitcoin (BTC) mining companies in the United States, is looking to raise $500 million in debt to buy Bitcoin and set up new Bitcoin miners. The Nasdaq-listed company officially announced Monday a private debt offering featuring a $500 million aggregate principal amount of its convertible senior notes. The company also expects to grant the initial purchasers an option to purchase up to an additional $75 million principal amount of notes after 13 days from the date the notes are first issued. “The notes will be senior, unsecured obligations of Marathon, will accrue interest …

Subsquid, a query node framework for Substrate-based blockchains, announced Thursday that it has closed a $3.8-million seed round led by Hypersphere Ventures. The company said that it expects to use this seed capital for developing the first blockchain indexing solution. The new data query technology, as per the announcement, will tap into a network of indexers and allow anyone to join and contribute data to Subsquid data users. While commenting on the successful seed closure, Subsquid’s technical founder, Dmitry Zhelezov, stated that: “We are looking forward to rolling out more functionalities in the coming weeks, allowing blockchain developers to harness …

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has teamed up with Solana Ventures to launch a new investment fund dedicated to Web3 and social projects, potentially setting the stage for the next wave of budding crypto startups. Ohanian announced Tuesday at the Breakpoint conference in Lisbon, Portugal that his Seven Seven Six venture firm and Solana Ventures have allocated $100 million to Web3 and “decentralized social projects.” In an accompanying news release, the internet entrepreneur touted his venture firm’s expertise in “identifying and investing in early social and crypto trends,” which include Reddit, Patreon and Coinbase, among others. Raj Gokal, the COO of …