Blockchain Insights — May 24th
Good morning readers! What a wild weekend for the industry as we head into the last full week of May. From Friday to this Monday morning, we went from preparing to celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day to WTF is happening to begin the cycle all over again with a ton of new momentum. Take a deep breath, grab your coffee/tea ☕ and let’s break it all down.
We’ll start with the fun and excitement. The industry celebrated Bitcoin Pizza Day 🍕 around the world on Saturday, May 22nd. Celebrations included reading Samantha Radocchia’s Bitcoin Pizza book, grabbing a slice of their favorite za, ordering a special edition pie from Anthony Pompliano’s Bitcoin Pizza company, or attending various meetups. Then things got…well, ugly.
The crypto markets saw an enormous pullback of double-digits across all assets, including Bitcoin and Etheruem. Charts were very red most of the day until early Monday morning, when things took a slight uptick. Some analysts said this was the expected correction we've been waiting while others were lost for words. Is the question outstanding is, have we reached the end of this bull market cycle, or is there more to come? My opinion is there’s a lot more to come in the second half. As always, do your own research before making any decisions.
Now let’s get to today’s movements. Starting us off is Galaxy Digital with yet another acquisition in the industry, its digital asset investment consulting group Vision Hill. Not more than a few weeks ago, Mike Novogratz and the team announced the mega-acquisition of custody provider BitGo. Both companies will provide Galaxy with a depth of tools and solutions for its growing institutional client base. We’ll keep an eye on what target may be next for them. Could it be a marketing intelligence or security and identity management platform?
Elon is in the news again, but this time with SpaceX and some positive news. It all begins with derivatives exchange, Opium and decentralized financial (DeFi) contract platform, UMA partnering to offer insurance and financial derivatives for hedging risks related to SpaceX flights 🚀. The solution will leverage Uma’s Optimistic Oracle DeFi product. I like this use case for the decentralized insurance industry. It’s a positive step forward for the category and opens a slew of opportunities in the industrial sectors, which we could see the same from soon.
Ark Invest bought $19,872,939 worth of bitcoin in the purchasing department, according to a filing with the SEC. Additionally, Ray Dalio publically stated, “I have some Bitcoin” to the world.
The ETF (exchange-traded fund) sector continues to expand the backlog of fillings in the U.S., with the latest being One River’s filing today for a Bitcoin carbon-friendly ETF.
On Friday, we receive a wild card dealt by the U.S. Federal Reserve who announced plans to release a whitepaper on issuing a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC). Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said that the CBDC would work alongside the current payments systems, including cash, rather than replacing them.
Visa stays in the spotlight as its crypto payments solution Gleec launched GleecDEX, a new decentralized trading application, which will let users exchange crypto and fiat currencies in partnership with Komodo.
Closing us out before funding news, data oracle Chainlink has joined the Hedera Governing Council, which oversees the distributed governance of the Hedera (Hashgraph) network. According to the announcement, Chainlink and Hedera will implement a series of initiatives aimed at helping traditional, centralized financial (CeFi) services and other organizations harness the distributed computational trust, visibility, and control offered by decentralized applications (DApps). This is an enormous move from both sides, and Chainlink joins others, including Boeing, Deutsche Telekom, DLA Piper, Eftpos, Google, and more.
New Venture Funds! 💸
Let’s talk about the massive amount of new venture funds launched last week looking to deploy throughout the blockchain landscape.
- Twin Apex Capital announced a $7M fund focused on blockchain & DeFi
- Beanie.VC announced a $5M fund focused on NFTs and DeFi
- White Star Capital announced a $50M digital asset fund
New Fundings! 💸
Congratulations to the following companies on their recent fundraises
- Unique Network ($4.3M), an NFT blockchain protocol
- MCDEX ($7M) a derivatives exchange
- Cryptocurrencies.AI, CCAI ($8M)
- Figure ($200M), blockchain mortgage firm
- Blocto ($8M), crypto wallet provider and Flow ecosystem partner
- Flux Protocol ($10.3M), DeFi data infrastructure company
- Realm ART ($2.25M) an NFT microverse platform
- Eco ($34.5M) a crypto & fintech wallet
- Solidus Labs ($20m, Series A), crypto market surveillance firm
- HaloDAO ($3.5M), a stablecoin marketplace protocol
- DAOSquare, an incubator for Web3
- Idexo, a blockchain integrator for apps (via SDK)
