I hope you had a good weekend, folks. In today's newsletter, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund invests in Infinex's Patron NFT sale, FTX agrees to drop its Bybit lawsuit, Solana's Phantom wallet faces downtime and more.
Meanwhile, crypto and stock trading app Robinhood gets in on the U.S. presidential election predictions game amid the rising popularity of Polymarket and Kalshi.
Let's get started.
Peter Thiel's Founders Fund invests in Infinex's Patron NFT sale
Peter Thiel's Founders Fund was unveiled as an investor in Infinex's new "patronage" fundraising model on Monday, as the sale officially closed.
- The fundraising model, which sold Patron NFTs to venture capitalists, angel investors and the community, has raised a total of $67.7 million, according to Infinex.
- The sale included notable backers like Wintermute Ventures, Framework Ventures and Solana Ventures, alongside well-known angel investors such as Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko and Aave founder Stani Kulechov.
- A total of 43,244 Patron NFTs were issued across the Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, Base, Polygon and Optimism networks.
- Though access to the sale was staggered, every participant received the same price, allowing all participants to support the crypto project on the same terms.
- Founded by Kain Warwick, Infinex is a decentralized exchange platform developed by his DeFi project Synthetix, aiming to create a user experience that rivals centralized exchanges while operating on decentralized infrastructure.
- Infinex claims to have a current total value locked of $125 million.
FTX agrees to drop lawsuit against Bybit
The FTX estate has settled its lawsuit with crypto exchange Bybit, its executives and its investment arm Mirana for $228 million, aiding upcoming creditor repayments.
- The settlement includes FTX recovering $175 million in cryptocurrencies held in Bybit accounts and selling Mirana over 105 million BIT tokens valued at around $52.7 million.
- The estate sued Bybit last November, alleging that it used its "VIP" access to FTX to withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and digital assets on the eve of the platform's collapse in November 2022.
- Earlier this month, a U.S. bankruptcy court approved FTX's reorganization plan, which is set to repay 98% of creditors at least 118% of their claims in cash, valued at the time of FTX's bankruptcy.
Solana's Phantom wallet faces downtime, causing inaccurate account balances for users
Solana's leading web3 wallet Phantom, was hit with 2 hours and 45 minutes of downtime on Monday, leading to inaccurate account balances for users.
- Phantom's status page confirmed a "major issue" with its backend, though the browser extension and mobile app remained operational, while the project sought to reassure users that their funds were safe.
- The outage coincided with users claiming a recently announced airdrop from the Solana-based dapp Grass, which is distributing 10% of the GRASS token supply.
- "Our services should be working well for most users now," the Phantom team posted to X following the issue's resolution, adding it will continue to actively monitor the situation.
Japan's Metaplanet now holds over 1,000 bitcoin
Japanese investment company Metaplanet has invested another $10.4 million in bitcoin, bringing its total holdings to 1,018.17 BTC, valued at around $70 million.
- The Tokyo-listed firm has been actively increasing its bitcoin reserves since designating the foremost cryptocurrency as a strategic treasury reserve asset in May.
- The latest acquisition makes it "one of the largest corporate holders of bitcoin in Asia," according to Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich.
- Metaplanet has funded the bitcoin purchases via capital market activities and operational income, including a $66 million stock offering last week, seeing its share price surge over 500% year-to-date.
Marc Andreessen shoutouts help AI-powered VC fund ai16z to nearly $100 million market cap
The newly launched, AI-powered VC fund "ai16z" reached nearly a $100 million market cap over the weekend after a shoutout from the unaffiliated a16z partner on which it's modeled, Marc Andreessen.
- It's the most successful fundraiser to come out of the decentralized platform Daos.fun, a sort of hedge fund version of the popular memecoin launcher Pump.fun, allowing users to fundraise and operate crypto investment funds in exchange for tokens.
- However, given the memetic nature of the tokens, they can trade at many multiples of the underlying net asset value of the fund they represent, with the ai16z token subsequently dropping dramatically to a current $38 million market cap, according to DEX Screener.
In the next 24 hours
- It's quiet on the economic calendar front.
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Disclaimer: Larry Cermak, CEO of The Block, also invested in the Patron NFT sale.
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