PayPal and Visa are among several major investors to have participated in a $300 million funding for Blockchain Capital. In a release issued on Tuesday, Blockchain Capital announced that the close of its Blockchain Capital V LP. According to the release, Fund V, capped at $300 million was oversubscribed with numerous investors including college endowments, family offices, and pension funds participating in the capital raise. As part of the announcement, Blockchain Capital stated that PayPal, Visa, and some other Fund V investors will take part in the firm’s strategic partnership program. Blockchain Capital is one of the oldest blockchain-focused funds …

Frank McCourt, a billionaire real estate mogul and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is backing a new effort for a decentralized social media project based on blockchain technology. McCourt is investing $100 million into an attempt to reinvent the foundations of social media by building a publicly accessible database of people’s social connections on a blockchain, Bloomberg reported Sunday. “Project Liberty” aims to allow users to move records of their interactions between social media services instead of being locked into a few dominant applications. The project would use blockchain technology to construct a new internet infrastructure called the …

Cryptocurrency investment platform Amber Group has added $100 million to its coffers following a successful Series B fundraiser, bringing its total pre-money valuation to $1 billion — a major milestone for the firm as it enters its fourth year of operations. The cash injection will be used to “expand global operations to meet client demand and develop market solutions for the world’s leading crypto investors and companies,” co-founder and CEO Michael Wu said. Measures of trade volume and total assets under management showcase Amber Group’s significant growth over the past four years. The company now has over $1 billion in …

Blockchain intelligence platform TRM Labs has secured $14 million in Series A funding from venture funds across the crypto and technology sectors, sending a strong signal that major investors are backing digital-asset projects with ever-growing conviction. The venture capital arms of PayPal and Salesforce contributed to the raise, which was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, a VC with 130 IPOs under its belt. The full list of investors includes Initialized Capital, Jump Capital, Operator Partners, Blockchain Capital and executives from Google-parent Alphabet Inc. Ethan Kuzweil, a partner at Bessemer and new TRM board member, explained his firm’s rationale for leading …

Yield Guild Games, also known as YGG, has received the backing of several venture firms and angel investors as it embarks on a mission to expand its network and popularize the play-to-earn gaming model. The $4 million cash injection will be used to invest in nonfungible token, or NFT, assets of play-to-earn games, the company announced Wednesday. YGG describes itself as a decentralized gaming guild of players who generate yield from NFT-based games. Gabby Dizon, YGG’s co-founder, further explained the rationale behind the guild: “At its core, YGG is a community of play-to-earn gamers. Think of it as a massively …

Bitwise, a four-year-old crypto asset management firm, has closed a Series B funding round, raising $70 million in fresh capital from investors. According to a report by CNBC on Tuesday, major Wall Street figures such as billionaire investor and Bitcoin (BTC) proponent Stanley Druckenmiller and David McCormick, CEO of asset management giant Bridgewater Associates, participated in the funding. Commenting on the stellar cast of investors, CNBC quoted Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley stating that the company was keen to attract major Wall Street and crypto backers. Bitwise will reportedly utilize the newly raised funds to beef up its balance sheet as …

BitDAO, a new decentralized autonomous organization, is launching after a $230 million funding round led by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel. BitDAO announced its DAO launch on Tuesday in conjunction with completing a private sale from initial partners led by Thiel, Pantera Capital, Dragonfly Capital and Founders Fund. Other investors included billionaire hedge fund manager Alan Howard, Spartan Group, Jump Capital, Fenbushi and Kain Warwick of DeFi protocol Synthetix, among a total of more than 20 players in the decentralized finance industry. Bybit, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges, is a major initial proponent of BitDAO, pledging recurring …

Venture firms from across the blockchain industry have thrown their weight behind decentralized exchange developer dYdX, offering further evidence that investors are eyeing a further expansion of the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. The Series C round generated $65 million in direct funding for dYdX, with venture fund Paradigm leading the raise. HaskKey, Electric Capital, Delphi Digital and others also participated in the raise. The exchange also received direct support from eight liquidity providers, including Kronos Research, MGNR, Menai Financial Group, QCP Capital, CMS Holdings, CMT Digital, Sixtant and Finlink Capital. Past investors include Polychain Capital, Three Arrows Capital and Wintermute, …

Billionaire hedge fund manager Alan Howard continues backing the cryptocurrency industry with fresh investment in two digital asset startups. The co-founder of major asset manager Brevan Howard led a $25-million extension raise for London-based crypto services firm Copper.co. The company announced Friday that the new investment follows a $50-million Series B funding round led by companies such as Dawn Capital and Target Global. The additional funding will be directed to further strengthen Copper’s expertise in enabling traditional financial firms to benefit from blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. The firm stressed that the additional funding shows the growing interest in crypto from …

The network onboarding a large number of decentralized applications aims to hit one million users through 0x’s decentralized exchange liquidity aggregator API. In an announcement today, Polygon and 0x Labs said they would be committing $10.5 million via the 0xDAO towards securing decentralized finance infrastructure on the network through the support of developers and projects. The project said it anticipated “an influx of new DeFi projects onboarding into the 0x ecosystem” with initial support offered for Matchaxyz, Dexguru, Dexkit, MyCrypto, Set Protocol, Zapper.fi and Zerion. Last month, 0x released a Polygon version API for its decentralized exchange liquidity aggregator, opening …

Goldman Sachs has backed a $28 million Series A funding round for blockchain infrastructure firm Blockdaemon. The funding was led by Greenspring Associates and included participation from crypto lending firm BlockFi, and crypto-asset broker Voyager Digital Ltd, along with a $5 million investment from Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs is an American multinational investment bank with a net worth of $131 billion. The banking giant appears to be paying a significant amount of attention to crypto of late. In May the Goldma led a $15 million investment round in blockchain analytics firm Coin Metrics, and also launched Bitcoin derivatives trading for …

Impossible Finance, a Defi protocol built on Binance Smart Chain, has completed a $7 million seed funding round backed by over 125 institutional and angel investors — with the funds going towards the development of a multi chain DeFi incubator. The seed round was led by venture capital firm True Ventures, and quantitative investment firm Alameda Research, blockchain development firm Hashed and investment firm CMS Holdings. Impossible Finance was launched on BSC on April 9, and the protocol currently offers DeFi investors token swaps, liquidity pools, and staking rewards through the Impossible Finance (IF) token The new funding will go …