Crypto funding: Metaverse, gaming and fintechs dominate $80M week

Eleven cryp­to star­tups raked in approx­i­mate­ly $80 mil­lion in new funds to expand prod­uct lines and start new projects. 

Ani­mo­ca Brands was the heav­i­est hit­ter, rais­ing $20 mil­lion via a new ordi­nary share offer­ing priced at A$4.50 ($2.90), accord­ing to a press release.

Blockchain tech­nol­o­gy ven­ture cap­i­tal firm CMCC Glob­al led the fundraise. Oth­er investors par­tic­i­pat­ed as well, includ­ing Kingsway Cap­i­tal, Lib­er­ty City Ven­tures, Game­Fi Ven­tures and others. 

Ani­mo­ca co-founder and exec­u­tive chair­man Yat Siu also per­son­al­ly invested. 

The fresh cap­i­tal will go toward an ongo­ing project called Moca­verse, an online mem­ber­ship-based plat­form that fea­tures a 8,888-strong NFT collection.

The next devel­op­ment for the meta­verse project will be the roll­out of Moca ID, anoth­er NFT col­lec­tion that’s non-trans­fer­able and will be used sole­ly to estab­lish people’s on-chain iden­ti­ty for access to exclu­sive expe­ri­ences. There will also be the oppor­tu­ni­ty to amass loy­al­ty points.

Blockchain financial services gain steam

French fin­tech Fip­to and finan­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny Flash­wire raised hefty sums this week.

Fip­to, based in Paris, took in $16 mil­lion and has been a reg­is­tered dig­i­tal asset ser­vice provider (DASP) in France since March 2023. It’s allowed to offer cryp­to asset exchange ser­vices and custody. 

The com­pa­ny main­ly serves com­pa­nies who want to man­age their dig­i­tal asset port­fo­lio and send cryp­to inter­na­tion­al­ly to oth­er busi­ness­es. Fip­to sup­ports bit­coin (BTC), ether (ETH), USD Coin (USDC), teth­er (USDT) and six oth­er cryptocurrencies. 

“Pay­ments in dig­i­tal cur­ren­cies make it pos­si­ble to sim­pli­fy inter­na­tion­al trans­ac­tions,” Fip­to CEO and co-founder Patrick Mol­lard said in a state­ment. “Tra­di­tion­al trans­ac­tions can take sev­er­al days to com­plete, are dif­fi­cult to trace and can be costly.”

Ser­e­na Cap­i­tal and Moti­er Ven­tures were the main investors in Fipto. 

On the oth­er hand, Flash­wire, is per­haps most rec­og­niz­able for its online bank­ing plat­form that gives access to cryp­to, raised $10 mil­lion in a series A fund­ing round. 

Leg­end Trad­ing, Cobo, GATE.io, VeChain, CyberX, Super­Chain Cap­i­tal, and oth­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed in the round. 

Flashwire’s oth­er prod­ucts include Stel­la Pay, a Visa-deb­it card that’s cryp­to-enabled and Anx­in Finance, a col­lat­er­al­ized cryp­to lend­ing plat­form exclu­sive­ly for insti­tu­tion­al clients.

After the fundraise, the com­pa­ny said it plans to hire more peo­ple, grow its prod­uct line, and enhance research and devel­op­ment capabilities. 

Other notable fundraises

• GamePhi­los raised $8 mil­lion in seed fund­ing from Xte­rio, Ani­mo­ca, and oth­ers to build a play-to-earn game called Age of Dino. 
• Myth­ic Pro­to­col closed an over­sub­scribed $6.5 mil­lion seed round led by Shi­ma Cap­i­tal and Alpha JWC to build a Web3-based shoot­er game called Rift­storm among oth­er offerings.
• Ethereum layer‑2 pro­to­col Lay­er N brought in $5 mil­lion from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and dao5.
• Cross-bor­der pay­ment solu­tion Par­al­lax raised $4.5 mil­lion from Drag­on­fly Cap­i­tal, Cir­cle Ven­tures and a num­ber of oth­er ven­ture cap­i­tal firms and angel investors. 
• Move­ment Labs locked down $3.4 mil­lion in pre-seed fund­ing and is also launch­ing a blockchain called M1 on Avalanche.
• Octav received a seed invest­ment worth $2.65 mil­lion to build a DeFi label­er to com­pete with the likes of Etherscan.
• Cryp­to trad­ing plat­form IMMIX emerged from stealth, clos­ing a $2.7 mil­lion seed round led by Mass­Mu­tu­al Ventures.
• Wal­let secu­ri­ty firm 0xPass raised $1.8 mil­lion in an effort to boost safe­ty for opt­ing for non-cus­to­di­al solutions.

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