$400M LedgerPrime Reboots

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Good Morning.

ETHDenver is underway and unlike other conferences in the past, numbers are still going up. Jinx. Spot Bitcoin ETFs continue to break records with new brokerages including BofA, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley considering supporting the ETFs. Higher.

In Today's Email:

• What Matters: LedgerPrime reboots 🔄

• Founders Highlight: Sascha of Parallel 🔀

• Deal Flows: Avail $27M seed round 💰️ 

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WHAT MATTERS

FTX-linked LedgerPrime Reboots

State of play: Following FTX’s bankruptcy, crypto hedge fund LedgerPrime is restarting under a new name, MNNC Group.

• MNNC Group has 11 staffers mostly from LedgerPrime, including including Shiliang Tang, the ex-Chief Investment Officer.

• Bloomberg reports that MNNC has raised an undisclosed amount of money from backers, including those who invested in LedgerPrime.

• MNNC is registered in Cayman Island.

• LedgerPrime once managed up to $400 million, averaging around 40% in annual returns.

• Earlier this year, other LedgerPrime alumni Zaheer Ebtikar and Michael Churchouse launched Split Capital.

Why it Matters: This is a sign that capital is starting to come back to the markets with LPs becoming more interested in crypto as an asset class once again.

For builders and investors: The time to sprint hard and build (for both founders and investors) is now.

• Like Naval once said: “Work like a lion, not a cow.” — now is the time to hunt really hard, and we’ll rest in the next bear market. Cheers

BUILDER-INVESTOR HIGHLIGHT

Sascha Darius Mojtahedi of Parallel

Intro: Sascha Darius Mojtahedi is the founder of Parallel, a sci-fi-based competitive card game where players build decks and face off, bank energy, and build armies to decide the fate of humanity.

• He is also the co-founder of a creative studio called Night Mission Studio.

• He is now also serving as an advisor at Blimp Homes, a platform for real estate professionals to connect and collaborate.

Previous background: Sascha started his career at TD’s Digital Channels and worked there for 8 years, TD is the sixth largest bank in North America. From 2014 to 2020, he served as the CEO of Bunz, an online trading platform.

The big idea: Sascha through Parallel is focused on integrating blockchain with entertainment, offering users ownership in the digital worlds they enjoy.

Take a peek at our referral reward at the bottom of this issue. Share this newsletter and receive our list of 500 crypto VC individuals 👇

INSIGHTS

Professional Crypto Trader Math

Credits to @jvb_xyz for the original tweet. 

Jonah a.k.a @jvb_xyz explains in a thread why quitting a traditional finance job to trade crypto professionally is highly unwise.

Here is the summary of his take:

• Leaving a traditional finance job to trade crypto professionally is highly discouraged due to the complex challenges and financial limitations faced in institutional crypto trading.

• Hedge funds and investment firms impose strict risk controls, and high costs, and limit the potential for high returns, making it difficult to achieve significant profits.

• Personal crypto investments can be far more lucrative without institutional constraints.

• He gives an example where even if you perfectly timed a $35M Bitcoin investment at its lowest, your outstanding move wouldn't save you from being fired multiple times due to institutional constraints,

• Jonah advises earning money through other means and investing personally in crypto rather than pursuing a career as a professional crypto trader.

DEAL FLOWS

Avail $27M Seed Round

Deal flows remain steady this week, we saw $90M+ in deals 💼

Avail announced on Monday that it raised $27M in a seed round led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Dragonfly Capital, with additional participation from SevenX, Figment, Nomad Capital, and others.

Avail will use the fund to build Avail Trinity, a three-phase roadmap aimed at unifying multiple ecosystems in web3:

• Avail DA: the core layer offering extensive storage for rollups to create a robust ecosystem.

• Avail Nexus: A unifying layer for rollups across systems, anchored in Avail DA for cross-web3 coordination.

• Avail Fusion Security: Enhances security across rollups and blockchains, leveraging tokens from established ecosystems like BTC and ETH.

Deal flows in the past week:

• FortyTwo, $1M Seed Round

• Sphere, $2.8M Seed Round

• ContributionDAO, $2.8M Seed Round

• Talus, $3M Seed Round

• Geodnet, $3.5M Seed Round

• Validation Cloud, $5.8M Seed Round

• BounceBit, $6M Seed Round

• Initia, $7.5M Seed Round

• Avail, $27M Seed Round

• Delphinus Lab, Undisclosed $ Pre-Series A Round

• ether.fi, $27M Series A Round

• Babylon, Undisclosed $ Private Round

• Morpho Labs, Undisclosed $ Private Round

• Imaginary Ones, Undisclosed $ Private Round

• Humanity Protocol, Undisclosed $ Strategic Round

• Octav, $4M Strategic Round

QUICK BITES

• Nigeria detains Binance executives.

• Bitcoin ETFs hit a volume record of $7.6B.

• Binance recovered $4B in mishandled users’ funds.

• Ethereum devs debate the future of account abstraction.

• Robinhood integrates Arbitrum for low-fee token swaps.

• IOTA commits $10M for tokenization and trading startups.

• Gemini to return $1.1B to customers in New York settlement.

• Attorney Generals challenge SEC's authority in Kraken lawsuit.

• Morgan Stanley evaluating Bitcoin ETFs for its brokerage platform.

• US Government initiates $922M in BTC transfers from seized funds.

• HashKey OTC receives an in-principle Payment Institution License in Singapore.

• House Finance Committee votes to move forward with a measure to overturn SEC's custody bulletin.

NOTEWORTHY READS

• Boffin’s read on “what the futarchy.

• Emin Gun Sirer’s read on Avalanche’s roadmap.

• Gaby Goldberg’s read on making the internet alive again.

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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.