Galaxy Digital Raises $100 Million for Cryptocurrency Startups
Galaxy Digital has raised $100 million capital to invest in cryptocurrency startups. A recent report revealed that the VC wing of Galaxy Digital is working in tandem with other VCs that are seeking new investment opportunities in the blockchain sector.
Fundraising for Digital Asset Startups
Mike Novogratz noticed that Galaxy Digital will reportedly start raising $100 million venture fund that will target digital asset startups.
The capital raised for the fund is contributed by other investors. Galaxy Digital’s VC arm namely Galaxy Ventures utilizes company money for investments but intends to open Galaxy Venture Fund to other VCs last year.
An insider working for the firm briefed Bloomberg regarding the matter on 4th April, 2024. The minimum investment to go into the startup is set at $1 million according to the source.
The fund is going to assist Galaxy Ventures to fuel its digital asset ecosystem by backing early-stage firms. Galaxy Ventures is planning to invest in various crypto startups to include a $2.7 million in February round for a project called Citrea.
This project aims at integrating zero-knowledge rollups or ZK-rollups to Bitcoin. Galaxy has raised and contributed to various other funds.
Crypto VCs Surged by 50%
The report indicated that venture funding has made a major comeback in the cryptocurrency sector since last year. As per Cointelegraph statistics, crypto VC funding increased by 50% on a month-on-month scale reaching $1.16 billion across 180 public investments. This figure is the highest monthly funding since April 2022. Para is another firm that has set a target to raise $850 million funding.
In the same manner, Hack VC is working on raising $150 million to back up various crypto startups. Meanwhile, Andreessen Horowitz has dedicated $30 million for Web 3.0 gaming projects.
The venture money has arrived with the ascent of Bitcoin ETFs in the United States earlier this year. These ETF listings led to massive capital inflows in Bitcoin leading to a price rally with the digital asset gaining 50% in value on year-to-date scale.
Bitcoin raised the value of the rest of the market with it. The total market cap at the start of 2024 was $1.7 trillion and it has now blossomed into $2.61 trillion with an aim to retake the previous ATH of $3 trillion as per CoinGecko data projections.
In other VeThor protocol reached $283 million on 12th April citing an important landmark. To commemorate the special event, the VeChain Foundation signed a $100 million sponsorship deal with UFC.
VeChain Introduces Tokenized Gloves in Association with UFC
As per Cointelegraph article, these gloves contain an NFC chip to record and report fighting data and send to blockchain for verification. On this account, all the gloves worn by UFC fighters will be tokenized and the identity of these gloves will be recorded on the VeThor network. These gloves include near-field communication chops.
After the fight athletes will be able to donate or giveaway their gloves or add them as a collector’s item. The buyers will be able to ensure that true identity and usage of these gloves in fights and track them back to the real fighter using on-chain fight data.
VeChain officials have noticed that this system will prevent fraud and new items will use different aspects of VeChain ToolChain which is a supply chain management network to track items and ensure that they are the actual recipients.
The protocol noticed that a set of 12 gloves will be gifted to A-list celebrities including Joe Rogan. Some of the VeChainThor or VTHO investors expressed optimism about the product noticing that it will serve as a utility to mint Real-World Assets (RWAs) gloves as NFTs for all UFC events.
Another social media user remarked that Gloves and merchandise tracking is a wonderful idea. The user further stated that it would be best to have QR code scanning that is synched with VTHO token burning during live TV telecast.
