Crypto has been shakier than a highly caffeinated Shakin’ Stevens operating a jackhammer these past few months. But tell that to Animoca Brands and Multicoin Capital, which both have big funding news this week.

Bear market? What bea… okay, yeah, we’ll can the cliché – it’s still a brutal bear market bordering on crypto winter. But at least this shows that big VCs are still as focused as ever on “buidling” up the industry.

 

Animoca Brands hits $5.9 billion valuation

The Hong Kong-based, formerly ASX-listed, blockchain-games-developing and investment powerhouse Animoca Brands has secured US$75 million in a funding round that values company at a whopping US$5.9 billion.

The Animoca raise is the second tranche of the roughly US$359 million funding it announced in January. The eye-catching part about that is, it gives the company close to another billion dollars in valuation compared with six months ago.

Investors in this round include Liberty City Ventures, Kingsway Capital, Alpha Wave Ventures, 10T, SG Spring Limited Partnership Fund, Generation Highway Ltd, Cosmic Summit Investments Limited, and others.

Animoca, which is the company behind highly valued The Sandbox (SAND) metaverse game project, will reportedly be using the capital to advance the “open metaverse” through strategic acquisitions, product development and IP licences.

The company also plans to bolster the promotion of digital property rights with the funding.

“Digital property rights represent a society-defining generational shift that impacts everyone online and will set the stage for the emergence of the open metaverse,” said co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands Yat Siu in a statement, adding:

“We are deeply honoured to continue to enjoy strong support from investors as we work to solidify the leadership position of Animoca Brands in the Web3 industry and in the field of true digital ownership.”

Animoca’s funding and expansion ventures have been a highlight of the crypto-gaming boom late last year and into this year. For instance, in April the firm purchased noted video game publishers Eden Games and Darewise Entertainment, as well as acquiring a large stake in the Aussie digital marketing firm Be Media.

 

Multicoin Capital’s $430m venture fund for startups

Crypto-focused VC firm Multicoin Capital is also giving bears a “talk to the hand”. It’s just announced a huge US$430 million fund for investing in crypto startups.

According to an announcement, the new fund is called Venture Fund III and will pump US$500k-$25m into early-stage crypto opportunities and up to about US$100m+ for later-stage projects. The latter grouping will be themed around businesses focused on data-aggregating decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs), open finance, Web3 infrastructure, social consumer products, and more.

“We’ve been investing in crypto for about five years now, and have watched innovation slowly move up the stack,” reads the Multicoin release. “While we continue to make deep tech and infrastructure investments, we are spending an increasing percentage of our time on things that directly face consumers and that are poised to reshape massive consumer-facing markets.”

The statement later signed off with a favourite crypto-industry catchcry… “LFG”.

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