London-based asset manager Fasanara Capital has launched a $350 million investment fund to back fintech and cryptocurrency startups that can deliver new use cases for the emerging Web3 economy. The company, which manages $3.5 billion in assets, is targeting early-stage startups in the fintech and crypto spheres. It plans to establish long-term relationships with project founders and other industry veterans. This includes potentially larger equity commitments than traditional venture capital firms. Founded in 2011, Fasanara Capital is a fintech investment firm increasingly specialized in digital assets and lending technologies. The company is regulated by the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority …

Cryptocurrency markets remain caught in a macro-based downtrend, with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) showing further signs of weakness at the end of April. But, venture capital activity in the crypto and blockchain sectors is the strongest it has ever been, offering further evidence that major investors are looking beyond immediate price action and ignoring divisive bull/bear narratives. The latest edition of VC Roundup highlights the growing excitement surrounding Web3 gaming, decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain infrastructure. bloXroute secures $70M from major investors Blockchain distribution network provider bloXroute has raised $70 million in funding to continue developing scalable infrastructure services …

If you’re looking at the price of Bitcoin (BTC), it’s hard to be bullish these days. The flagship cryptocurrency has once again broken below $40,000, with analysts foretelling of a much bigger decline in the weeks ahead. Unfortunately, many new investors forget to treat crypto as an exponential asset class and, therefore, let short-term price fluctuations weaken their conviction. Do you want to know who’s conviction in digital assets hasn’t waivered amid the latest downtrend? Venture capitalists (VCs), i.e., investors whose sole purpose is to uncover the most promising startups they think are poised for greatness. This week’s Crypto Biz …

Dragonfly Capital, a prominent venture capital corporation operating in the cryptocurrency sector, has announced its third funding round, valued at $650 million. The figure surpasses its two prior rounds of $100 million in October 2018 and $200 million in December 2020. The $650 million raise saw participation from Tiger Global, KKR, Sequoia China and Invesco, among others, and arrived at slightly higher than the $500 million initially declared to the Securities and Exchange Commission in a Form D filing in January. The introduction of Dragonfly Fund III was coupled with a pledge to distribute financial support to projects at seed …

The first quarter of 2022 saw unprecedented growth in terms of venture capital activity in different blockchain sectors. In 2021, venture capitalists poured in over $30 billion into infrastructure, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized finance (DeFi), centralized finance (CeFi) and Web3. That set the bar pretty high if 2022 was going to beat it. In the first quarter of 2022, capital inflows from venture capitalists were over $14.6 billion, or around 48% of all the capital investment by the last year. Over 500 individual deals were struck in the first three months of 2022 throughout the five major sectors listed above. …

Miami Tech Week took place last week in the South Florida city as part of the April Tech Month program, which also included NFT Miami and the Bitcoin 2022 conference earlier in the month. Tech Week kicked off with the eMerge Americas conference and the myriad of panel discussions scheduled throughout the city that followed. Cointelegraph gathered some key insights from thought leaders who participated, and the two main themes are Miami as a hot spot for crypto folks, and crypto as a disruptor of the investment landscape. eMerge Americas is a venture-backed organization with a mission to position Miami …

“Web3” used to be an empty industry buzzword that described the next iteration of the internet. In 2022, Web3 is still an annoying buzzword, but at least the blockchain community is trying to assign it real-world utility. This week’s Crypto Biz newsletter features several major funding rounds dedicated to building the Web3 economy. After reading through the stories, you can decide whether we’re actually getting closer to defining Web3. Oh, and remember all the buzz surrounding Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, or SPACs? A crypto-focused SPAC just closed an initial public offering on the Nasdaq, raising $115 million in the process. …

Ethereum scaling solution Polygon has launched a new network for Web3 development, pledging $100 million to early users who can help fast-track adoption. The Polygon Supernet chain gives developers the ability to build their projects in a customizable environment without hosting or operational costs, the company announced Friday. Developers will be able to deploy their projects on either a Supernet Sovereign Chain or Supernet Shared Security Chain — the former is managed by a single validator, which reduces maintenance costs, whereas the latter offers an easier path to decentralization with professional validators staking Polygon (MATIC) tokens to validate the network. …

Blockchain security firm CertiK has raised $60 million in funding from SoftBank Vision Fund II and Tiger Global, further cementing its unicorn status after raising a combined $290 million over nine months. The raise comes at a time when the blockchain community is leading growth around Web3 application development and creating new use cases for virtual ecosystems, especially in gaming, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized finance (DeFi). “When development moves at breakneck speed, mistakes happen,” CertiK’s vice president of marketing Monier Jalal explained to Cointelegraph in a written statement. He continued: “With current Web3 development, security most often is an …

Theoretical computer scientist and Columbia University professor Tim Roughgarden has been appointed the head of Andreessen Horowitz’s (a16z) new crypto research unit. Roughgarden’s resume includes more than three years as a professor of computer science at Columbia University in New York, along with a 14-year stint at Stanford. He has also served as a research partner at a16z since February last year. As one of the most active venture capital firms in crypto, a16z has funds reportedly worth around $9 billion. Partly guided by the firm’s new unit which was announced earlier today, Roughgarden has stated that its funding into …

Crypto-focused venture firm Framework Ventures has raised $400 million in new funding to invest in early-stage companies across the Web3, blockchain gaming and decentralized finance (DeFi) industries. "FVIII," as the fund is called, includes a $200 million allocation to blockchain gaming projects, the company confirmed Tuesday. Framework Ventures, which had early exposure to DeFi, now has over $1.4 billion in assets under management. The company was an early investor in projects such as Chainlink, Aave and The Graph. Like DeFi in 2020, gaming and Web3 have been identified as the next major growth plays for the blockchain industry. Axie Infinity …

Crypto exchange KuCoin’s venture capital arm and nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace have launched a $100 million “Creators Fund” to help bootstrap early-stage NFT projects at the intersection of art, sports and GameFi. KuCoin Ventures and the Windvane NFT marketplace have created the fund to help artists and creators showcase their work and scale their business to wider audiences, the companies announced Tuesday. The fund’s mandate is to support promising NFT projects that are contributing to the development of Web3, which refers to the next iteration of the internet powered by blockchain technology. Windvane is a new NFT marketplace from KuCoin …