Silicon Valley Funding News - Week of January 31, 2022. FTX US Raised $400M Series A led by SoftBank and Temasek

Happy Chinese New Year of the Tiger! 

Here's some great reads for this week:

• Venture Capital - Chris and I were featured on the Acquired podcast show this week.  It was super fun talking with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal  walking down memory lane on our stories meeting Solana Labs, FTX, China 🇨🇳 #crypto scene, winter, #web3, 500 Startups, lessons learned and more. WAGMI ❤️ Check it out. 
• Crypto gaming - Are play-to-earn (P2E) games pyramid schemes? The short answer is mostly yes. It depends on the details of each game and its underlying game economy. Crypto games like Axie Infinity is really a pyramid scheme and raised $152M from a16z. The only way for pay-to-earn (P2E) players to sustainably get money out of the game is for an external income stream (unrelated to P2E) to feed money into the game. Great article on how P2E game can be economically sustainable.
• DAO - Decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is like a digital LLC.  All the transactions (purchases and ownership) in a DAO are recorded on a blockchain. Members of a DAO typically receive a “non-fungible token” or NFT in return for their investment. Holding an NFT means you are recognized as a member of a DAO and therefore eligible to vote on how it should be managed. Learn more by listening to All You Need to Know About DAOs podcast by Jason Choi.
• China - Hillhouse led the Chinese IPO leaderboard for 2021 with 32 IPOs. Sequoia China, SZVC (Shenzhen) tied at 23.
• Hong Kong has introduced some of the strictest entry rules and stiffest quarantines in the world, allowing only residents to return to the city and mandatory hotel quarantine of up to three weeks for arrivals from most countries, regardless of vaccination status, paid for by the travelers themselves. As a result, more than 75,000 people have left the city and more expats are thinking of leaving. Global banks, asset managers and corporate law firms are facing talent crunch.

This week a total of 38 startups raised $1.8001B in funding, 1 M&As:

• $381.3M goes to 13 Enterprise startups
• $97M goes to 3 FinTech startups
• $410M goes to 2 Crypto startups
• $65M goes to 2 HR startups
• $76.3M goes to 4 Marketplace startups
• $110M goes to 1 Edtech startup
• $39M goes to 1 Logistics startup
• $74M goes to 2 Automotive startups
• $21.5M goes to 1 Robotics startup
• $5.3M goes to 1 FoodTech startup
• $402.7M goes to 5 BioTech startups
• $40M goes to 1 Healthcare startup
• $50M goes to 1 Hardware startup
• $28M goes to 1 Other startup