White Star Capital Digital Asset Fund - newsletter #50
Take a look at our newest investment blurring the lines between the physical world and virtual world 🔮
Our investment in Exclusible and the trend of DAO investments
This week we announced our latest investment in Exclusible, a premium marketplace for digital collectible assets in the luxury sector. The platform enables a brand’s digital assets to be designed, minted and shared in a trusted environment. Buyers can purchase these digital assets directly from the brands when initially minted or on the marketplace in a secondary transaction. Buyers & holders can then withdraw their NFT from the platform and either store them in a non-custodial wallet or use those items in the metaverse. Check out their website here.
The latest trend in the crypto venture landscape is investing in a new type of entity called a DAO. We highlighted DAOs in a special report earlier this summer: White Star Capital’s Views on the DAO Economy.
Fred Wilson, founder and GP of Union Square Ventures, highlighted one of their recent DAO investments:
USV sent 500 ETH to the Bright Moments DAO and we got back one million Bright Moments DAO (BRT) tokens into our wallet. This is the third time USV has invested in a DAO and we will blog about the other two in the coming weeks. These are token transactions denominated in ETH and ERC-20 assets with no other paperwork. All governance is done inside the DAO (decentralized autonomous organization). In the case of Bright Moments, the DAO voted on our transaction over the weekend and approved it unanimously. This is a new world of business entity, governance, and a lot more that is exciting to USV and we plan to continue investing in it.
This is a completely new investment structure and is something we have been watching for some time. As mentioned in our DAO spotlight, “The strategy of venture capital is evolving beneath our feet at this very moment. The introduction of crypto networks and token-based projects has ushered in a new era for industry-defining businesses.” a16z has also been taking large bets in the space with their recent investment in Syndicate and interest in FWB.
We remain on the lookout for DAOs and DAO infrastructure as we are confident that over the coming years, DAOs will become as familiar to most as large corporations. By the end of this decade, a few will be as familiar to you as Facebook and Google are now.
🔦 White Star & Portfolio Spotlight
Announcing our newest investment: Exclusible
We’re happy to announce our investment alongside Tioga Capital, Indico Partners and other phenomenal investors in Exclusible’s €2.2m seed round!
Rally is trending on Product Hunt!
RLY holders approve social token platform’s decentralization plan
The proposal’s voters unanimously backed Rally’s plan to spawn a venture studio, an Asia-focused affiliate and other new entities.
ParaSwap brings DEX aggregation to the Avalanche Rush program
🏦 Enterprises & Institutions
Nomura offers customers token subscription service for a luxury Italian restaurant
Major Japanese financial firm Nomura announced on Friday a new blockchain token service to buy and trade food dishes at an upmarket Italian restaurant.
Budweiser buys beer.eth domain name for 30 ETH, rocket NFT for 8 ETH
Budweiser has changed its Twitter profile picture to that of a rocket designed by NFT platform Rocket Factory.
UTA signs NFT art projects CryptoPunks, Meebits and Autoglyphs
The agency will represent the crypto-art projects from Larva Labs for film, TV, video games, and publishing projects, becoming some of the first crypto-native IP to seek mainstream content deals.
⚖️ Government & Regulation
BIS and Hong Kong Monetary Authority to experiment with tokenized green bonds
The tokenized green bonds are the Bank of International Settlements Innovation Hub's first green finance project.
El Salvador approves $150m trust fund to support bitcoin ambitions
The finance commission of El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly has approved a $150m trust fund to support the country’s plan to make bitcoin legal tender.
China’s digital Yuan experiment expands to insurance, fund management
State-owned banks are exploring the use of the central bank digital currency in higher-value payments.
💰 Funding & Exits
DeFi analytics community UniWhales raises $2.2m for DAO transition
Signum Capital led the round along with HyperChain Capital, Faculty Capital, Impossible Finance and Double Peak Capital.
Solana’s Apricot Finance raises $4m
The round saw participation from Delphi Ventures, Lemniscap and other investment firms.
Paradigm leads $8m Series A into DeFi lending company Euler
The lead investor in the seed round, Lemniscap, also joined the Series A, along with Ethhub co-founder Anthony Sassano, Mythos Capital founder Ryan Sean Adams, Bankless co-founder David Hoffman, Synthetix founder Kain Warwick and Paradigm researcher Hasu.
Paradigm and Founders Fund lead $16m investment in 3LAU's NFT music platform Royal
Founded by electronic dance music artist and NFT proponent 3LAU, Royal gives fans the chance to ‘co-own’ music in the form of a digital asset — and potentially a way to earn royalties alongside artists.
Polkadot-based DeFi protocol Parallel Finance raises $22m in Series A funding
Polychain Capital led the round, with Lightspeed Venture Partners, Slow Ventures, Alameda Research, Blockchain Capital, CMT Digital, Blockchange Ventures, and others also participating.
Community investing DeFi project scores $20m raise
Venture capital firm a16z led the round, alongside an array of over 150 investors including celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Snoop Dogg, alongside investment firms like Coinbase Ventures and Bill Ackman’s Table Management.
Fox leads investment in blockchain tech firm Eluvio
Entertainment giant Fox has made a strategic investment in Eluvio to “accelerate the adoption of Eluvio’s blockchain/NFT platform” across the media and entertainment industry. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Fox said its investment marks the completion of Eluvio’s Series A round that values the company at $100m.
1inch Network is looking to raise Series B at a $2.25bn valuation
1inch is targeting a raise of $70m in this round.
'Vincent Van Dough' launches NFT fund with Three Arrows Capital founders
The fund, Starry Night Capital, will aim to raise $100m.
FTX.US acquires crypto derivatives exchange LedgerX
While the deal's financial terms have not been disclosed, LedgerX is a profitable entity and has raised around $35m in total funding to date.
NFT platform Hodl buys crypto-commerce firm CoinLinked for an undisclosed sum
HODL Assets is moving forward in its efforts to secure funding to fuel expansion of its operations.
🚀 Project Launches & Updates
Solana-based data oracle Pyth Network is going live
In other words, Pyth Network is launching on the Solana mainnet. Until now, the network has been available on the Solana devnet as a playground to test it. The mainnet launch will allow developers to integrate Pyth Network's "real-time" market data into decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.
Celo taps Aave, Curve, Sushi and more in $100m DeFi incentive program
The phone-focused proof-of-stake chain is betting big on user adoption in collaboration with Ethereum’s top DeFi platforms.
🔥 Other Bits We're Excited About
eToro’s Q2 crypto income soared by 23 times compared to last year
eToro’s crypto commissions grew to $264m in Q2 this year.
a16z answers critics with fresh disclosures on DeFi delegate program
a16z is calling for greater transparency about how influence is distributed by DeFi token holders.