Funding

Huobi Global launches $1B investment arm focused on DeFi and Web3

The bear market in crypto hasn’t deterred venture capital firms from investing heavily in blockchain and Web3 projects.

Digital asset exchange Huobi Global has spun out a new investment arm focused on decentralized finance (DeFi) and Web3 projects, further highlighting venture capital interest in the blockchain economy.

Dubbed Ivy Blocks, the new investment arm has over $1 billion in crypto assets under management to deploy, a spokesperson for Huobi confirmed. These funds have been earmarked for “identifying and investing in promising blockchain projects,” the company said.

In addition to financing, Ivy Blocks will offer various services to selected projects, including an asset management platform, a new blockchain incubator and a dedicated research arm. The firm’s asset management department will provide “liquidity investments” to help DeFi and Web3 projects get up and running, according to Lily Zhang, Huobi Global’s chief financial officer.

Ivy Blocks on Friday also announced that Capricorn Finance, an automated market maker built on the Cube blockchain, was the first project to receive funding.

The firm’s focus on DeFi comes at a time when the sector’s overall value has declined by more than half from its peak. When measured in total value locked, or TVL, the DeFi sector is currently worth just under $133 billion, according to industry data. DeFi TVL peaked north of $316 billion in December 2021.

*When measured in TVL, the DeFi sector is down 58% from its peak. Chart: DeFi Llama.*

DeFi’s woes are a symptom of the so-called crypto winter, which has swept the market since the start of 2022. Analysts say market-cleansing bear cycles are healthy because they usually follow “irrational” periods where asset prices are bid up recklessly.

Despite the downtrend, venture capital continues to flood the crypto scene, with investors prioritizing Web3 and metaverse plays. As reported by Cointelegraph Research, blockchain and crypto projects saw $14.6 billion in capital investments in the first quarter alone. To put that in perspective, venture capital investment in all of 2021 was roughly $30.5 billion.

‘Data DAO’ Delphia raises $60M Series A led by Multicoin Capital

Decentralized autonomous organizations continue to gain traction. In the case of Delphia, retail traders will be rewarded for contributing their personal data.

Algo-adviser startup Delphia has closed a $60 million investment round backed by some of crypto’s biggest venture funds as it embarks on the creation of a new data-focused decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

The Series A was led by crypto-focused venture firm Multicoin Capital, with additional participation from Ribbit Capital, FTX Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, FJ Labs, Lattice Ventures and Cumberland. Delphia will use the funds to launch a new rewards token as well as expand the ways users can contribute data to algorithmic models, which will be used to enhance investor returns.

According to Multicoin Capital co-founder Tushar Jain, data DAOs utilize user-owned data to benefit all contributors within the organization. As an Algo-adviser, Delphia will use data contributed by users to further enhance thetrading algorithms that directly manage their money.

0/ I’m excited to announce that Multicoin has led a $60M round in @delphia with participation from FTX Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Cumberland, Road Capital, and others.

Delphia is the first instantiation of a new type of organization uniquely enabled by Web3: a DataDAO.

— Tushar Jain (@TusharJain_) June 8, 2022

“Data contributors are rarely rewarded for their contributions […] Because they don’t have a right to the value created by the aggregate data, nor are they entitled to govern how their data is used, which leads to a massive leap of faith in the aggregator—which, unfortunately, has been violated many times over,” Jain explained. Data DAOs “solve this misalignment by giving data contributors direct economic upside in the aggregate data and the ability to govern it.”

Delphia’s investment platform offers long-only actively managed strategies. Users can invest a minimum of $10 to gain exposure to a diverse portfolio of individual stocks.

DAOs have sprung up in various ways to give users access to communities free of hierarchical management. DAO structures have even received the attention of national governments looking to encourage project formation and development within their own borders. Proponents believe that DAOs incentivize the long-term sustainability of crypto projects by giving users a direct share in their growth.

Indonesia-licensed crypto asset platform Pintu raises $113M in Series B

The latest $113 million fund injection will be redirected to scale the platform’s existing offerings, such as introducing new features and added support for blockchains.

Indonesian crypto asset platform Pintu announced the closure of a $113 million Series B funding round with participation by four prominent investors: Pantera Capital, Intudo Ventures, Lightspeed and Northstar Group.

Licensed by the Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency, or Bappebti, under the Ministry of Trade, Pintu caters to Indonesian crypto investors dealing in popular cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).

Bappepti previously highlighted that the number of Indonesian crypto investors in 2022 doubled from 2021, to which Jeth Soetoyo, founder and CEO of Pintu, said:

“We believe that crypto adoption in Indonesia is only in its beginning stages, and educating users on the fundamentals is critical to ensuring this growth continues in a healthy way.”

The latest $113 million fund injection will be redirected to scale the platform’s existing offerings, such as introducing new features and support for blockchains. The company also plans to add more tokens and launch new products to solidify its position in Indonesia further.

In the only two years since its inception, Pintu has launched numerous features on its mobile application that allow users to earn and stake their crypto holdings. In addition, a part of the Series B funding will be dedicated to Pintu Academy, an educational program for crypto traders that aims to spread awareness about the opportunities and risks of crypto investing.

As Cointelegraph recently pointed out, crypto investments in Indonesia saw considerable growth between 2020 and 2022, with 4% of the country’s population having invested in crypto.

Celebrity involvement in crypto seemingly fueled the adoption spree among Indonesian investors. In addition to the participation of popular stars such as Joe Taslim, Jessica Iskandar and Shandy Aulia, the Indonesian celebrity crypto scene witnessed numerous nonfungible token (NFT) launches.

Binance Labs’ $500M fund to catalyze crypto, Web3, blockchain adoption

Binance Labs plans to allocate the latest $500 million fund to projects across various stages — incubation, early-stage and late-stage growth.

Binance Labs, the investment arm of crypto giant Binance, launched a $500 million fund in partnership with global investors including DST Global Partners and Breyer Capital to drive innovation across the crypto, Web3 and blockchain landscape.

Binance Labs plans to allocate the latest $500 million fund to projects across various stages — incubation, early-stage and late-stage growth.

Sharing his take on accelerating the adoption of the crypto ecosystem, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO of Binance, revealed the importance of a connection between values, people and economies:

“The goal of the newly closed investment fund is to discover and support projects and founders with the potential to build and to lead Web3 across DeFi, NFTs, gaming, metaverse, social, and more.”

Binance Labs was established in 2018 and has since invested in and incubated more than 100 projects globally. Some of the prominent companies in its portfolio include 1inch, Axie Infinity, Dune Analytics, Elrond, Polygon and The Sandbox.

Fun fact, Binance Labs had also invested $3 million in Terra’s layer-0 blockchain back in 2018.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Binance Labs’ executive director of investments and M&A Ken Li said that there are 14 projects that are participating in the Season 4 of the Incubation Program and they will receive the first funding from the new fund.

The eligible startups are Grindery, NuLink Network, FilSwan and Starton from the infrastructure sector; CODA and OpenLeverage from the DeFi sector; CoralApp, AlterVerse Inc, ChapterX and Gamic Guild from the gaming and metaverse sector; Qwestive and Reveel from the SocialFi sector; Playbux (MyCashBack) and Ambrosia Finance from the crypto fintech sector.

Several former Binance executives led funding rounds in helping multi-strategy blockchain investment fund Old Fashion Research (OFR) invest in over 50 blockchain projects in just one year.

As Cointelegraph recently reported, the fund was founded by Ling Zhang, the former vice president of mergers and acquisitions and investments at Binance and Wayne Fu, former Binace head of corporate development.