Bain Capital Ventures, Pomp Investments, Tiger Global, and partners of DST Global have led investors in a $350 million series D funding round for the crypto lending firm BlockFi, according to an announcement on March 11. The company indicated that with the addition of these funds, as well as $100 million raised via three earlier funding rounds in the last two years, BlockFi is now valued at $3 billion. The secured funds will reportedly be used to expand the crypto offerings at the firm, including a Bitcoin (BTC) rewards credit card and a Bitcoin trust. “In less than six months …

A venture DAO is taking on the heavyweights of the blockchain VC world with a community-driven venture capital protocol and accelerator. Stacker Ventures claims that the current landscape is often dominated by exclusive deals that see VCs get significantly greater value than mainstream investors. As well as delivering capital to early-stage projects, the platform is also going to provide the manpower and skills that startups need to succeed through its involved DAO participants. Stacker Ventures is backed by a line-up of renowned crypto venture capital firms — including Senary Blockchain Ventures, Supernova Fund and Fourth Revolution Capital — who are …

Crypto.com has launched a venture arm and has set aside $200 million to invest in promising cryptocurrency startups, as it seeks to expand its partnerships with entrepreneurs in the crypto and blockchain industry. Announced on March. 4, the new venture arm, named Crypto.com Capital, was launched to accelerate the growth of crypto startups, and to advance the growth of the industry in general, according to a press release. The $200 million fund will be used to invest in seed rounds for promising startups, with single investments poised to reach anywhere between $100,000 and $3 million. Investments in Series A funding …

Major cryptocurrency tax compliance startup TaxBit has raised $100 million as it expands into Europe. According to a March 3 blog post, TaxBit has secured the funds in Series A round led by Paradigm and Tiger Capital. Additional investors included PayPal’s venture arm, major industry firms like Coinbase and Winklevoss Capital, as well as individual investors like Bill Ackman, Ryan Smith, Anthony Pompliano and others. According to the announcement, the new investment round comes in response to the increasing global demand for crypto services amid the crypto industry’s parabolic surge to hit a $1.5 trillion market capitalization. “The importance of …

Sorare, a major blockchain-based soccer gaming platform, has raised $50 million from high-profile investors backing major companies like Twitter, Instagram and Discord. The fresh Series A round brings Sorare’s total funding to $60 million, the company told Cointelegraph on Thursday. The funding round was led by Benchmark, an investment giant famous for funding companies like Twitter, Uber and Snap. Accel Partners was another lead investor, known for backing companies like Facebook and Spotify. The round also included some additional investment from investors like Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, VaynerMedia CEO Gary Vaynerchuk and Barcelona striker Antoine Griezmann. With the new funding, …

Veteran cryptocurrency investor Polychain Capital has joined a funding round in DFX Finance, a new decentralized finance exchange protocol optimized for non-U.S. dollar stablecoins. DFX raised more than $5 million in seed funding from Polychain and True Ventures to create a new blockchain-powered market for stablecoins and open up DeFi applications to a global audience. Announcing the news Wednesday, DFX said that other investors included industry players like Hex Capital, CMS Holdings, Castle Island Ventures and DeFi Alliance. DFX is currently being developed by contributors from major crypto projects and firms like the Ethereum Foundation and ConsenSys. The platform is …

New Ethereum-backed stablecoin RAI hopes to be the savior of the DeFi sector by providing a truly decentralized stablecoin alternative. Developed by blockchain startup Reflexer Labs, RAI is not pegged to any fiat currency and its monetary policy is managed by an on-chain, autonomous controller. It's a fork of Maker's DAI. RAI co-founder Ameen Soleimani explained: “RAI is an asset backed only by ETH, governance-minimized, and programmed to maintain its own price stability without needing to peg to an external price reference like the USD.” Soleimani believes that RAI, which he dubbed “A Money God,” has far greate potential than …

The number of whale addresses holding Bitcoin (BTC) have hit a new all-time high, the latest data shows. This can be considered bullish, particularly as the price of BTC is showing staying power above $50,000. The increase in the number of whales indicate that high-net-worth investors are actively accumulating Bitcoin as the bull market continues. Why is the rising number of whales important? During bull cycles, the price of Bitcoin could be at risk of a severe sell-off if whales begin to sell or take profit on large positions. When this happens, it creates a massive downturn because the overleveraged …

Popular crypto wallet and data provider Blockchain.com announced on Wednesday that it has raised a $120-million funding round that follows its earlier Series B round for $40 million. Several notable macro investment funds joined the round, including Moore Strategic Ventures, Access Ventures, Rovida Advisors, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Google investment spin-off GV, Lakestar, Eldridge, Hayman Capital’s Kyle Bass and others. The funding will be used to bolster Blockchain.com’s growing Institutional Markets business. The company recently expanded its suite and began offering crypto custody, trade execution and lending services tailored for institutional investors. Blockchain.com’s main business was a multicryptocurrency wallet, which processed …

2021 is shaping up to be a generous year for cryptocurrency donations. On Wednesday, Coin Center, the leading cryptocurrency nonprofit in Washington, D.C., announced that it had raised millions in additional funding from high-profile names in the crypto industry. Jerry Brito, Coin Center’s executive director, tweeted that his organization had received enough donations to claim the $1 million in matched contributions from Grayscale Investments, the world’s largest crypto fund manager. Less than three weeks ago, Grayscale announced that it had donated $1 million to the advocacy group and pledged an additional $1 million in matched contributions. A few days later, …

Balancer Labs announced today a $5 million investment round led by DeFi (decentralized finance) mainstays Three Arrows Capital and DeFiance Capital. The two VCs now join Pantera Capital and Alameda Research in investing, bringing Balancer’s series A round to a total of $12 million raised. The investment might come as a surprise to some, given that in a recent podcast Arthur of DeFiance Capital gave a less-than-glowing review of Balancer as an automated market maker (AMM) relative to its peers: “It’s definitely one of the bigger mysteries in DeFi on why, despite the similar features, Balancer is behind Uniswap or …

IDEO, an American design and innovation consultancy firm, has filed for a new cryptocurrency fund through its blockchain-oriented venture capital subsidiary. IDEO CoLab Ventures, an early stage investment fund focused on blockchain development, has applied Tuesday for a new crypto fund with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC. Called “IDEO CoLab Crypto Fund II LP,” the new fund has a total offering amount of $100 million. The application was filed by IDEO CoLab managing director Joe Gerber. The SEC filing follows IDEO CoLab's announcement of a $21 million early-stage crypto fund from in October 2020. The new …