Round Tripping

weekly recap of the crypto ecosystem featuring news, notes, tokens, charts & more

Apr 30, 2022

tl;dr: BTC and digital assets in 401(k)s, NFT tokens replacing meme coins, APE & GMT controlling flows, and broad adoption accelerates.

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news & funding:

Dragonfly Capital announces new $650M crypto fund
Joe McCann targeting a $1B raise for new crypto investment firm Asymmetric
OneFootball raises $300M to enable soccer clubs, players, and leagues to bring digital assets and fan experiences to blockchain
Venture Arm of crypto exchange Gate.io raising $200M for its second fund
0x Labs, DEX infrastructure provider, raises $70M
Argent, L2 supported wallet, raises $40M to expand NFT & gamefi support
Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund & Pantera lead $20M series A for Ondo Finance
OpenSea acquires NFT aggregator Gem as NFT marketplace battle heats up
Fidelity to allow 20% BTC allocation to 401(k)s, hope to launch in summer
Fireblocks adds support for Terra, institutions have since allocated ~$500M
Cogni, US neobank, raises $23M and confirms plans to launch multichain wallet and DeFi enabled savings account
Venly, wallet/NFT integration provider, raises $23M series A
Goldman Sachs offers first BTC backed loan

thoughts & notes:

NFT tokens

GCR @GiganticRebirth

Prediction NFT communities issue governance tokens [$PENGU] that accrue the benefits of mass adoption; this will inject tremendous liquidity to the projects giving both whales/ retails incentive to trade it; rn not liquid enough for whales, and priced out for retail $PENGU

As always, GCR is miles ahead of us all outlining what we’ve witnessed over the past month with regards to $APE. Liquid tokens attached to successful, well-branded NFTs significantly increases the surface area of available participants.
While the original collection size of BAYC was the standard 10k, the number of APE holders is currently at 65k. Of course, some the recent price appreciation and holder count is inflated with Yuga requiring 305 APE needed to purchase the forthcoming land sale but the ability to introduce liquidity for whales and lower entry pricing to retail is a powerful combination.
NFTs have been the most successful retail on-boarding mechanism and introducing liquid tokens to the established NFT brands will continue to push this trend forward while simultaneously injecting liquidity to the ecosystem.

Increasing Adoption

While markets have continued their slow grind down, institutional demand, interest, and broad adoption remain developing in the background.
Fidelity, 20M+ retirement accounts & $2.7 trillion AUM, announced they will support the ability for customers to allocate up to 20% of their 401(k) holdings to BTC. This is a massive development in creating access to digital assets, and Fidelity also confirmed they will expand the offering to ETH and other tokens.
Fireblocks, crypto service provider to institutions, announced their support for the Terra Ecosystem in response to “record breaking demand” from customers. Their customers “deployed more than $250M into Terra-based protocols within the first 72 hours of integration” and the amount of assets accessing Terra has grown to just shy of $500M.
In other general adoption news, we have Goldman offering their first BTC backed loan, Panama passing crypto friendly regulation, and The Central African Republic (CAR) approving BTC as legal tender.