FinTech news in Alexis Ohanian category

Then we have GPs of global VC funds like Ribbit Capital’s Micky Malka, Hustle Fund’s Elizabeth Yin, Sebastes Capital’s Jason Fish, a16z’s David Haber, Y Combinator’s Michael Seibel, 776’s Alexis Ohanian, Bonow Ventures’ Tilo Bonow, Precursor Ventures’ Charles Hudson, Better Tomorrow Ventures’ Sheel Mohnot, Broadhaven Ventures’ Michael Sidgmore, etc.; Web 2.0 and web3 operators; local and international HNIs; sport and entertainment icons; and PAVE Investments (the anchor LP in Microtraction Fund I), which has committed $1.5 million into the community fund. Microtraction, an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in African startups at the pre-seed stage, is announcing that it has reached the first close of its second fund, Microtraction Community Limited. The LPs in this community fund include 30+ venture-backed founders of African companies like Helicarrier’s Ire Aderinokun, Paystack’s Shola Akinlade, Cowrywise’s Razaq Ahmed, 54gene’s Francis Osifo, Paga’s Jay Alabraba, Spleet’s Tola Adesanmi, Float’s Jesse Ghansah. Microtraction is also venturing into the web3 space by setting up a community vehicle (akin to a DAO) where social tokens will be used to incentivize and gamify the experience of members who provide value-add and support to the fund and founders.

Binance said in a press release that Lame will apply this TikTok format to videos about web3, trying to simplify complex concepts for his followers.

Curio taps into several different sources of data to provide a powerful analytics tool for both browsing and tracking the value of NFTs. Cofounders Chrys Bader and Sean Dadashi started working on Curio about two years ago, but it wasn’t called Curio back then.

Americana Technologies, a startup founded early last year by designer Jake Frey, allows brands and creators to turn physical items such as streetwear, collectibles, cars and artworks into NFTs.

Multimillion dollar monkey pictures and monkey money are likely not the future you were expecting to capture the undivided attention of Silicon Valley VCs, but Yuga Labs hopes that the new game and token will inspire a mainstream crypto economy built around their their IP, which further expanded last week to include the highly valued CryptoPunks and Meebits NFT collections after Yuga acquired the assets from Larva Labs.

The fund is backed by a who’s who of crypto investors, with LPs including a sizable chunk of a16z’s investing team.

Rainbow, a crypto startup building a mobile wallet app that allows users to interact with decentralized applications on the Ethereum blockchain, wants to be the app users download to tap into that future.

With big-name backers like The Chainsmokers, Alexis Ohanian, Mark Cuban and Snoop Dogg, Pearpop is launching Pearproof, a web3 app that allows creators to mint NFTs of their social media posts.

Companies within the 776 portfolio include Alt, an alternative asset trading platform; Pipe, a global trading platform that makes recurring revenue streams tradable for their annual value; Axie Infinity, a web3 play-to-earn online gaming universe that witnessed over 200x growth in the last year; and Metafy, a video game education platform providing one-on-one access to champion-level gaming coaches. When launching 776’s first fund, the firm said explicitly that it sought a diverse investor base, of which 50% identified as female and 15% as Black or Indigenous people. Seven Seven Six, better known as 776, announced today that it has closed on $500 million across two vehicles for its second fund. The most recent survey revealed that 51% of 776’s LPs identify as female, 13% as Black or Indigenous people and 10% as Latino/a/e.