crypto recap 3/6 - 3/12
news, notes, funding, charts, and tweets summarizing the past week in crypto
as always, thanks for reading and you can follow me here
tl;dr; markets continue ranging and chopping you up, Neeraj told us for weeks the executive order was nothing to fear, Andre steps away from DeFi, BAYC owners buy the IP of Punks & Meebits, several multi-hundred million dollar crypto funds announced, ZK-tech is approaching its moment, and everyone wants a piece of the NFT stack. Let’s get to it.
coins summary (weekly +/-):
majors against BTC as of 8am Saturday morning
7d gainer highlights
Terra, Privacy Coins, Thorchain & Waves
Monero (XMR) & Zcash (ZEC) saw considerable gains this week as economic sanctions and state confiscations forced a reforming of the privacy narrative (correlates to the ZK enthusiasm we’ve seen as well)
$XMR +13% & $ZEC +~30%
for a deeper dive on privacy protocols read this foobar thread
Thorchain ($RUNE) & Waves ($WAVES) were two of the biggest gainers this week. $RUNE released ThorFi this week and users are anticipating Thorchain’s integration with $LUNA. $WAVES information is mostly from unverified sources currently but the common narratives pushing price seem to be Binance adding it as collateral and Waves being a Russia linked protocol with good on/off-ramps as their citizens exit fiat.
$RUNE +15% & $WAVES +45% along with +153% 14d
7d declines
Andre Coins
FTM and its ecosystem, Solidly, & Keep3r suffered large losses as he “closes the chapter” on DeFi development
$FTM -27%, $KP3R -33%, $SOLID -5% 7d but -80% 14d
Cosmos Ecosystem
after weeks of excitement leading up to the REKT Evmos airdrop and rollout, the protocol pushed back it’s release as they work through technical difficulties
$ATOM -10% & $OSMOS -8%
Anchor Protocol
while LUNA was pumping, the main protocol for supplying $UST with ~20% yields fell ~37% this week as users await the result of a controversial governance proposal and vote — $ANC -37%
funding & news:
Spartan Group closes $200M fund to invest in the metaverse, primarily focusing on protocols/games enabling in-game digital ownership
BAYC owner Yuga Labs acquires the rights to CryptoPunks & Meebits
Venture Firm Bessemer forms BessemerDAO and commits $250M to Web3 initiatives in “consumer DeFi, infrastructure, and other enabling technologies”
Avalanche Foundation ($AVAX) launches $290M (4M $AVAX tokens) incentive program to boost development for their subnets — DeFi Kingdoms ($JEWEL) to receive the first subnet incentive with rewards in $JEWEL, $CRYSTAL, $AVAX
Espresso raise and announcement of new ZK L1 protocol — raised $32M
Immutable X ($IMX), ETH ZK scaling solution, raises $200M @ $2.5B valuation
Argent, ETH DeFi mobile wallet, launches zkSync L2 scaling wallet with over 500k on waitlist
Bain Capital Ventures launches $560M crypto fund — Frank fills us in on the details of how they plan to deploy that capital here.
WalletConnect raises $11M to build native wallet-to-wallet communication
Curated raises $30M+ as “an NFT asset fund designed to collect the top assets and support the NFT community at large”
Tomorrowland partners with FTX for NFTs and web3 feature integrations
Stripe, global payments powerhouse, now supports crypto businesses including exchanges, on-ramps, wallets, and NFT marketplaces
StarkWare, ETH ZK scaling solution, reportedly raising $100M @ $6B valuation
Cega raises $4.3M to build DeFi derivatives; valuation @ $60M
The Sandbox and World of Women NFT partner to form $25M alliance for the WoW foundation and collaborations inside The Sandbox ($SAND)
Lunar, Nordic neobank, raises $77M @ $2B valuation and launches their crypto trading platform with access to BTC, ETH, DOGE, ADA, & DOT
DraftKings taps Zero Hash for technical implementation to become Polygon validator; DraftKings currently uses Polygon for its NFT marketplace
Cake DeFi launches $100M venture arm to accelerate web3 & gaming
SoftBank’s internet arm, Z Holdings, plans to launch NFT marketplace this year
LimeWire, yes that LimeWire, rebrands to NFT marketplace for music NFTs and other collectibles from musicians
Okcoin, crypto exchange, and Stacks partner to launch $165M commitment to advance BTC adoption
Upstream, no-code platform for launching DAOs, raises $12.5M series A
Yoon Suk-Yeol wins South Korean presidential election after campaigning on promises to deregulate South Korea’s crypto industry
thoughts & notes:
ZK Tech Stays Hot
Announcements from Immutable X, StarkWare, Argent, and Espresso totaling a combined $323M of capital into the ZK sector this week. Stay tuned for a further dive into the current ZK protocols and developments of the past few months with an article I’ll be sending out on Tuesday.
Everyone Wants NFT Pie
In the midst of the NFT volumes sinking and liquidity slowly drying up, companies and funds race to integrate NFTs. SoftBank and LimeWire are launching NFT marketplaces, Stripe enables NFT marketplace (and crypto broadly) payment solutions, DraftKings becomes a Polygon validator securing their marketplace, Tomorrowland partners with FTX, and Curated launches a NFT fund.
BAYC owners Yuga Labs acquire CryptoPunks/Meebits signaling the beginning of NFT M&A that will have ripple effects for years to come.
Funding Remains Market Agnostic
Amongst market chop, inflation & rate hike fears, and global uncertainty, this is one of the largest funding and news weeks I can remember. Investors in the crypto ecosystem are placing their convicted bets that everything in the short term is noise and crypto in the mid to long term is inevitable.
Highlighted raises included above: Bain Capital $560M, Spartan $200M, Bessemer $250M, $AVAX foundation $290M, Immutable X $200M, StarkWare $100M, Okcoin/Stacks $165M, Lunar $77M, and numerous other tens of millions listed above. Overall total approaching ~$2 billion
around the ecosystem:
Jon with another great NoSleep Reading List
Darren Lau supplies currently interesting protocols and crypto developments
Ryan Selkis breaking down the executive order passed this week
Ryan Watkins with a thought provoking thread around BTC and ETH taking different paths to potential reserve currency status
Travis Kling threads his thoughts on the current market and risks
thenftedge on the current NFT macro cycle
An insane The Verge story on the world’s most interesting man Justin Sun
tweets of the week:
