Burnt Finance is a crypto startup which, as a stunt, burnt a Banksy artwork and but then the NFT they’d minted for it for $400,000, double what it cost on the ‘normal’ open art market. Based on the idea that auctions for NFTs could be improved, it went on to raise $3 million for a […]
WTF is .xyz?
If you’ve visited a crypto company’s website recently, you’ve probably visited a URL ending in “.xyz” instead of its cheugier counterpart, .com. From fintech Block, formerly known as Square, to venture firm Paradigm, to blockchain startups like Mirror, .xyz has become the go-to URL ending for many web3 companies. But what does it mean, and […]
Crypto mayors on the rise
One mayor is certainly notable, and two mayors a pattern. But with more than three mayors on board the bitcoin bandwagon, it’s clearly a trend.
‘PayPal for Crypto’ wannabe Ramp raises $52.7M Series A round led by Balderton Capital
In the same way that PayPal and Stripe radically changed online payments by allowing any online service to embed payments, the race is on to have the same impact on crypto assets. To this end, players such as Wyre (raised $29.1M) and MoonPay (raised $555M) have risen to the fore. But in the Summer of […]
Watr launches ESG-oriented blockchain for commodities, partners with Algorand
With COP26 negotiations in full throw this week, the climate is probably the highest up the global agenda it’s ever been. And as the world slowly emerges from the global pandemic, more people are talking about re-writing the rules of trade, not just to unblock the clear inefficiencies made manifest by the Evergreen Suez-blocking debacle, […]
Productfy raises $16M to build the ‘Shopify of embedded finance’
Productfy Inc., a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform that aims to build “DeFi for traditional finance,” has raised $16 million in a Series A round of funding led by CM Ventures. Existing backers Point72 Ventures, 500 Startups and Envestnet | Yodlee also participated in the financing, which brings its total raised since its 2018 inception to nearly […]
Shooting for greater privacy in DeFi, Sienna Network launches SiennaSwap
The rise of privacy-oriented financial blockchain projects are going to be crucial if “DeFi” (decentralized finance) is to have any kind of future. We have come to expect privacy in our “normal” financial lives, so we will expect it in the blockchain and Crypto world, whatever some might claim. We saw murmurs of that starting […]
Ben Rubin explains why the Web3 era of social media will help everybody get paid
After a decade of a handful of social media companies trading what are essentially publishing tools in exchange for serving us all an endless deluge of ads, the winds of change are finally blowing.
Guardian owner invests in Unlock, an NFT protocol designed for subscriptions and memberships
Monetization for the creator economy continues to be a huge issue and opportunity, but creators mostly have to lock themselves into platforms like Patreon to realize their value. A better method would be to have a membership system for creators which sat across several platforms. Now, GMG Ventures (parent company of The Guardian newspaper) has […]
Crypto liquidity is ready to eat cross-border payments’ lunch
Traditional foreign exchange companies will need to change their revenue models, which currently rely heavily on transaction fees, or risk becoming obsolete.