Hey everyone, and welcome back to chain reaction,
In our Chain Reaction Podcast this week, Anita and I spoke to Mercedes Bent of Lightspeed Venture Partners about supporting blockchain startups and the future of consumer fintech. More details below.
Last week we talked about how the crypto industry should take a moment to think about buying love from its followers. This week we look at the unfortunate setbacks of America’s favorite public crypto company
To get this newsletter in your inbox every Thursday, sign up on businesstraverse.com’s newsletter page.
Image Credits: Robert Nickelsberg / Getty Images
the hottest take
While crypto markets have been relatively stable since last week’s bombastic dump-o-rama, this week’s gloom has been on the menu for institutional investors and retail buyers who predicted crypto winters will hit all households in the coming years.
The message from VCs to crypto startups and mega-corps was “cut the fat” — a statement that doesn’t sit well with the lavish launch parties and plans to fivefold the hiring numbers that many founders seemed to be working toward last month. It has been a period of unprecedented boom for crypto startups, but life has been looking a little less pleasant for Coinbase since Bitcoin and the public markets hit their frothy peak last November.
Coinbase is currently trading below $65 a share after falling more than 80 percent from its November high. Many other technology stocks in the public market are also feeling the pain, but relative to the revenue Coinbase brought in last year, it’s clear that investors have adjusted their expectations for the company’s future performance. Coinbase had net sales of $7.4 billion in 2021 and currently fluctuates with a market cap of less than $14 billion. That’s crazy.
Investors in the public market may not have the rosy picture of Coinbase, but the question is how it really affects the company. Well, the company is adjusting its growth expectations for one thing. COO Emilie Choi announced this week that the company was stepping on the brakes: “Going into this year, we planned to triple the size of the company. Given the current market conditions, we feel it would be prudent to delay and reassess hiring…”
This is expected, but not great for a company that has several money consuming competitors all chasing their market share. The company has diversified its offerings to leverage its network and provide more of a browser for the nascent web3 world, but it’s unclear what kind of consumer pick-up the crypto world is looking at in the coming year compared to the past few, something it has. left company in a pretty grim position for the short term…
the latest podcast
hey it is Anita† here to give you an update on our latest episode of Chain Reaction where we unpack the latest web3 news block by block for the crypto-curious.
In this episode we talked about 30-year-old blockchain billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) buys a 7.6% stake in Robinhood and what it may intend to do to help reverse the struggling stock market in a difficult first half of the year. We’ve also explained the difference between custodial and non-custodial wallets, since Robinhood just announced it is launching the latest – the latest in a slew of new products aimed at attracting more users to its platform.
Since we were talking about Robinhood, we had to discuss what’s going on with its competitor, Coinbase, which this week said it would be slowing down its recruiting plans due to the crypto market crash. We also gave listeners an update on the latest news with the disgraced UST – the stablecoin that (sort of) started it all.
Our guest this week was Mercedes Bent, an investor at Lightspeed Venture Partners, who helped us unravel the loaded term that is the “metaverse” and talked about some of the long-term potential she sees in sectors like web3 video games.
Subscribe to Chain Reaction at Apple† Spotify or your alternative podcast platform of choice to join us each week.
Follow the money
Where seed money moves in the crypto world:
- Multi-Chain Wallet BitKeep banks $15 million from Dragonfly
- Starting up treasury management currency exchange gets $15 million from Tiger Global
- Start up crypto tip top raises $24M from a16z
- Web3 social startup CyberConnect scores $15 million from Animoca and Sky9
- Smart contract security startup Certora scores $36 million from Jump
- crypto education co code club raises $5M from Galaxy Digital and Lemnis Capital
- crypto games co meta theory banks $24 million from a16z
- Investment DAO seed club scores $15 million from Union Square Ventures, others
- Crypto Investment Firm Elwood Technologies gets $70 million from Goldman Sachs
- Web3 studio Gusto Collective raises $11 million from Animoca
businesstraverse.com+
Animoca Brands plans to add education to its multi-billion dollar NFT and gaming business
Animoca Brands has grown into one of the largest companies in the metaverse, play-to-earn gaming and NFT worlds, but co-founder Yat Siu told businesstraverse.com there’s a new sector the company wants to enter: education. No, not education on crypto topics, but more general learning resources that can apply to more than one discipline. Siu said he hopes to boost the teacher economy with a “learn-to-earn” or “learn-to-earn” model so that both teachers and students’ time can be rewarded in the form of a token or cash. . This push could be another wave for the crypto ecosystem to implement additional ways to earn rewards.
Thanks for following and get Chain Reaction in your inbox every Thursday by subscribing to the businesstraverse.com newsletter page,
Lucas Matney
