Traditional funding in the crypto space was once considered useless. After all, the industry itself offers different, controversial, but nonetheless, ways to fund a project – initial coin offering (ICO), initial exchange offering (IEO) and the current darlings of offerings – launchpads and initial decentralized exchange (DEX) offerings. But with the industry maturing and more startups wanting not only the capital but mentorship to build a working and valuable product, venture capital has emerged as one of the most attractive options. Cointelegraph talked to Li Rongbin, founding partner of SevenX, about why venture capital funding is the next big thing …

Singapore-based Blockchain Founders Fund has launched a new venture capital fund to support emerging projects in the cryptocurrency, metaverse and Web3 sectors, offering further evidence that investors are still keen to back major growth trends in the digital asset market. Blockchain Founders Fund II, also known as BFF II, has raised $75 million from various investors across the blockchain and crypto industry, including NEO Global Capital, Appworks, Baksh Capital, Octava and The Sandbox COO Sebastien Borget. BFF II has already deployed capital across 11 projects, including a layer-two derivatives exchange, several play-to-earn games and a DeFi protocol. BFF II is …

The wide world of crypto has always been made up of people who know a lot about money. After all, cryptocurrencies themselves are financial products. The paradigm-shifting elevator pitch of Web 3.0 has always been able to pique the interest of investors, and over the last couple of years, we’ve seen an extraordinary amount of money flowing freely into the industry. Those funds have come both in the form of direct investment — venture capital (VC) and now decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and indirect investment — institutional acquisition of cryptocurrencies driving token prices up and bolstering the crypto-based treasuries of …

Secret Network is offering $400 million in funding to grow its privacy-oriented ecosystem and expand user adoption. Secret Network is a decentralized ecosystem that utilizes trusted execution environments to enable private, secure computation over encrypted data. The ecosystem has four components: Secret Tokens, Secret Bridges, Secret Finance and Secret NFTs. According to a Jan. 19 announcement, the privacy-oriented platform is offering a $225 million ecosystem fund and a $175 million accelerator fund with support from 25 existing investors and partners, including BlockTower Capital, Arrington Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Outlier, Spartan Group, and Figment. The Founder of Secret Foundation Tor Bair told …

The nonfungible token marketplace Autograph co-founded by Super Bowl champion Tom Brady has announced it closed on a $170 million funding round. In a Wednesday announcement, Autograph said Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, and VC firm Kleiner Perkin co-led the $170-million Series B round with contributions from crypto investor Katie Haun’s firm, Nicole Quinn of Lightspeed Venture Partners, and San Francisco-based venture firm 01A. The company said it planned to use the funds to scale its NFT technology and hinted at a series of partnerships aimed at expanding its user base. In addition to the funding round, Haun, a16z general partner …

Web3 and social games publisher Carry1st has raised $20 million in Series A funding to further expand product development in Africa — a continent that could become the premier hub for the gaming industry over the next decade. The investment round was led by Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, which has been highly active in the blockchain space, with additional participation from Avenir and Google-parent Alphabet. Carry1st’s existing backers, including Riot Games, Konvoy Ventures, Raine Ventures and TTV Capital, also participated in the investment round. The cash injection will be used by Carry1st to expand its content portfolio, grow …

Hong Kong-based software and venture firm Animoca Brands has secured $358.8 million in capital investments to fuel new acquisitions in the nonfungible token (NFT), gaming and metaverse sectors, further cementing crypto’s biggest trends in 2022. The funding round was led by Liberty City Ventures and had participation from some of blockchain’s biggest venture funds, including 10T Holdings, Gemini Frontier Fund, ParaFi Capital, Provident, Sequoia China, and Winklevoss Capital, among several others. Animoca said the capital injection will go towards financing strategic acquisitions and investments, product development, and license acquisition for intellectual properties. The company said its vision is to create …

Blockchain investment firm CoinFund has appointed former United States commodities regulator Christopher Giancarlo as a strategic adviser — a move that should help the Brooklyn-based company navigate complex and ever-changing regulatory requirements in its home country. Often referred to as “Crypto Dad” by the blockchain community for his support of digital assets, Giancarlo was nominated as commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in 2014. In January 2017, he would become the agency’s acting chair before assuming the role full-time in August of the same year. He held the position until July 2019. CoinFund president Christopher Perkins described Giancarlo …

Fintech startup Seashell has raised $6 million in seed investments from some of crypto’s biggest venture funds and project founders as it seeks to build out an inflation-resistant finance app — a timely initiative as consumers struggle with the pressures of rising costs. The investment round was co-led by Khosla Ventures and Kindred Ventures, with additional participation from Robinhood co-founder Vlad Tenev, billionaire investor Mark Cuban, former U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair J. Christopher Giancarlo and Coinbase Ventures. The founders of crypto-focused projects Terra, Polygon, Avalanche and Solana were also among the investors. Seashell is launching a consumer app …

Binance Labs, the venture capital (VC) arm of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, announced Tuesday that it will contribute to Oasis Foundation’s $200 million ecosystem development fund, sending a strong signal that major investors were still keen to back emerging projects on alternative blockchain networks. With the investment, Binance Labs joins other prominent VC firms in supporting the Oasis Network, an alternative smart contract platform that intends to compete with Ethereum. As Cointelegraph reported in November, Oasis Foundation initially launched a $160 million development fund to lure promising startups to its blockchain. In addition to Binance Labs, other notable VC firms …

The nonfungible token (NFT) market is gaining momentum as the next frontier in collectibles, gaming and the metaverse. To accelerate this vision, OpenSea announced on Jan. 4 that it has secured $300 million in a Series C funding led by Coatue and Paradigm. OpenSea is a digital market based on the Wyvern Protocol, which is composed of custom-built Ethereum smart contracts that are expressly created for buying and selling unique digital assets. The marketplace was established in 2018. With the most recent investment, OpenSea's value has now surpassed $13.3 billion. Apart from Paradigm and Coatue, OpenSea noted that there were …

Digital asset curator Metaversal announced Tuesday that it has completed a $50 million funding round to further expand its investment capabilities in the nonfungible token (NFT) and metaverse sectors. The Series A funding round was co-led by investment firms CoinFund and Foxhaven, with additional participation from Collab+Currency, Dapper Labs, Digital Currency Group, Franklin Templeton, Rarible, Theta Blockchain Ventures, Galaxy Vision Hill and others. Metaversal said it will use the funding to expand its NFT-focused business, including acquiring high-profile digital collectibles and supporting projects that are being bootstrapped by its venture studio. The funding also enabled Metaversal to secure partnerships with …