Investors Love Sustainable Mining

This week twenty-seven crypto companies raised capital totaling $1.46 billion, more than half of which went to two miners, Crusoe Energy Systems and Bit Digital. Web3 came in second, bringing in over $226 million, followed by CeFi ($137 million), NFTs ($129 million), Infrastructure ($92 million), and DeFi ($20 million).

Additionally, four funds launched this week after raising a combined $610 million. Framework Ventures’ newest fund was the standout, raising $400 million for web3 gaming and DeFi investments.

Deal of The Week

Crusoe Energy Systems, a flared natural gas mining platform, raised a $350 million Series C round in addition to a $155 million credit facility. The Series C offering was led by G2 Venture Partners, a climate-focused venture capital firm with additional participation from Valor Equity Partners, Polychain Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, Winklevoss Capital, and Castle Island Ventures.

Why it’s important: Crusoe’s platform allows oil drilling operations to easily convert natural gas that’s normally “flared” or wasted into electricity to power crypto mining. The use of otherwise wasted energy for mining should go a long way to change the perception that Bitcoin and crypto broadly are net negatives for the environment. The company plans to use the proceeds to also develop a secondary platform, Crusoe Cloud, for powering modular data centers in partnership with chipmaker Nvidia.

Deals & Fundraising

• Rario, an NFT platform for cricket, raised a $120 million Series A round from Dream Capital and others. The partnership gives Rario access to Dream Sports’ 140 million user India-based fantasy sports platform.
• Spruce, a decentralized identity and data platform, raised a $34 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Other investors include Okta Ventures, SCB 10x, Robot Ventures, OrangeDao, Y Combinator, A.Capital Ventures, Third Kinda Venture Capital, Protocol Labs, SV Angel, and Gemini Frontier Fund.
• Bit Digital (BTBT), a publicly traded bitcoin miner, filed a prospectus with the SEC to raise up to $500 million in equity as an at-the-money offering. The offering can include ordinary shares, preferred shares, or warrants. If the offering were to be 100% ordinary shares it would create approximately 181.8 million new shares, increasing total outstanding shares by 241%.
• CoinDCX, an Indian crypto exchange, raised a $135 million Series D round at a $2.15 billion post-money valuation co-led by Steadview and Pantera with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Kingsway, DraperDragon, Republic Capital, and Kindred Ventures.
• Flipside Crypto, a blockchain data analytics company, raised a $50 million Series A round at a $350 million valuation led by Republic Capital with participation from Galaxy Digital, True Ventures, Terra, Dapper Labs, M13, Blockchain Coinvestors, Avon Ventures and others.  
• Aura Fat Projects Acquisition Corp., a blank check company (or SPAC), closed an IPO for $115 million. The company will focus its efforts on Southeast Asia searching for investment targets in web3, blockchain, digital ledger, e-gaming, and other emerging sectors.

Please see below for a full list of deals