coinfund

Stablecoin payment infrastructure company Trace Finance has completed a $32 million Series A financing round, led by CoinFund, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, Jump Capital, Paxos, Chainlink Labs, HOF Capital, and others. Bernardo Brites, co-founder and CEO of Trace Finance, stated that the company's valuation has increased approximately tenfold since the seed round in 2022, but did not disclose the specific valuation.Trace Finance is headquartered in Brazil and primarily provides stablecoin cross-border payment infrastructure, integrating local banking channels, foreign exchange, compliance, and stablecoin settlement capabilities. The company currently holds licenses in the United States and Brazil and operates through partner banks in Mexico, Colombia, Europe, and Asia. Trace Finance plans to expand its operations in Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina, followed by entry into the Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia markets. Brites also mentioned that the company will continue to apply for additional licenses in Singapore, the United States, and the Asia-Pacific region in the future.

According to PR Newswire, the prediction market infrastructure company EDGE Markets announced the completion of a $29.2 million Series A financing round, led by CoinFund, with participation from Indicator Ventures, Mantis VC, Stepstone Group, and Bullpen Capital. This round of financing will be used to launch the banking platform EDGE Pro for prediction market market makers, as well as the payment network EDGE Connect designed specifically for entertainment and prediction markets.Among them, EDGE Pro will provide market makers with high-throughput deposit accounts, supporting real-time fund transfers and settlements between trading platforms regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The company is applying for Introducing Broker (IB) and Futures Commission Merchant (FCM) licenses from the National Futures Association (NFA) to enhance capital efficiency and support margin management.EDGE Connect is positioned as a payment network dedicated to the prediction market industry, enabling 24/7 real-time payments (RTP) and reducing transaction costs through a model that only charges for new net deposits. The company stated that compared to traditional payment channels, this system can reduce payment processing costs by more than 70%, while also decreasing refunds and user churn.

According to market news, Franklin Templeton has agreed to acquire CoinFund's spin-off company as part of its digital asset expansion and is launching new crypto strategies aimed at institutional investors.

CoinFund President and former banker Christopher Perkins expressed on social media that he criticizes the cryptocurrency market structure bill currently under consideration by the U.S. Senate, which may limit retail investors' access to rewards related to stablecoins.As a member of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Global Markets Advisory Committee, Perkins stated that depriving retail investors of the right to earn rewards from stablecoins is an inappropriate policy, especially against the backdrop of income inequality being a significant social issue.The U.S. already has a stablecoin bill called GENIUS and questions why policymakers would want to prevent ordinary investors from benefiting from stablecoins.Perkins suggested addressing banks' concerns about deposit and loan outflows by releasing regulatory capital and integrating blockchain technology, believing this would be a win-win solution.He predicted that if this approach is taken, Global Systemically Important Banks (GSIBs) and community banks would ultimately accept policies that allow retail investors to earn rewards from stablecoins.

According to Fortune, cryptocurrency startup LI.FI announced the completion of a $29 million funding round, led by Multicoin and CoinFund, bringing its total funding to $52 million.The company provides cross-blockchain price comparison and transaction path optimization services for fintech companies, helping businesses efficiently transfer assets across different blockchains. LI.FI has established relationships with over 800 partners, including Robinhood, Binance, and Kraken, with a monthly trading volume of $8 billion. The company plans to use the new funds to expand its business into areas such as perpetual futures, yield opportunities, and lending markets, as well as to increase its workforce.

ChainCatcher news, the programmable data chain Irys announced the completion of a $10 million Series A funding round, led by CoinFund, with participation from Hypersphere, Tykhe Ventures, Varrock Ventures, Breed VC, Echo Group, Amber Group, and WAGMI Ventures. This round of financing brings Irys's total funding to $20 million.

ChainCatcher news, according to Decrypt, the development team of the TON ecosystem DEX project STON.fi announced the completion of a $9.5 million Series A funding round, led by Ribbit Capital and CoinFund.STON.fi is a decentralized automated market maker (AMM) built on the TON blockchain, offering nearly zero fees, low slippage, an extremely simple interface, and direct integration with the TON wallet.

ChainCatcher news, according to Fortune magazine, stablecoin bank Dakota, founded by former Coinbase executive Ryan Bozarth, has completed a $12.5 million Series A funding round, led by CoinFund, with participation from 6th Man Ventures, Digital Currency Group, and Kraken's Triton Ventures.Dakota facilitates fund transfers through stablecoins, providing banking-like account services for businesses and individuals. Its business model combines traditional banking functions with blockchain technology, primarily serving overseas corporate clients in non-crypto sectors. The platform has processed $1.6 billion in transaction volume and is expected to reach $4 billion by the end of 2025. Although it does not hold a banking license, the company is registered as a money services business in the United States and Europe.

ChainCatcher news, game development studio Cold River Games has completed a $2 million funding round to support the development of the ARPG game "Crystalfall."This round was participated by Beam Investments, CoinFund, Partnerinvest Norr, Avalanche Foundation, A100x Ventures, Lyrik Ventures, MH Ventures, and others.

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, DeFi infrastructure company Veda announced the completion of a $18 million financing round, led by CoinFund.The company aims to simplify DeFi yields for cross-blockchain applications and institutions. The new funding is intended to support its platform to enable applications and institutions to offer streamlined crypto yield products, including a modular vault framework that allows developers to create smart contracts to manage yield strategies without exposing users to the complexities of DeFi.

ChainCatcher news, according to Fortune, AI startup Pluralis Research has announced the completion of a $7.6 million funding round. This round was led by venture capital firms CoinFund and Union Square Ventures, with participation from Topology, Variant, Eden Block, and Bodhi Ventures. Notable cryptocurrency investors Balaji Srinivasan and HuggingFace co-founder Clem Delangue also took part.Pluralis founder and CEO Alexander Long told Fortune that this funding round is an equity financing, accompanied by warrants for future cryptocurrency (if Pluralis decides to issue cryptocurrency). Currently, Pluralis has not launched a product, and investors are mainly optimistic about Long and his team. "The reason I raised this round of funding is 'this team is the best team to solve this problem,'" Long said. "No one else is trying. We believe we can do it."Unlike other companies attempting to train AI through decentralized server networks, Long's approach is to investigate whether it is possible to train parts of a model on a single computer rather than the entire model. "If you can make the problem precise enough, you usually find a solution immediately," he said.

ChainCatcher news, according to Marketwatch, U.S. President Trump has signed an executive order to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve and a separate digital asset reserve. Seth Ginns, head of liquid investments at crypto investment firm CoinFund, stated: "While on the surface, a U.S. crypto reserve enforced by a presidential executive order seems like a good thing, the fate of that reserve will be concerning if the next government, four years from now, takes a critical stance on Bitcoin. Over time, it would be better to have a congressional authorization to protect the crypto reserve from the influence of the next administration."

ChainCatcher news, CoinFund CEO Jake Brukhman stated, "Retail speculators are trying to hype their meme coins using AI concepts, and now meme coin prices are falling, with people surrendering and exiting. Meanwhile, some companies in the Web3 space are tackling the most challenging problems in AI, creating new domains, and advancing technological development. This is not meant for meme coin speculators."Previously, Aiccelerate DAO co-founder Ejaaz mentioned, "Crypto AI is becoming a non-consensus bet. When everyone is bearish, open-source models are catching up to the best models, OpenAI is rolling out agent functionalities, and AI's overall cognitive share continues to rise. All of this takes time to develop, but I still believe this field will ultimately dominate the crypto industry."

ChainCatcher news, Rho Labs, the on-chain interest rate market founded by former Copper Chief Product Officer Alex Ryvkin, has successfully completed a $4 million seed round financing, led by CoinFund, with participation from CoinFund, Flow Traders, and others.Rho Protocol is the first crypto-native interest rate market, uniquely integrating staking, lending, and perpetual contract funding rate trading on a single platform.In previous news, Rho Labs announced the completion of a $2.2 million Pre-Seed round financing, led by Speedinvest, with participation from Keyrock, Re7 Capital, Daedalus Collective, and Copper CEO Dmitry Tokarev, among others.

ChainCatcher news, according to Fortune, the Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain development team Movement Labs announced that it is about to complete a $100 million Series B financing, with a valuation of $3 billion. This round of financing is co-led by CoinFund and Nova Fund under Brevan Howard, and is expected to be completed by the end of January. Investors will receive a combination of equity and Move tokens, with a focus on tokens. Movement Labs previously completed a $38 million Series A financing led by Polychain Capital in April 2024.The project is built on the Move programming language and launched its testnet and tokens in December 2024. Currently, the market capitalization of Move tokens is approximately $2.25 billion, doubling since its initial trading, and it has been listed on major exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase.

ChainCatcher news, the crypto investment firm CoinFund announced that it will expand its workforce in 2024, doubling the number of investment team members, increasing the number of members outside of managing partners to 16. The overall employee count of the company has grown by 28%.Currently, CoinFund's portfolio includes 105 companies, with projects such as ZKsync and Ondo Finance. The native token ZK of ZKsync has a market capitalization of nearly $800 million, while Ondo's governance token has a market capitalization of approximately $2.9 billion.

ChainCatcher news, a recent survey by CoinFund on its 44 early-stage investments shows that 79.5% of the companies plan to expand hiring in 2025, with 40% expecting their team size to increase by at least half. To support business development, 70.5% of respondents plan to raise funds, with 25% planning to raise less than $10 million, 25% planning to raise between $10 million and $25 million, and 20.5% planning to raise over $25 million.The survey also indicates that executives of these projects are generally optimistic about the development prospects of consumer applications in 2025, followed by the transformation from DeFi and Web2 to Web3. Notably, 77.2% of respondents expect a killer application that will gain mainstream attention to emerge in 2025, primarily focused on gaming, global payments, and DeFi.In terms of development challenges, 48% of respondents believe that project execution is the biggest threat, while 23% are concerned about finding product-market fit under existing funding support. In contrast, traditional concerns such as regulatory uncertainty and market fragmentation rank lower.

ChainCatcher news, according to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, the Polygon Ecosystem Growth address has distributed 128.9 million POL (formerly known as MATIC), worth 47.57 million USD, to 45 addresses in the past 4 hours. The recipients of POL include institutional addresses such as CoinFund, Alameda Research, Galaxy Digital, and Animoca Brands.

ChainCatcher news, CoinFund founder and CEO Jake Brukhman posted on the X platform stating that the following are the things he is looking for amidst the noise of the bull market (from specific to macro):Decentralized AI:Companies focused on solving Web3 AI inference challenges and making it accessible for Web2.Enterprises capable of effectively addressing verifiable inference issues.Companies supporting open public networks, promoting decentralized training, and competing with large tech firms.Companies dedicated to optimizing decentralized training data pipelines.Institutional Adoption:Public networks open for use by institutions and enterprises (possibly blockchain-based).Compliant revolutionary DeFi products that eliminate counterparty risk, such as fully decentralized dark pools.Leading companies leveraging stablecoins to drive B2B payment developments.Companies providing stablecoin-related services to support the future development of stablecoins.Blockchain Infrastructure: Early projects with potential in scalability, interoperability, API services, intent, zero-knowledge, MPC, and other areas.Consumer Cryptocurrency: Crypto projects with innovative non-SaaS business models.