There’s always a crypto angle
We all learnt this lesson during the most recent cryptocurrency bull run: cryptocurrency is a well-known haven for those trying to start over. Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork, is no exception. The news this week that Neumann’s new startup, which focuses on residential real estate communities, had just received a $350 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz—the largest check the VC firm has ever written—made headlines in the tech industry, though it was unclear how much of that was equity versus debt. According to The New York Times, the startup Flow was valued at $1 billion before, well, really accomplishing anything (apart than buying up housing units).
In an odd turn, Marc Andreessen himself emphasized in a blog post announcing the transaction that the new company’s goal is to try to alleviate the housing issue. Andreessen is the venture capitalist who, earlier this month, was discovered to have pushed tenaciously to block the construction of affordable housing units in his affluent hometown of Atherton, California. However, other from some ambiguous remarks about renters not being able to profit from owning their home equity, there were few initial specifics as to how precisely Neumann’s organization would truly handle the situation.
This week, Forbes revealed that Neumann’s business, Flow, intends to introduce a cryptocurrency digital wallet. However, given that the wallet prevents users from using cryptocurrency to pay their rent for Flow-owned homes, there seems to be little to no overlap between the wallet’s functionality and the company’s professed concentration on real estate innovation.
According to Forbes, the startup has been recruiting individuals by branding itself as a “next generation multi-family property management system” that will support cryptocurrency payments as well as a tokenized incentives system. Later, a Flow representative informed Forbes that the job description was mostly untrue and that the error was the fault of an outside recruiter the business had previously dealt with.
Although the size of the role that cryptocurrency would play on Flow’s plan is still unclear, the representative gave Forbes a new job description that merely focused on “technology” in residential real estate, rather than cryptocurrency or web3 in particular.
It’s not Neumann’s first time in the web3’s uncharted territory. In May, he raised $70 million for Flowcarbon, a firm that aimed to tokenize carbon credits on the blockchain, which was also headed by a16z. Although naming Neumann as a co-founder of the company at the time the a16z investment was revealed, Flowcarbon has subsequently postponed a planned token sale, blaming unfavourable market circumstances, and seems to have erased references to Neumann from its team website. Strangely, Neumann’s involvement with Flowcarbon was completely absent from the Flow announcement this week from a16z, which listed Flow as his first project after WeWork.
While many entrepreneurs with merit and promise are being passed over by the current VC environment, a16z’s decision to place such a sizable wager on the infamous Neumann is indicative of investors’ priorities. However, if anything positive emerges of this endeavour, it may be a compelling TV show.
Most recent pod
While Lucas was out, Jacquelyn and Anita once again seized control of this week’s news, and the first item on their schedule was very hot.
Do Kwon, the discredited creator responsible for the collapse of the Terra stablecoin, gave his first interview since going into hiding after causing investors to lose billions of dollars. He spoke on Coinage, an NFTV programme produced by the firm Trustless Media, to discuss his part in causing the greatest meltdown in the cryptocurrency market.
After summarising the Do Kwon interview highlights, Anita and Jacquelyn discussed how Galaxy Digital tried to say “jk haha” after deciding to purchase cryptocurrency custodian BitGo and went over both negative and positive developments for Crypto.com.
Keep an eye out for our special guest interview with Devin Lewtan, creator of the web3 media production business Mad Realities, on Tuesday.
Observe the money
Where venture capital is going in the realm of cryptocurrency:
- Satellite IM, a platform for decentralised messaging, has secured a $10.5 million investment that was jointly led by Framework Ventures and Multicoin Capital.
- To create the “Fidelity for crypto,” Rocketplace received $9 million in initial money.
- Thirteen million dollars were raised by Tencent veteran’s at.bit to create cross-chain decentralised IDs.
- Ankr, a web3 infrastructure protocol, received strategic funding from Binance Labs.
- Jito Labs, which has its headquarters in Solana Beach, received $10 million in a Series A headed by Multicoin Capital and Framework Ventures.
- Japanese Incubate Fund funded a €1.5 million seed round that was completed by the gaming studio Murasaki.
- Datawisp, a B2B web3 data analysis company, raised $3.6 million in a seed round that was co-led by Coinfund.
- For the debut of a new web3 IP, animation company Invisible Universe secured $12 million in Series An investment headed by Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six.
- Tessera, also known as Fractional, received $20 million in a Series a headed by Paradigm for its fractional NFT platform.
- Gaming DAO MatchboxDAO on Starknet raised $7.5 million with the help of Starkware.
TC+ evaluation
TC+ subscribers may get the following crypto analysis from senior writer Jacquelyn Melinek this week:
The head of investments at Polygon is still “very positive about web3.”
Despite the fact that the cryptocurrency market is stuck between a severe bear market and a rebound, investors continue to pour money into it. Shreyansh Singh, head of investments at Polygon, told TechCrunch that, overall, nothing has changed in regards to the company’s long-term purpose, bear markets or not.
NFTs, in Anthony Hopkins’ words, are “art in a new medium.”
Others are turning to NFTs as a method to interact with followers as celebrities and athletes alike enter the crypto space to support tokens or businesses. Sir Anthony Hopkins, a two-time Academy Award winner, is the newest participant. He launched his own television series, The Eternal Collection, in collaboration with NFT digital collectable firm Orange Comet. According to Hopkins, “NFTs are a blank canvas for me to create art in a new format.” Hopkins told TechCrunch.
Crypto scams are down, but hackers are still strong in down markets.
Despite the volatility of cryptocurrencies, there is still a lot of illegal activity, according to a recent Chainalysis research. The apparent fall in criminal activity is not without subtlety, however; in 2022, certain crypto-based crime subsectors grew while others shrank.
According to Polygon CISO, open source software is required to stop future crypto attacks.
Many members in the cryptocurrency community are questioning what can be done to stop future attacks like 2022’s pricey vulnerabilities. They may certainly stress the value of knowledge and of safeguarding your own digital assets, but what else? According to Polygon’s Mudit Gupta, chief information security officer, the solution may be found in initiatives that use open source software.
