Electronic dance music producer and DJ Justin Blau, better known by his stage name 3LAU, has officially announced the launch of a blockchain-based music investment platform Royal. The announcement comes in conjunction with the platform raising $16 million in a seed funding round led by crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Forbes reported on Aug. 26. Founded by 3LAU and his college friend JD Ross, Royal is a new platform aiming to enable fractional music ownership through Royal’s own version of nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, referred to as limited digital assets. The venture intends to democratize access …

Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid has secured $120 million in debt financing from FTX Trading after suffering a nearly $100-million hack last week. Announcing the news Thursday, Liquid Group and FTX Trading — the owner and operator of crypto exchange FTX — said that the new funds will help Liquid improve its balance sheet and contribute to the exchange’s licensing opportunities in the key jurisdictions of Japan and Singapore. The new funding also targets new capital generation, increasing liquidity, as well as improving Liquid’s customer support, the announcement notes. FTX CEO and founder Sam Bankman-Fried said that the new financing underpins …

Nonfungible token protocol Alethea AI has closed a $16 million private token sale to build scalable infrastructure for the NFT market, highlighting once again the growing demand for digital collectibles. Billionaire investor Mark Cuban was among the backers of the Alethea AI token sale, which was co-led by Metapurse and Crypto.com Capital. Some of blockchain’s biggest venture funds participated in the sale, including Alameda Research, Multicoin, Galaxy Interactive, Dapper Labs, LD Capital, Gemini Frontier Fund, Borderless Capital and others. Individual investors included CoinShares’ Meltem Demirors and Haseeb Qureshi of Dragonfly Capital. The funding will go towards building “scalable AI infrastructure …

Filecoin (FIL) accumulated 65% gains over the past 30 days to reach its highest price since June 8. The recent strength was accelerated after an Aug.6 partnership with Chainlink's oracle protocol on Aug. 6 allowed the projects to join their grant initiatives to speed up the development of hybrid smart contracts to leverage code running on the blockchain while the managing data computation process off-chain. Numerous events triggered the $235 all-time-high on April 1, but that movement is clearly long gone because the cryptocurrency is 67% below that level. Let's take a moment to understand what triggered the rally and …

Blockchain fintech company XREX has concluded a $17 million pre-A investment round led by a consortium of global investors, underscoring heightened institutional demand for crypto-focused startups. The consortium was driven by CDIB Capital Group, a publicly traded company in Taiwan, and includes investors from major banks and venture capital firms in North America, Europe and Asia. Several other publicly listed companies also participated in the investment round, including SBI Investment, which is a subsidiary of SBI Holdings, ThreeD Capital, E.Sun Venture Capital and Systex Corporation. Black Marble, New Economy Ventures, Metaplanet Holdings, Seraph Group and the Taiwan government’s National Development …

EOS rallied in May after Block.one, a blockchain software firm, announced a $10-billion funding round to build an EOS-based crypto exchange platform called Bullish. The EOSIO development company revealed that it had raised capital from Peter Thiel and Mike Novogratz, as well as hedge fund managers Alan Howard and Louis Bacon. In light of the “bullish” news, the recent $6 local top stands 60% below the $15 high reached on May 12, and this leaves investors with little reason to celebrate. At the moment, retail traders are not comfortable using leverage for bullish positions, and professional traders have been neutral-to-optimistic …

MobileCoin, a crypto-focused digital payment ecosystem, announced Wednesday that it has concluded a $66 million funding round as part of a wider effort to bring more of its products and services to market. The Series B had participation from several leading venture funds from within the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry, including Alameda Research, BlockTower Capital and Coinbase Ventures. Berggruen Holdings, General Catalyst, Vy Capital and TIME Ventures also participated. Several entrepreneurs and investors also contributed to the funding round. MobileCoin said the funding will be used to further develop its core crypto offerings, including MOBot, which is described as the …

Blockchain security firm CertiK has concluded a $24-million-dollar funding round as part of its ongoing efforts to expand its product and security offerings for the decentralized finance, or DeFi, sector. The funding round, which was co-led by Tiger Global and GL Ventures, comes on the heels of the successful launch of Skynet Premium, an active monitoring platform for DeFi applications. Since its inception, Skynet has monitored over 2 million smart contract addresses and over 2 billion on-chain transactions. Related: Blockchain security firm CertiK raises $37M to combat DeFi and crypto risks CertiK claims to have served over 1,300 enterprise clients …

Popular social media platform Reddit has gained $4 billion in value since its last funding round earlier this year in February. Six months ago, the firm raised $250 million in Series E funding at a valuation of $6 billion. In the latest move, Reddit announced a Series F funding round on Thursday — which is being led by Fidelity Management and Research Company LLC and is expected to close at around $700 million with a post-money valuation of $10 billion. According to the New York Times, investment in the funding round has reached $410 million so far, with Reddit stating …

Already classified as a unicorn startup, United States-based cryptocurrency tax software developer TaxBit now has a valuation of more than $1.3 billion after a recent funding round. According to a Thursday announcement, IVP and Insight Partners led a $130 Series B funding round for TaxBit with participation from Bitcoin bull Anthony "Pomp" Pompliano, Tiger Global, Paradigm, 9Yards Capital, Sapphire Ventures and Madrona Venture Group. The company said it planned to use the funds — which bring its valuation to $1.33 billion — to scale its tax and accounting offerings system as well as open new offices in the United States …

Helium Network, a provider of decentralized wireless infrastructure, has concluded a $111 million token sale led by some of the biggest venture firms in the blockchain industry. The sale, which centered around Helium’s native token, HNT, was scooped up by several venture capital firms, including Andreessen Horowitz. Alameda Research, Multicoin Capital and Ribbit Capital also contributed, according to BNN Bloomberg. General partner at Andreessen Horowitz Ali Yahya told Bloomberg that new cryptocurrency protocols like Helium will “challenge centralized incumbents” and compete with bigger telecommunication service providers. Yahya tweeted Tuesday that his firm will work with Helium to create a "grassroots …

Luxembourg-based Blocktrade has become the latest cryptocurrency exchange to receive major backing from venture capitalists, offering further evidence that digital asset startups are becoming a prime target for investment funds. Private investors across 33 countries participated in the $25.8 million, or 22 million euros, Series A round, Blocktrade announced early Tuesday in Europe. The investors were not disclosed. Blocktrade said that the funding will go toward improving internal operations, especially in the areas of security, fiat onramps and market-making. The company also said it would allocate more resources to growing its potential user base, as well as pursue other business …