#424
Fortune Favors The Ape

Published:

Feb 12, 2022


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Published:

Feb 12, 2022


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If Fintech is Culture, count crypto and web3 as today’s purest embodiment of this zeitgeist.

That much will be on full display this Sunday as the world gets its annual dose of American Football and unapologetic consumerism; this year with an added side of crypto and sports betting encouragement to boot. Estimates suggest bettors will place more than $7b worth of wagers on this year’s Super Bowl, up nearly 80% since last year. Elsewhere, tens of millions will be spent by crypto companies in advertisements in an attempt to woo new users into digital assets.

Some suggest this year’s ‘Money Bowl’ is emblematic of a broader class of consumers that are turning to speculation as a hobby: a swath of consumer that skews towards young males and cuts between someone likely to purchase digital collectibles and NFTs, gamble on the opening Super Bowl coin toss, and trade cryptocurrencies and options on memes stocks. The effects of the financialization of everything and an expression of finance for entertainment.

But there’s something deeper afoot as well. Beyond the calls of brevity to join crypto and make it rain from sports wagers, you’ll notice Sunday that there’s a more subtle call to action stemming from brands — both corporate and celebrities alike — that want to appeal to a different emergent demographic than money hobbyists entirely. One that skews digital first. New data released this week from New Consumer — a publication about how and why people spend their money — finds that GenZ and Millenials are the first generations to feel most like their authentic selves in an online, digital first context.

Whether that’s Bud Light partnering with a DAO for its advertisement, Bored Apes making an appearance during the halftime show (odds are currently going for -400), or players in the game with performance bonuses paid in bitcoin on the line, brands of all shapes and sizes are fighting for relevance in a growing digital first world. Tomorrow’s money and financial services will be no different, and is already leading many in fintech to appreciate the ‘CAC hack’ that crypto as a wedge into younger demographics can provide.

So enjoy the game and the apes, but most importantly remember: no matter who wins, WAGMI.

Portfolio News


Tiger Global just led a $12m Series A into Devron, an AI fintech startup launched by a former CIA agent - Congratulations to portfolio company Devron on this latest round of financing! Devron allows firms to pull together data from across an organization that might be difficult to otherwise combine - and Kartik Chopra, Devron's founder and CEO, is no stranger to wrangling data across different systems. As a former CIA intelligence officer targeting adversarial technologies in Russia and China, Chopra spent years pouring over large sets of transactional data to sniff out malicious activity, bad actors, and fraud. Read more

NYDIG named in Forbes Blockchain 50 list for 2022 - Congrats to portfolio company NYDIG for being named on the third annual Forbes 50 list. Nearly half of the Blockchain 50 are based outside the United States; 14% are Chinese. New this year: venture capital firms, which as a group invested more than $32b in the sector in 2021. Read more

Fortune Favors The Ape


The internet turned “money” into a hobby - There has never been a more opportune time to have “money” as a hobby. Options trading, once the provenance of professional financiers, has soared with the rise of stock trading platforms like Robinhood, which makes it extraordinarily easy to buy and sell individual stocks. Stories of artists making hundreds of thousands on NFTs of their work and of cryptocurrency enthusiasts making bank buying and selling them have abounded over the past year. Read more

Sports gamblers expected to wager a record $7.6b on Super Bowl LVI - According to a new report by the American Gaming Association, 31.4m Americans plan to bet on Super Bowl LVI, a 35% increase from 2021. Bettors will wager an estimated $7.61b, up 78% from last year - in part due to 10 more states launching legal sports betting since last year, plus New York launching its mobile sports betting program, which hit a national monthly handle record of $1.6b in January. Read more

Bengals, Rams and Bitcoin: Crypto ads invade the Super Bowl - Advertising during the gridiron matchup remains the priciest on television: Thirty seconds of NBC airtime can cost up to $7m. As such, Super Bowl ads often highlight industries with cash to burn. In the past, ads for internet companies and erectile dysfunction flooded the airwaves. Now it is crypto exchanges hoping to become nationally known. Read more

Bud Light partners with Nouns DAO for its upcoming Super Bowl ad - Bud Light expects that the partnership will help the beer brand further authenticate itself in the NFT space. As part of the partnership, Nouns has gifted Bud Light NEXT with a Nouns NFT in exchange for the famous Nouns glasses to be featured in the Super Bowl commercial. Read more

Industry News


US officials seize $3.6b in Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex hack - Agents arrested two individuals, married couple Ilya "Dutch" Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, in New York on this week on charges they conspired to launder proceeds from the Bitfinex hack in 2016. The DOJ release alleges the two conspired to launder these proceeds and heavily implies, but does not claim, they were the original hacker(s). Read more

Apple announces a way to buy stuff by tapping iPhones together - The new Tap to Pay feature effectively turns iPhones into point-of-sale terminals without additional hardware. Apple said that Stripe would be the first payment operator to offer the service, and that it would be integrated into Shopify’s point-of-sale product. Read more

Binance, led by the world’s richest crypto billionaire, is taking a $200m stake in Forbes - The move shows the increasing real-world influence of the crypto sector, which has seen surging valuations and minted a new class of billionaires amid global interest in digital assets. While crypto companies have gone public, affixed their names to sports arenas and flooded airwaves with celebrity endorsements, this is the sector’s first big investment in a traditional U.S. media property. Read more

Connecting with small shareholders remains a challenge for companies - Executives are turning to new methods, such as tools that analyze reams of data and social-media platforms, to determine just who their small investors are and how to reach them, while also using traditional approaches like shareholder letters and meetings. But with individual investors growing in number and scattered across the country or even the world, connecting with them can be much more difficult than communicating with institutional investors. Read more

Crypto’s aspiring Washington kingmaker - Cryptocurrency exchange FTX is grabbing headlines for an upcoming Super Bowl ad campaign and a Tom Brady endorsement deal, a sign of the digital currency industry’s increasingly mainstream ambitions. But the company’s executives are quietly emerging as crypto kingmakers in the nation’s capital as they spend millions to launch super PACs, bankroll congressional campaigns and recruit former government officials with an inside track on looming crypto regulations. Read more

Credit Suisse securitizes yacht loans to oligarchs and tycoons - The Swiss lender quietly sold on a slice of the risk related to $2b of its “ultra-high-net-worth” client loans at the end of 2021. The securitization of the portfolio of loans to tycoons and oligarchs backed by their “jets, yachts, real estate and/or financial assets” was made by a unit of the bank that has previously been plagued with sanctions-related issues. Read more

A Florida home to be auctioned as an NFT has attracted more than 7,000 potential bidders - The Gulfport, Fla., house will be auctioned on Thursday, with a starting price of $650,000, through a partnership between real estate companies Propy and Heckler Realty. The winning bidder will get an NFT, a digital token that, in this case, will record that person’s ownership of a limited liability company on an online ledger. The LLC’s only asset is the house. Read more

Betterment enters the cryptocurrency market by acquiring Makara - Rather than having users individually pick the coins they want to invest in, Makara offers up “baskets” or indexes of vetted cryptocurrencies and does the work behind the scenes of rebalancing assets and shifting to currencies its algorithms recommend. The acquisition will provide consumers and financial advisors the ability to invest in expert-built, diversified crypto portfolios alongside their existing investments, through an easy-to-use customer experience. Read more

American Express launches its first all-digital consumer checking account - The new offering, American Express Rewards Checking, is currently available for eligible U.S. Consumer Card Members. The launch comes as the emergence of digital banking services is causing traditional banks to enhance their digital strategies and offer more competitive banking offerings. Read more

Messenger’s ‘Split Payments’ feature is rolling out to all users in the US - The company began testing the feature late last year as a way for users to share the cost of bills and expenses through the app. Meta sees the new feature as a “free and fast” way to handle finances through Messenger. Read more

Europe fintech giant Klarna considers raising fresh funds - The Stockholm based company is likely to attract sovereign wealth and pension funds as new investors, and could potentially fetch a valuation of roughly $50b to $60b based on preliminary estimates. Read more

Major crypto firms and groups form coalition aimed at promoting 'market integrity' - In an announcement this week, market surveillance firm Solidus Labs and exchanges including Bitstamp, Coinbase, BitMEX and CrossTower said they would be launching the Crypto Market Integrity Coalition, or CMIC, asking all other companies involved in the crypto space to follow their example. According to the CMIC, members must pledge to encourage “a fair digital asset marketplace to combat market abuse and manipulation and promote public and regulatory confidence” in crypto. Read more

Top Latin American exchange Bitso officially expands to Colombia - Founded in 2014 in Mexico, Bitso is now officially present in Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador and Colombia. Read more

Select Financings


Alchemy - San Francisco based blockchain infrastructure company raised $200m in Series C funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Silver Lake. Read more

Aleo - Reno based private application building platform raised $200m in Series B funding led by Kora and SoftBank Vision Fund. Read more

Alma - France based BNPL startup raised €115m in Series C funding from investors including Tencent, GR Capital, Roosh Ventures, Cathay Innovation, Eurazeo, Bpifrance, Seaya Ventures and Picus Capital. Read more

Brick - Singapore based provider of a suite of APIs that connects financial apps to “hyper-local” sources of data raised $10m in Seed funding led by Flourish Ventures and Antler. Read more

Clikalia - Madrid based iBuyer active in Spain and Mexico raised €75m in growth funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Fifth Wall. Read more

Compute North - Minnesota based bitcoin mining infrastructure firm raised $85m in Series C funding led by Mercuria and Generate Capital. Read more

Daffy Charitable - Los Altos based non-profit community for donations and giving raised $17.1m in Series A funding led by Ribbit Capital. Read more

EasyKnock - New York based residential sale-leaseback platform raised $57.2m in new funding from Blumberg Capital, Gaingels, Moderne Ventures, QED Investors and Viola FinTech. Read more

ElasticRun - India based e-commerce and working capital platform for small shops raised $300m in Series E funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Read more

FNZ - New Zealand based wealth management tech platform raised $1.4b in growth funding from Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Motive Partners. Read more

GoCardless - London based account-to-account payments platform raised $312m in Series G funding led by Permira. Read more

Happy Money - California based unsecured lending startup raised $50m in Series D financing led by Anthemis Group and CMFG Ventures. Read more

LoanStreet - New York based platform for sharing, managing, and analyzing loans raised $25m in Series B funding led by Portage Ventures. Read more

Midas - Turkey based investing startup raised $11m in Seed funding led by Spark Capital and Earlybird. Read more

Neo.Tax - Mountain View based business tax startup raised $10m in Series A funding led by Infinity Ventures. Read more

OpenNode - Los Angeles based Bitcoin payment processor and infrastructure provider raised $20m in Series A funding led by Kingsway. Read more

Polygon - India based Ethereum scaling startup raised $450m in funding via a token sale led by Sequoia Capital. Read more

Qredo - London based crypto infrastructure developer raised $80m in Series A funding led by 10T Holdings. Read more

Rewire - Tel Aviv based digital mobile banking platform for facilitating cash remittances raised $25m in Series B funding led by OurCrowd. Read more

Rift Finance - New York based decentralized protocol for DAOs raised $18m in funding led by Pantera Capital. Read more

Sardine - San Francisco based fraud and compliance platform for fintech companies raised $19.5m in Series A funding led by a16z. Read more

Selina - London based Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) lender raised $35m in Series B funding led by Lightrock. Read more

Seyna - Paris based insurance platform raised €33m in Series A funding led by White Star Capital and Elaia Partners. Read more

Streetbeat - Palo Alto based investing app for stocks and cryptocurrencies raised $10m in Seed funding led by TTV Capital. Read more

Taxfyle - Miami based online tax filing platform raised $20m in Series B funding led by Fuel Venture Capital and IDC Ventures. Read more

Thndr - Egypt based investing app raised $20m in Series A funding led by Tiger Global, BECO Capital and Prosus Ventures. Read more

Tonik - Philippines based neobank raised $131m in Series B funding led by Mizuho Bank. Read more

Vitesse PSP - UK based payment, liquidity, and treasury management platform raised $26m in Series B funding led by Prime Ventures. Read more

Vivid Money - Berlin based challenger bank raised $114m in growth funding led by Greenoaks Capital. Read more


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