REPORT
This report is the first of what will be an annual overview of trends in the crypto industry, shared through the a16z crypto vantage point of both tracking data and across the countless entrepreneurs and builders they meet.
👉 Download the full “2022 State of Crypto Report” report, by Daren Matsuoka, Eddy Lazzarin, Chris Dixon, and Robert Hackett here.
👀 NEWS HIGHLIGHT
Amid crypto market turmoil, Andreessen Horowitz announced a $4.5 billion web3 fund.
The new $4.5 billion fund doubles the size of its last crypto fund and showcases the widening interest among the firm’s limited partners in increasing their exposure to crypto startups. The firm specifies that one-third of the new mega-fund will be earmarked for seed deals exclusively.
👉Link to the full article here.
📊 INFOGRAPHIC
B2B is generating impressive year-over-year growth rates in 2022.
👉Link to the full source article here.
📰 ARTICLE
Y Combinator-backed fintech Pebble uses stablecoins to offer 5% yield on cash.
As equities continue to trade down from recent peaks, investors are searching for higher returns. Some have turned to the crypto-based decentralized finance (DeFi) realm, where yields from lending and staking cryptocurrency can range from 1% to as high as 15% for riskier projects.
👉Read the full article here.
💡INSIGHTS
Americans spend $13 Billion on Fintech subscriptions. Among consumers between the ages of 21 and 55, 40% pay to receive or subscribe to fintech services each month, with half spending $10 or more.
👉 Read the full Cornerstone Advisors article by Ron Shevlin article here.
🎤 PODCAST
UKTN Podcast: Banked: CEO on open banking and disrupting payments: “We’ve got a very big ambition,” Brad Goodall tells UKTN Podcast host Mark McDonagh.
👉Link to the full episode here.
NOW, ON TO THE SUMMARY OF LAST WEEK'S NEWS
🇺🇸 NATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS
⭐️ Bolt just laid off over 100 employees across engineering, sales, and marketing. Link here.
⭐️ Stretch wants to bank individuals with a conviction history. Link here.
⭐️ Andy Bromberg, CEO of the a16z-backed startup Eco, is claiming that Pebble, another fintech startup that came out of stealth this morning, “plagiarized” Eco’s materials and business model. Link here.
⭐️ Elon Musk hints at super app and payment ambitions for Twitter. Link here.
😇 Do you want to have access to the best deal flow in FinTech? And/or do you want to invest alongside me and 1000+ other FinTech Angel investors?
👉 Join my Angel Investors Syndicate!
DIGITAL BANKING
Marqeta signs Evolve Bank & Trust as a new bank partner to offer additional solutions for customers that take advantage of Marqeta’s full program management capabilities. Link here.
PAYMENTS
Square has acquired GoParrot, an all-in-one digital ordering and marketing platform for restaurants. Link here.
Block acquisition of Afterpay will help it create financial services and retailing platform “super app”, backed by tools to lift access to bitcoin. Link here.
Caribou, the auto fintech whose mission is to help people take control of their car payments, today announced it has closed $115 million in an oversubscribed Series C funding round, which brings the company’s valuation to $1.1 billion. Link here.
PayEngine, a white-label payments-facilitation platform for vertical SaaS companies, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Point72 Ventures, a global venture capital strategy. Link here.
Stripe has launched a new apps marketplace, designed to bring third-party accounting, analytics, CRM, marketing and signature features directly into Stripe. Link here.
Keep Financial, a San Jose, California—based technology company focused on compensation to enhance recruiting and retention, raised $9m in seed funding. Link here.
OPEN BANKING
Axway (Euronext: AXW.PA), an API management leader, and Cloudentity, a leading provider of modern application identity and authorization, are proud to offer the first production release to support FDX 5.0 APIs. Link here.
CRYPTO
According to a Form 4 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Fred Ehrsam – through Paradigm, the venture capital firm he co-founded – purchased more than one million shares of Coinbase (COIN) worth roughly $75 million, stepping in as the crypto exchange's stock price plunged following the company’s weak earnings report. Link here.
BLOCKCHAIN / DEFI
In a classic “pivot to crypto to reinvent yourself” moment, controversial WeWork founder Adam Neumann recently launched a startup, Flowcarbon, to sell tokenized carbon credits on the blockchain. Link here.
INVESTMENT
A little over a month after Robinhood publicly released its first crypto wallet, the company announced it’s working on a second. The new wallet will be non-custodial, giving users sole custody over the private keys necessary to control their money on the blockchain. Link here.
Synapse announced the launch of Global Cash, a secure cash management account product, that enables residents in more than 35 countries to invest and hold U.S. dollars. Link here.
MOVERS & SHAKERS
LPA, the capital markets technology and advisory firm, announced ambitious international expansion plans into the United States supported by a key executive hire.
Serge Malka joins as LPA US Managing Director, marking a milestone moment of growth for the firm. Serge will be responsible for the acceleration of LPA’s American software and consulting operation with the opening of a new office in New York. Leveraging extensive industry connections, Serge will build on LPA’s significant growth trajectory and its strong international client base.
👉Read more here.
If you are a fintech startup and have over 100 questions send me an email, maybe I can answer a few.