November will be history. Our team pulled together a snapshot of the latest on the crypto front as to why it is rising courtesy of the team at the Information. We will be focused on Crypto as we also have been seeing the rise of Rivivan and other Major Developments including someone who's vying to take on Amazon.
We look forward to the ongoing discourse:
 | | | KKR Plans to Lead Investment in Crypto Firm Anchorage | By Berber Jin, Kate Clark and Hannah Miller | Private equity giant KKR plans to lead a new investment in crypto startup Anchorage, which offers crypto custody, trading and financing services for financial institutions, said two people familiar with the matter. The Series D funding values the San Francisco-based company at about $3 billion including the investment, one person said. KKR’s investment underscores the private equity firm’s growing interest in the crypto industry, which Wall Street investors once avoided due to concerns about potential illicit behavior such as money laundering. The new funding also reflects the growth of crypto custody startups, which provide storage and security services for blockchain-based assets used by large financial institutions. New York-based Fireblocks, which offers similar custody services to Anchorage, is also in talks with investors to raise a new round of cash at a valuation of approximately $8 billion, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter. | |
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 | | | Startup’s Formula for Beating Amazon in Brazil Rests on Chinese Tactics | By Juro Osawa | When Diego Dzodan quit Meta Platforms (then known as Facebook) as head of Latin America three years ago to found his own startup in Brazil, he sought inspiration from Chinese startups, like a growing number of emerging market entrepreneurs. Instead of looking to Amazon, he modeled his business on China’s Pinduoduo, a hyperfast growing e-commerce app that offers bargain-basement deals and free shipping. It’s working. The startup is now close to raising more than $100 million at a pre-money valuation of $1 billion—quadruple its $250 million valuation in July, making it one of the region’s fastest to hit that milestone, according to two people with knowledge of the deal. New investor Goodwater Capital is leading the round, which also includes existing shareholders Tiger Global Management, Glade Brook Capital, GGV Capital and Monashees. Before the current round, the startup had already raised about $370 million in total. Meanwhile, transaction volume on Dzodan’s online marketplace—Facily, which mainly sells groceries and is expanding into gadgets and clothes—skyrocketed to 124 million reais (about $23 million) in October from just 570,000 reais (about $104,000) a year earlier, Dzodan said in an interview with The Information | |
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| | ‘Crypto Is Culture’: After One-Upping Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm Founders Open Up | By Kate Clark | As a co-founder of Coinbase, Fred Ehrsam tried to raise money for the cryptocurrency-exchange startup from Sequoia Capital, Silicon Valley’s premier venture capital firm. The firm turned him down twice, he told The Information in an interview, but Coinbase went on to be worth $100 billion as a public company. After Ehrsam left Coinbase in 2017, then-Sequoia partner Matt Huang—who was part of the investment team that had previously turned down Coinbase—invited him to pitch another startup idea to the firm involving blockchain technology, a decentralized computing platform owned by users, powering a virtual reality metaverse. That idea didn’t lead to an investment either, but the pair later exchanged 60 emails brainstorming potential business ideas related to crypto before deciding to launch their own VC firm, Paradigm, in 2018, when cryptocurrency prices were sagging. Just three years later, Paradigm is considered the top VC firm exclusively focused on crypto, which is among the hottest private investment categories. On Monday, Paradigm announced an eye-popping new $2.5 billion fund, the largest of its kind, seizing a mantle recently worn by Andreessen Horowitz, a more traditional tech investment firm that made the first big VC bets on crypto, including Coinbase in 2013. In June, Andreessen Horowitz made a splash by raising a $2.2 billion fund dedicated to crypto deals. | |
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| | Five Climate Tech Investors to Watch | By Mahira Dayal | These are busy times for the venture capital investors backing startups tackling a range of tough-to-crack climate problems, from global warming to a shortage of clean water. VC investors have poured a record $30.8 billion into climate technology startups so far this year, a nearly 50% increase from all of last year, according to data firm PitchBook. These investors are betting on more hits like electric vehicle maker Rivian, whose market value topped $150 billion after its listing debut this month. And they are hoping to avoid the failures, like Solyndra, that burned green energy investors a decade ago. | |
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| | More Institutional Investors Embrace Crypto VCs as Pantera Capital Raises $600 Million | By Kate Clark | Pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments and other institutional sources of capital used to shy away from cryptocurrencies over concerns about their use in illicit activity. Those reservations increasingly seem to be dissipating. The latest example comes from Pantera Capital, one of the first investment firms to focus exclusively on blockchain and cryptocurrencies. The firm, led by Tiger Management alum Dan Morehead, has raised $600 million for its fourth venture fund, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. Roughly 75% of the capital for the new fund is from institutional sources such as endowments, this person said. That’s a change from the firm’s $175 million vehicle raised in 2018, which was funded mainly by individuals, including newly wealthy crypto investors. | |
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