Crypto Winter Watch, Bankruptcies, Layoffs | Multicoin's New Mega Fund

FOLLOWING VOYAGER’S FOOTSTEPS

Celsius Network filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late Wednesday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York. The initial filing estimated Celsius’ assets and liabilities both between $1 billion and $10 billion and lists more than 100,000 creditors. Among them are Pharos USD Fund, with over $81 million owed and billionaire FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research, which is owed almost $13 million. Celsius’ crypto mining unit was also included in the bankruptcy, only months after it had filed paperwork for an initial public offering.

In an accompanying blog post, the embattled lender said it halted withdrawals last month to prevent “certain customers—those who were first to act”—from being paid in full “while leaving others behind to wait for Celsius to harvest value from illiquid or long-term asset deployment activities before their receive a recovery.” A few hours prior to the announcement, Celsius had repaid its last debt associated with decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, reclaiming a combined $1 billion of collateral.  

NFT BUYERS UNSWOON IN JUNE  

Buyers returned to the non-fungible token (NFT) market last month even as prices extended their decline, a new report from blockchain analytics firm Nansen shows. Following a series of NFT events and conferences in the past month, the number of monthly returning NFT buyers on the Ethereum blockchain bounced back to 45,000 in June after seeing less than 35,000 in May. Nansen also credits a series of free minting events, also called AirDrops, as a reason for the increased activity. AirDrops are often used by new collections as a way to gain initial consumers and build their user base. However, the report points to limited liquidity in the NFT market as a sign that June’s participation uptrend may not sustain.

Source: Forbes Digital Assets, powered by Nomics.  Prices as of 4:00 p.m. on July 14, 2022.

MULTICOIN LAUNCHES $430 MILLION FUND

The Austin, Texas-based investment firm is making its biggest foray into small blockchain and crypto investing, with a new $430 million venture fund that has it looking past the current bear market. Notably, the two largest investors in the vehicle are Multicoin’s founders, Tushar Jain and Kyle Samani, themselves. The fund, dubbed Venture Fund III, disclosed investments from at least 321 sources.

According to the announcement, it aims to put $500,000-$25 million in early-stage opportunities, but potentially up to $100 million for more mature projects as well. Multicoin may also deploy additional funds from its multi-billion-dollar evergreen liquid fund for these larger investments. The company offered a $100 million Venture Fund II last year, which made winning bets on Solana and crypto exchange FTX, among others.

BLOCKCHAIN 50 SPOTLIGHT

Providence: In 2019, Providence, a not-for-profit Catholic health system, acquired Seattle health-tech startup Lumedic. The prize? Lumedic’s blockchain, which helps solve time-consuming administrative problems like “prior authorization”—when a doctor needs to check with a patient’s insurer to ensure certain surgeries or medications will be covered. In 2021, 16 of Providence’s hospitals and four clinics in Washington, Montana and Oregon were using its shared ledger to speed up prior-authorization processing time to hours from days. Last year, more than 40,000 treatments were processed on Lumedic’s blockchain.  

ELSEWHERE

Three Arrows Founders’ Whereabouts Unknown, Liquidators Say [Bloomberg]

StarkWare Confirms Long-Rumored StarkNet Token [CoinDesk]

Polygon Among Six Web3 Projects Selected for Disney Accelerator [Decrypt] 

Michael del Castillo
Senior Editor 
Forbes Digital Assets

Nina Bambysheva
Reporter
Forbes Money & Markets

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