Profit Pulse: Crypto Chemistry

This week’s highlight covers Portal’s $34M seed round, which the company will use to continue building the first Bitcoin-based exchange that enables Layer 2 atomic swaps.

Table of Contents

• Profit Pulse: Crypto

  • Deal of the Week: Portal

  • Weekly Deal Flow Takeaways

    • Private Fundraises

    • M&A

    • Public/Fund Financings

Deal of the Week: Portal

• Portal’s $34M Seed Round

  • Founded: 2019

  • Team Size: 11-50 employees

  • Location: San Francisco

  • Chains: Bitcoin, ETH, and others

Problem: Cross-chain Bitcoin swapping relies on highly centralized, opaque and risky solutions like wrappers, bridges and custodians.

Solution: Portal is building a solution that will enable peer-to-peer swapping of Bitcoin across a range of blockchains

Core Differentiation: From their recent press release: “As a staking and swapping layer, interoperability layer and execution layer, Portal’s infrastructure will enable any user to swap Bitcoin across a range of blockchains and back in seconds without giving up custody, privacy or security.”

Upcoming roadmap items:

• Portal DEX: the first Bitcoin-based exchange that enables Layer 2 atomic swaps of cryptocurrencies across blockchains at greater speed, lower cost and with increased transparency, security and interoperability.

• Portal Wallet is a fully non-custodial tool that integrates Portal DEX and allows users to receive, store and send cryptocurrencies across blockchains.

• Given the company’s current job postings, we expect to see Portal making news in the Cosmos ecosystem sooner rather than later:

Weekly Deal Flow Takeaways

Fundraises: 9 deals; $80M identified
M&a: 1 deal; terms undisclosed
Public / Funds: 1 deals; $315M in new dry powder identified

Private Fundraises

Portal, a Bitcoin-based decentralized exchange, raised $34M in a round featuring Coinbase Ventures, Arrington Capital, OKX Ventures and Gate.io

Cube.Exchange, a hybrid crypto trading platform, raised $12M in a round led by 6th Man Ventures. Other investors included GSR Markets, ParaFi Digital, Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, and Everstake Capital.

Pixelmon, an NFT project with a hilariously underwhelming 2022 debut, raised $8M in a follow-on round that featured participation from Animoca Brands, Delphi Ventures Foresight Ventures, Amber Group, 9GAG Founder Ray Chan and Immutable Co-Founder Robbie Ferguson.

Mesh, a crypto transfer platform focused on enhancing security, raised $6.5M with participation from PayPal Ventures.

Gevulot, a Layer 1 blockchain using ZK proofs, raised $6M in a round led by Variant. Participating investors included RockawayX, Volt Capital, and Staking Facilities, as well as Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron and Manta Network founder Shumo Chu.

Saltwater, a Web3 gaming company, raised a $5.5M seed round led by Deus X and Fourth Revolution Capital.

Velar, a developer of decentralized finance tools for Bitcoin, raised $3.5M.

BBO Exchange, a decentralized derivatives exchange, raised $2.7M in a pre-seed round led by Hashed and Arrington Capital. Participating investors included Consensys, CMS Holdings, Flow Traders, Manifold Trading, Mask Network, and Nomura's Laser Digital.

Bitflow Labs, a Bitcoin DeFi company, raised $1.3M in a round led by Portal Ventures. Participating investors included Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Bitcoin Startup Lab, Big Brain Holdings, Newman Capital, Genblock Capital, Tykhe Block Ventures, and more.

M&A

Ionic Digital acquired Celsius' Bitcoin mining assets and plans to go public.

Public/Fund Financings

Uncorrelated Ventures raised $315M for its newest fund.

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