For all of the excitement pulsing through the so-called web3 space in the past year, most of the heartiest sums of investor dollars have seemed to find their way towards products touching users in the United States, but an increasing number of startups are looking to tap opportunities in developing nations where existing centralized financial […]
Justin Kan’s NFT platform suffers rocky debut as scammer makes off with $150K in user funds
Despite billions in VC investment, many web3 crypto platforms are still pretty hostile places for users new to the crypto world. Case in point, today Justin Kan’s NFT platform Fractal suffered a security breach when a scammer hacked the announcement bot for the startup’s Discord which sent out a fraudulent link to the platform’s more […]
Sound.xyz raises $5M from a16z to explore how Web3 can upend the economics of the music business
This year, we’ve seen plenty of evidence that NFTs can shake up the economics of selling visual art, but there’s been less activity when it comes to web3 upending the economics of different verticals in the art world, including music. Sound.xyz is a new startup looking to help recording artists monetize their community through NFTs, […]
Katie Haun is splitting off from a16z to launch her own crypto fund
Katie Haun, who co-led Andreessen Horowitz’s $2.2 billion crypto fund, is splitting off from the firm and taking a number of colleagues with her — including operating partner Rachael Horwitz — to start a new crypto-centric fund, Axios reports. Haun joined the firm in 2018 after a career as a federal prosecutor for the Justice […]
Long-time Lyft CFO departs to become CFO at NFT marketplace OpenSea
Lyft’s long-time CFO Brian Roberts, who took the company public, announced Monday that he was departing the rideshare company that he joined in 2014 to take the same role at NFT marketplace OpenSea. Roberts confirmed earlier reports in a Twitter post. The departure is another signal of how executives and engineers are migrating from the […]
Jack Dorsey dials in on his dream job — bitcoin missionary
Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review! Last week, we took a break from contextualization for some guides to consumption. This week, we’re looking at what’s happening in the mind of one Jack Dorsey. You can get this in your inbox from the newsletter page, and follow my tweets @lucasmtny. the big thing While […]
Coinbase acqui-hires team behind BRD crypto wallet
As crypto proponents look to onboard a new generation of users, one of the major consumer onramps has been a host of consumer wallet apps with slick interfaces. Today, Coinbase announced that it is bringing on the team from BRD — a crypto wallet startup that first launched its mobile wallet back in 2014. While […]
TabTrader raises $5.8M for a mobile app that aggregates crypto exchange data
As many of the top cryptocurrencies seem to temporarily stabilize near all-time highs, users looking to speculate on tokens that are a bit more volatile are searching across exchanges to find deals. Amsterdam-based startup TabTrader has been capitalizing on this search with a platform that aggregates prices and token availability across dozens of exchanges. While […]
NFT music rights startup Royal banks $55M investment led by a16z Crypto
Less than three months after announcing a $16 million seed round led by Founders Fund and Paradigm, NFT music rights startup Royal has raised another major bout of funding, banking a $55 million Series A from Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto investment arm. The startup partners with musicians and allows users to buy NFTs which represent collective […]
VR glove startup says Meta’s recently unveiled prototype is ‘substantively identical’ to their own device
Facebook, errr Meta, showed off a new prototype haptic feedback glove yesterday, which they detailed could eventually bring a new generation of AR/VR users closer than they’ve ever been to digital content. Today, a VR startup with that same mission called HaptX (which we’ve covered here before) released a fairly aggressive statement accusing Meta of […]