FTX Billion Dollar Reboot

📢 Sponsor | 💡 Telegram | 📰 Past Editions

Good Morning,

Happy Eid to those who are celebrating 🐐

Crypto markets are slightly up, FTX ponders a reboot, and Compound’s Founder Robert Leshner is so sick of Azuki’s new NFTs that he’s starting a new company (that’s our word, not him!)

In Today's Email:

• What Matters: FTX reboot coming? 🤖

• Founders-Investors Highlight: Hootie of Hash3 📈

• Deal Flows: Mythical Games $37M Series C 💸

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

This spot could be your company - in front of thousands of web3 builders and investors! We are looking for early sponsorship partners. Fill out this form and we'll get in touch :)

WHAT MATTERS

FTX Initiates Discussions for a Reboot

State of play: FTX's CEO, John J. Ray III, has announced that FTX intends to reboot its flagship international crypto exchange and has already commenced soliciting interested parties for the relaunch.

• FTX is in talks with investors for backing the restart through structures including a joint venture.

• FTX may rebrand and compensate certain customers with stakes in the reorganized entity.

• Blockchain firm Figure has expressed interest in providing support for the potential restart

The investigation led by the new FTX’s CEO finds new details on how FTX spent customer funds without their knowledge:

• The investigation finds that FTX made multimillion-dollar investments ranging from Robinhood Markets to Modulo Capital, a crypto hedge fund started by SBF’s associates.

• The forensic audit of FTX’s assets identified a shortfall of around $9B owed to customers.

• FTX has received approval to sell LedgerX for $50M and Embed for 0.4% of its purchase price.

Why it matters: Post FTX collapse, Binance dominates — and less competition is never good for the end consumers, especially if that monopoly is also under massive regulatory scrutiny.

• The space is lacking a legitimate offshore exchange with tight spread, exotic products, and a global user base.

• The rebooted FTX might be able to fill that space.

For builders and investors: The best thing that can emerge out of all the mess in the past year, both for builders and investors, is strict regulation for CEXs to segregate customer accounts, and disclose conflict of interests.

• All the problems could’ve been prevented if user accounts and the exchange’s own accounts are by law separated + the public knows the extent of the exchange’s own internal market making firm.

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Hootie Rashidifard, Founder of Hash3

Hootie Rashidifard is the Founder and Managing Partner of Hash3, a global pre-seed/seed stage crypto fund.

• Hash3 is a $29M seed stage crypto fund, with a $250k-1M check size.

• Hash3 has made ten investments so far, including Ajna.finance, Crossmint, and EigenLayer.

• Has3’s largest focus area is infra/middleware.

Previous backgrounds: Hootie graduated from Northwestern University with a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics.

• He spent five years from 2017-2022 at Canaan Partners, a $7B AUM early-stage fund, where he was investing in crypto and fintech.

The big idea: Decentralization and user-owned networks will define the next wave of technology development and adoption.

• Through Hash3, he is partnering with passionate entrepreneurs striving to architect the future digital landscape.

Take a peek at our new referral reward at the bottom of this issue. Share this newsletter and receive our list of 100 smart crypto investors' wallet addresses 👇

INSIGHTS

Defi Mochi Drama

@0ctoshi shared his investigation on @defi_mochi act of promoting several ‘rugs’ in June 2023 and the end of May 2023.

• On 21st and 26th of June, @defi_mochi promoted $PNP while actually selling it at the same date totalling 4 ETH and ~$17K USDC.

• On 22nd June, she also promoted $LVL while selling $8K worth of it.

• On 19th June, she promoted $LBR while swapping it to 7.6 ETH.

Be careful with what you see out there.

Thread writers are allowed to promote projects with proper disclosures, even in the unlikely scenario that the project is a rug — but front-running or dumping your followers is a different kind of shady.

DEAL FLOWS

Mythical Games $37M Series C Round

Deal flows soared this week 📉 — we saw $110M+ in deals.

$37M to build an in-game marketplace. Mythical Games is planning to launch a new marketplace and pursue other revenue-generating initiatives with the newly raised funds.

• Mythical will hold its unicorn status, with a valuation of over $1B.

• Mythical expects an additional $20–$30M raise in the coming months, when the full round is expected to close.

• The funds will be used to develop an in-game marketplace for its other title NFL Rivals, which recently hit over 1M downloads.

The round was led by Scytale Digital with participation from ARK Invest, Animoca Brands, MoonPay, and others — alongside previous investors Andreessen Horowitz, WestCap, Gaingels, Signum Growth and Struck Capital.

Deal flows in the past week:

• MetaBlaze, $4M Presale Round

• AlloyX, $2M Pre-Seed Round

• Mind Network, $2.5M Seed Round

• Startale Labs, $3.5M Seed Round

• Pixion Games, $5.5M Seed Round

• One Trading, $33M Series A Round

• Mythical Games, $37M Series C+

• Hash3, $29M Crypto Fund

• Hook, $3M Investment from Collab+Currency and Lattice

• Elysium Technology Group, Undisclosed $ Acquisition

• XPLA, Undisclosed $ Closed Round

QUICK BITES

• Fidelity refiles for spot Bitcoin ETF.

• FTX begins talks on reboot.

• Binance’s Yi He speaks out amidst regulatory scrutiny.

• Coinbase claims that SEC has no jurisdiction over cryptos on its platforms.

• Cboe amends filing for Ark’s Bitcoin ETF to include Blackrock-like feature.

• CFTC to discuss DeFi, DAOs and more.

• Coinbase International nears $900M in volume.

• Robert Leshner starts Superstate, a new company on the RWA space.

• King Charles approves UK crypto and stablecoin rules.

MEME & NOTEWORTHY READS

• Ann’s read on building too much on infrastructure.

• Molly White’s read on FTX spaghetti.

• Bridget Harris’ read on shared sequencers.

If you enjoy reading this issue, please consider subscribing. It takes 1 minute of your time but it would mean the world to us 🙇

Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.