Issue #10

Market Overview

As of the time of writing (Monday 5pm), the total market cap of the crypto asset market $US982B, up 1.3% from last week.

Below is the weekly performance of the top crypto and NFT assets. 

News Headline Highlights

• According to a recent SEC filing, NYDIG (New York Digital Investment Group) has raised $720 million from a total of 59 unnamed investors for its Institutional Bitcoin Fund. 
• Crypto ETP inflows defy market, attracting $397m of new investment in the first 3 quarters of 2022.
• Cboe has entered DeFi, adding 10 of their equity real-time market data feeds to the Pyth Network. Pyth is a Jump Trading Group-backed decentralised publisher of market data onto public blockchains.
• An SEC filing has revealed that Fidelity has launched an Ethereum Index Fund that has already attracted over $5m in sales.
• Crypto exchange FTX is partnering with Visa to simplify crypto payments for goods and services. By the end of the year, exchange users in LatAm and Europe will be able to acquire Visa cards linked to their FTX accounts.
• Gemini is integrating with Envestnet’s Tamarac platform to offer crypto managed accounts for 3,000+ investment advisors, who oversee more than $1.3 trillion in assets.
• Hamilton Lane announced plans to tokenise three of their investment funds to provide qualified US investors with direct access to equity, private credit and secondary transactions.

 Crypto Asset Project Updates

• MakerDAO, the world’s largest DeFi lending protocol and issuer of the 4th largest stablecoin (DAI), announced on Thursday a plan to invest $500 million in short-term US treasury bonds and investment-grade corporate bonds. Some within the DeFi community view the decision to invest in US bonds as incompatible with Maker’s decentralised mission.
• Binance Smart Chain was hacked in a bridge exploit that saw 2,000,000 BNB minted (>$600m). Binance responded by freezing the chain and rolling back the transactions to remove the additional supply that was added. However, before they were able to do so, the hacker had already moved ~$100m worth of assets off of the Binance Smart Chain (money which is still at large).
• RTFTK, the Nike acquired NFT company, teased the launch of Project Animus. Whilst little detail has been shared, it would appear holders of RTFTK's CloneX NFTs will be receiving 'eggs' which will hatch creatures in the next stage of the projects roadmap. 

The Weekly Deal Room

• Golden, a startup that seeks to build a decentralised data hub, raised $40 million in a Series B funding round led by a16z.
• Blockchain based gaming company, Horizon, raised $40m in Series A funding led by Brevan Howard and Morgan Creek Digital.
• Web3 banking platform, Juno, raised $18m in funding led by ParaFi Capital.
• Exponential raised $14m in seed funding, led by Paradigm, to build out their DeFi investment discovery and risk assessment platform.
• Blowfish, a firewall provider looking to help Web3 firms fight off the cyberattacks, raised $11.8m from Paradigm and others.
• Renewable Bitcoin mining operator, Aspen Creek Digital, raised $8m in Series A funding from Galaxy, Polychain Capital and others.
• Thirdwave, a blockchain gaming data service provider, raised over $7m in seed funding led by Framework Ventures.
• Scale3 Labs, a Web3 node infrastructure company, raised $5.3m in their seed round led by Redpoint Ventures.
• Lasso Labs, who are building a platform to make it easy to discover and create utility for digital assets like NFTs, raised $4.2m in an initial funding round led by Electric Capital.
• Decentralised music platform, StemsDAO, raised $4m in seed funding from musicians RAC, Boys Noize and others.

Metric of the Week

Q3 2022 was tough for nearly all global investments. Outside of bitcoin, only precious metals (gold miner stocks) and cash (3-month Treasury Bills) posted positive performance during the quarter. 

In saying this, Q2 was also a tough investment period globally, in which Bitcoin significantly underperformed most asset classes. 

Source: NYDIG