Aurora, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) designed to scale decentralized applications (DApp) built on the Near protocol, has announced a $12-million debut funding round. The round included over 100 venture capital investors, including Pantera Capital and Electric Capital. According to an official statement, Aurora will use the funds to expand cross-chain capabilities beyond its current offering, in addition to hiring specialist developers to support the growth of Ethereum scaling. The scaling solution seeks to facilitate interoperability between blockchains through its EVM connection and multichain bridge, granting developers the accessibility to launch DApps with multichain functionality. Aurora has also revealed it …

Decentralized talent network Braintrust has officially launched its BTRST token on the Ethereum mainnet, setting in motion a new governance framework as it aims to drive mass enterprise adoption of its services. The project launched publicly in June 2020 and has now generated $31 million in gross services revenue, up from $3.5 million during the time of the unveiling, Braintrust announced Wednesday. Since June of last year, Braintrust’s community has tripled in size, boasting enterprise clients such as Goldman Sachs, American Eagle Outfitters, Atlassian, Porsche, Under Armour and Wayfair. The average monetary value of projects listed on Braintrust has grown …

MakersPlace, a nonfungible token (NFT) market dedicated to digital art, has secured $30 million in Series A financing, highlighting once again that venture funds are keen to back promising NFT plays. The funding round will be used by MakersPlace to scale business operations and acquire additional talent as it continues to attract new users and artists to its platform. The investment was co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Pantera Capital, with additional participation from Coinbase Ventures, Sony Music Entertainment, Uncork Capital, Dragon Digital Assets and 9Yards Capital. Several notable angel investors also participated in the round, including Acquavella Galleries, Sabrina …

Amid the looming Ethereum London hard fork, Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead predicted that the upcoming upgrade would likely help Ether (ETH) outpace Bitcoin (BTC) as the largest cryptocurrency. As a newer cryptocurrency, Ether has more potential than Bitcoin, Morehead said at the Reuters Global Markets Forum on Monday, noting that the latest Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 upgrade will help the digital token to trade more like a fixed asset. One of five EIPs in the Ethereum London upgrade, EIP-1559 is an anticipated update to Ethereum’s existing fee structure, introducing a minimum payment for sending Ethereum transactions and move …

The chief executive of Pantera Capital, Dan Morehead, is confident that the big crypto selloff is slowing because he thinks “we’ve seen the most of this panic”. In the monthly newsletter published on June 14, the venture capitalist stated that the best time to buy is when markets are “well below trend”. A Bitcoin trend deviation chart backed up this claim as it showed that the asset has only been this “cheap” relative to its trend for a fifth of its lifecycle. For new investors, it’s best to buy when the market is well below trend. Now is one of …

BitDAO, a new decentralized autonomous organization, is launching after a $230 million funding round led by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel. BitDAO announced its DAO launch on Tuesday in conjunction with completing a private sale from initial partners led by Thiel, Pantera Capital, Dragonfly Capital and Founders Fund. Other investors included billionaire hedge fund manager Alan Howard, Spartan Group, Jump Capital, Fenbushi and Kain Warwick of DeFi protocol Synthetix, among a total of more than 20 players in the decentralized finance industry. Bybit, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency derivatives exchanges, is a major initial proponent of BitDAO, pledging recurring …

Cryptocurrency asset managers Pantera Capital and Arrington XRP Capital have co-led a $5.8 million private investment round for Unbound Finance, an up-and-coming DeFi treasury protocol for pooled tokens. The funds will be used to further develop Unbound Finance’s cross-chain stablecoin platform, including the development of native bridges for instant transfers between its native UNB stablecoin and other synthetic assets, the company announced Wednesday. Unbound Finance operates a so-called “liquidation-free collateralization platform,” which, as the name suggests, allows users to obtain interest-free loans against collateralized tokens. Automated market makers are “DeFi's Zero to One Innovation and we are building the aggregator …

DeFi lending platform Liquity Protocol has secured $6 million in Series A funding to expand its on-chain borrowing services, underscoring the continued growth of cryptocurrency loans. The funding round was led by Pantera Capital, a crypto-focused venture capital firm, with additional contributions from Nima Capital, Alameda Research, Greenfield.one and IOSG, the company announced Monday. Angel investors including Meltem Demirors, David Hoffman and Calvin Liu also contributed to the raise. Liquity has raised $6M in Series A funding led by @PanteraCapital. Read the full announcement here: https://t.co/OhqrKT8N9x — Liquity (@LiquityProtocol) March 29, 2021 Robert Lauko, Liquity Protocol’s CEO, said the new …

New data from Pantera Capital, an investment firm and hedge fund, suggests that Bitcoin’s (BTC) current price action is closely following the stock-to-follow model’s trajectory and the firm’s analysts believe BTC will reach $115,212 by Aug. 1. Bitcoin’s parabolic rally may have placed the price a bit ahead of the model’s projection and this week’s 28% correction sent temporary shivers across the market but sharp corrections and short consolidation periods are characteristic of bull markets. The model focuses on the price impact of Bitcoin halving events that cut the amount of Bitcoin minted every block in half every 4 years. …

Dan Morehead, founder and CEO of Bitcoin (BTC) investment firm Pantera Capital, has maintained his bullish Bitcoin prediction for 2021. Bitcoin is poised to hit as much as $115,000 by August 2021, surging 200% in the next eight months, Morehead reportedly said at a conference call on Jan. 12. The exec initially made this prediction in August 2020, when Bitcoin was trading at about $11,600. At publishing time, the cryptocurrency is trading at over $38,000. On Tuesday, Morehead said that Bitcoin still has lots of room for growth: “Is bitcoin overvalued? I would say no. [...] Bitcoin has spent three …

In a filing with the SEC yesterday, Bitcoin hedge fund giant Pantera Capital announced an equity offering of up to $134 million — among the largest capital fundraising efforts in the seven year history of the firm. Formed in 2013 as the first-ever Bitcoin fund in the United States, Pantera initially raised a comparatively measly $13 million, and later $25 million, according to reporting from Cointelegraph. But in 2018, the fund directed its efforts towards a larger raise that would result in the formation of a third investment fund, dubbed Venture Fund III. This new fund attracted $164 million from …

Some of the biggest names in blockchain have thrown their weight behind a new cryptocurrency derivatives exchange, signaling that the next bull market could be driven by institutional investors. Crypto derivatives platform Globe has raised $3 million in seed investments to launch its Globe Derivative Exchange. The new platform is aimed at bringing institutional investors into the world of cryptocurrency. Early-stage investors in the new venture include billionaire Tim Draper, blockchain investment fund Pantera Capital and venture capital firm Y Combinator. Pantera executive Paul Veradittakit cited growing institutional interest in crypto as one of the primary reasons why his company …