This Week On The Brink with Castle Island Ventures
Castle Island Content
Ria penned a blog this week, "Reviving Trust in Crypto".
This morning on the podcast Nic and Matt discussed the top stories of the week.
You can see all of our episodes on our podcast website and you can listen on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Google.
Market Movements
As of the time of this writing, the total implied market value of all cryptoassets sits at $903 billion, up +10.4% on the week.
Below is the current standing of the top cryptoassets:
Chart powered by Messari
Deals and Fundraising
From the CIV portfolio: Alkimiya, a capital markets protocol for hedging, raised $7.2 million from Castle Island Ventures, 1kx, Circle, Coinbase and Dragonfly.
CyberX, a crypto market making firm, raised $15 million from Foresight Ventures.
Fanatics has sold its 60% stake in Candy Digital, an NFT company, to a group led by Galaxy Digital.
Quasar, a Cosmos based DeFi protocol, raised $5.4 million from Shima Capital, Polychain, Blockchain Capital and others.
C14, a crypto payments company, raised $2.5 million from General Catalyst.
News
FTX Crime Family News
Nishad Singh, the third FTX co-founder, reportedly met with the SDNY in a proffer session.
The SEC is reportedly investigating venture funds who invested in FTX over their due diligence practices.
FTX debtors and the Bahamas announced a cooperation agreement.
FTX announced that it has recovered over $5 billion in assets thus far.
The WSJ has more details on the FTX investment in Genesis Digital Assets, the mining company (not the DCG affiliate). Apparently $500 million of the $1.1 billion investment was a secondary that went to the two Kazakh founders. Hmmm, okay.
The standoff between DCG and Gemini escalated this week with Cameron Winklevoss writing an open letter demanding that the DCG board terminate Barry Silbert. DCG replied with their open letter and set of FAQs.
As this newsletter was about to go to print, the SEC announced charges against both Genesis and Gemini related to their interest accounts, claiming that they constitute unregistered securities. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler made a twitter video for the event. Cameron Winklevoss reacted here. Representative Tom Emmer took issue with the action. Virtu CEO Doug Cifu agreed with Emmer.
Nexo, the secretive crypto lender, is reportedly under investigation in Bulgaria for money laundering. Reuters is reporting that the company has been raided across 15 locations.
The CFTC brought market manipulation charges against Avraham Eisenberg this week for his manipulation of the Mango Markets venue. This occurs several weeks after he was arrested by the U.S. Department of Justice on similar charges.
Coinbase announced that it will lay off 950 employees (20% of staff). Blockchain.com announced that it is laying off 28% of its staff.
Robinhood announced that they are dropping support for Bitcoin SV (BSV). The bigger story here is that they had support in the first place.
Coin Metrics and FactSet announced a data partnership to distribute Coin Metrics data across FactSet's platform.
What we are Reading, Watching and Listening to This Week
We enjoyed Coinbase's 2023 Crypto Market Outlook.
This article was interesting: Mike Novogratz Wants to Punch Disgraced Crypto Titans in the Face
Now you are up to speed!
Matt & Nic