Some updates on our activities from the past month.
Summary
Winter is coming, but we keep growing. November was an insightful month for us. We launched our 3rd cohort of the Web3 VC Investment Analyst course and became mentors for a bunch of startups across Europe. Despite the electricity outages in Ukraine, our Research Department reviewed over 100 startups, using a pipeline strategy. While attending the 2022 Web Summit in Lisbon, we partnered with one of the biggest global organizations supporting Ukraine during the russian invasion. Also, we launched our charity NFT collection “Brave Cossacks” to increase awareness of the situation in Ukraine and support people who suffered from russian terrorism.
Team News
In November our team was among 71,000 attendees of Web Summit, which gathered tech industry professionals, startups and investors from 160 countries. Without a doubt, it was a wonderful experience of networking and meeting like-minded people, including Tim Draper, who shared some valuable insights into the venture capital industry. While in Lisbon, we also took part in Solana Breakpoint 2022, meeting mission-driven founders of Web3 startups. Some other events, that we attended in November were Techstars in Warsaw and Web3 Ukraine Startup Pitch Day organized by Kyiv Ethereum Community, where we have been mentors for early-stage ventures. With the launch of the 3rd cohort of our Web3 VC Investment Analyst course, we onboarded 18 talented interns, who might become our team members in the future.
Portfolio Updates
Huge milestone for our portfolio company, Agoric, as they launched the next phase of their mainnet. Now it provides a rich JavaScript stack for smart contracts allowing to build contracts using a composable toolkit. With this update, the fulfillment of the vision to be a JS framework for smart contracts becomes much closer.
Another project, we invested in, cross-chain communication layer 1 blockchain Umee, surpassed a number of 80M transactions and upgraded its native lending and borrowing module, compatible with blockchains of Cosmos ecosystem. Simply, with this update, the platform allows users to leverage all Cosmos and Ethereum assets quickly and cost-effectively on the Umee blockchain.
Industry Insights
During the last month, we prepared research articles on various sectors of the crypto industry.
The collapse of FTX exchange in November caused the most shocking bankruptcy of a custodian for the digital asset industry in history. Fueled by fear and disbelief in centralized entities BTC holders are flowing it out of exchanges at a rate of 172.7k BTC per month, eclipsing the previous peak set following the June 2022 sell-off. Meanwhile, stablecoins held across all exchange reserves reached a new all-time high of $41.18B, highlighting the favor of holding trustless BTC and ETH assets, rather than centrally issued stablecoins at this time. Over the last weeks, the market realized a net loss equal to -521k BTC, which is again close to the all-time largest recorded in history.
By the end of 2021, you could have heard about NFTs basically from every corner. The market was at its peak, and behind funny pictures of stylized monkeys and pixels, punks hid the capitalization of around $30 billion. But now, right in the middle of the bear market, there is nothing but silence. Instead of discussing brand new NFTs, people are arguing about the upcoming recession and the cap of the industry continues slowly melting before our eyes. This article aims to discover whether the industry could overcome all of the challenges of the bear market and recover to burst with an even more impressive performance on the new ATHs.
Angel Block is an innovative solution in the world of Web3 investing. DeFi protocol, which is aiming at solving the issues of fundraising for digital assets and making the process crypto-native. Focusing on simplicity of use, transparency, compliance, and decentralization, the AngelBlock team is creating a hybrid platform for multiple forms of fundraising, investor activity, and community building.