Welcome to Finance Redefined, a weekly newsletter that provides essential insights into decentralized finance. This newsletter is designed to bring you the most important events of the past week.
This week marked another historic milestone for the cryptocurrency industry. On July 23, the first Spot Ether (ETH) exchange-traded fund (ETF) began trading in the United States.
Other key developments accompanying the launch of the spot ETH ETF include the launch of the first-ever Ether ETF dashboard by blockchain intelligence firm Nansen to increase transparency on institutional inflows.
In other news, venture capitalists (VCs) are finally turning their attention to Web3 as institutional investors look for the next big blockchain startup.
Galaxy Asset Management Raises $113 Million for New Crypto Venture
Galaxy Asset Management has raised $113 million for a new cryptocurrency venture fund that could provide significant fresh capital to crypto startups building new use cases.
Billionaire Michael Novogratz’s new venture will invest in early-stage cryptocurrency startups, with a focus on cryptocurrency software, infrastructure, and financial applications.
According to a statement shared with Bloomberg, the new fund, called Galaxy Ventures Fund I LP, will initially invest in 30 companies and continue to raise capital until it reaches its target of $150 million by 2025 at the latest.
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Nansen Launches Industry-First Ether ETF Analysis Dashboard
Popular blockchain analytics provider Nansen has launched an industry-first Ether ETF analytics dashboard.
The free-to-use dashboard tracks the performance of the highly anticipated US-based spot Ether ETF, providing a real-time overview of the data most important to traders, including interactive ETF flow charts and total ETF issuer balances.
In a statement shared with Cointelegraph, Nansen CEO Alex Svanevik wrote that the Ether ETF approval is a significant milestone for the industry.
“We are excited to launch our ETH ETF Dashboard, demonstrating how Nansen empowers investors with real-time insights. This dashboard provides the first-ever insight into ETF flows to help you make informed decisions.”
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Web3 Venture Funding Stabilizes After a Tough 2023 – Crunchbase
According to Crunchbase, venture funding for Web3 startups is stabilizing after a year-long decline that began in 2023, with cryptocurrency startups securing about $2 billion in funding in Q2 2024.
The Q2 figure is slightly higher than the $1.8 billion raised in the previous quarter, but it reverses a downward trend that saw Web3’s quarterly venture funding totals roughly halve last year, according to Crunchbase, from $2.3 billion in Q1 2023 to $1.4 billion in Q4.
The decline in deal volume reflected a decline in funding. Total deal volume fell from 681 deals in Q1 2023 to 284 deals in Q4. Despite a recovery in funding amounts in recent quarters, deal volumes remain depressed, with data showing that only 291 funding rounds closed in Q2 2024.
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Vitalik Buterin Introduces Circle STARKs for Blockchain Efficiency
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has introduced a new cryptographic protocol called Circle STARKs (Scalable and Transparent Assertion of Knowledge) that promises to improve the security and efficiency of blockchains.
In a recent post, Buterin explained that this technological leap could allow small-scale fields like Mersenne31 to significantly improve proof speed without compromising security measures.
“The most important trend in the design of the STARK protocol over the past two years has been the shift to working in small fields.”
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WazirX Hacker Consolidates $57 Million ETH to New Wallet
The WazirX hackers have transferred $57 million worth of stolen funds to two new cryptocurrency addresses through the latest on-chain movement of stolen funds.
As part of the latest attempt to embezzle stolen assets, hackers have transferred 16,350 Ether, worth $57 million, to two new cryptocurrency wallets.
The lion’s share (over $54 million) was sent to address “0x58d,” according to a July 22 post from blockchain security firm PeckShield.
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DeFi Market Overview
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap ended the week in the red.
Among the top 100 tokens, the Solana-based Memecoin ‘Cat in a Dog World (MEW)’ has seen the biggest gains this week, rising more than 89% on the weekly chart, followed by the Helium (HNT) token, up more than 24%.
Thanks for reading our roundup of the most impactful DeFi developments of the week. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights, and education on this dynamic and evolving space.