Crypto Research

The biggest news in venture capital this week was the $1 billion private token sale with Terra, which we wrote about in more detail in our Crypto Weekly report. Other than the Terra private sale, Centralized Finance projects took home the bacon, raising $475 million across just three projects. Infrastructure investments raised $103 million mostly in early-stage, low price tag funding rounds. Three gaming / NFT projects received $13 million....

“Thy who controls the liquidity, controls the DeFi universe.” _- Anonymous DeFi Degen, 2022_ To those familiar with legacy finance, it comes as no surprise that it is a capital-intensive business. Banks rely on deposits to transfer value via withdrawals, remittances, and credit services. Stock brokerages use stocks held by one customer to enable short-selling by another. Insurance firms collect premiums from those insured to pay out claimants. DeFi is...

Markets continue to experience turbulence in the face of growing geopolitical tensions and full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine.We examine recent growth in spreads on major exchanges, highlighting a persistent low-liquidity environment.Option volumes point to the likelihood that many investors are maintaining long positions while hedging risk with derivatives.The market is already questioning the ability of the Fed to raise rates as indicated by a decline in projected rate hikes.We...

Walter Teng provides a brief overview of DeFi, decentralized finance, as it compares to traditional centralized financial systems. DECENTRALIZED FINANCE: A PRIMER

Infrastructure remained the hottest sector in crypto this week, with Helium’s $200 million raise as the stand-out. NFT/metaverse projects also remain of interest to investors broadly. The sub-category of DAO tooling is gaining more traction with RabbitHole’s $18 million raise. Like last week, DeFi was relatively inactive, with only a few deals closed focusing on derivatives and cross-chain liquidity. Active investors this week include Multicoin Capital, Tiger Global, Alameda Research, Polychain...