Quick take:
- Animoca Brands recently led three funding round within the NFT and GameFi space.
- Founder Yat Siu has expressed his desire to onboard more brands into the open metaverse by financing Web3 projects.
- On Thursday, he asked Jack Dorsey not to dismiss Web3 and instead help shape it to keep it open, decentralised and equitable.
Animoca Brands this week continued with its growing investment in Web3 projects, particularly in NFTs marketplaces and GameFi. The company raised $359 million from venture capitalists last month to bring Web3 to the masses through the open metaverse.
In keeping his commitment to the goal, Animoca Brands’ founder Yat Siu recently challenged Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Block Inc., formerly Square to not dismiss Web3 and instead help shape it to keep it open, decentralised and equitable.
In a recent interview with Business Insider, Siu told the publisher that Dorsey taking a back seat in the Web3 boom is not “the Jack that I think we thought we knew”.
Block Inc. was an earlier adopter of cryptocurrency payments in the mainstream financial services industry before the likes of PayPal stepped in.
However, its founder Dorsey called Web3 a venture capitalist plaything in December sparking reactions of Web3 investors.
Dorsey has participated in several Web3 fundraising campaigns but his comments could suggest he thinks it is a tool that VCs are using to boost their egos.
If that turns out to be true, then Yat Siu would be somewhere near the top given the investments his company has made in the space.
On Tuesday, Animoca led a $10 million funding round for Ucollex, a Hong Kong-based NFT marketplace that focuses on arts and pop culture collections.
Commenting on his company’s involvement, Siu said in a statement that press release that he was “pleased to lead the funding round because it will make it easier for intellectual properties to participate in the open metaverse.”
His company had earlier led another $5 million private round for Cradles, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by DRepublic.
The metaverse-based game will use NFT staking, allowing layers to formulate their own custom NFTs.
Siu’s company also joined Coinbase Ventures and Crypto.com to lead another $3.6 million funding round for NFT analytics platform BitsCrunch.
The Munich-based platform wants to make buying NFTs easier by providing actionable NFT insights and safeguards, thus helping buyers to avoid falling into traps set by scammers.
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