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Laser Digital, the crypto subsidiary of Japanese financial services giant Nomura, has appointed industry veteran Florent Jouanneau as a new partner in its venture capital business. The company plans to grow its venture capital arm despite shrinking industry-wide funding levels.

The appointment of Jouanneau brings Laser’s venture team size to a total of seven members, said Olivier Dang, the company’s general partner and head of ventures. Launched last fall, Laser Digital currently has about 65 employees and also runs asset management and trading services.

Jouanneau came to Laser from White Star Capital, a VC firm investing in web3 and DeFi startups. He was previously a structured credit and ABS trader at Bank of America, and has held roles in sales and trading at UBS and BPCE Group’s Natixis.

Laser’s ambition to expand its venture business comes with VC investments in web3 on the decline. Web3 venture funding dropped in the first quarter of this year, down 80% from the same period last year, according to data from K33 Research.

The Block Pro data also show that VC investment in web3 totaled $2.8 billion in the first quarter of this year, representing a sharp decline from $13.5 billion in the first quarter of last year.

“In 2022, we have seen a slowdown in the market, especially when 2021 was an incredible year in terms of fundraising with big institutions [participating],” Jouanneau told The Block in an interview.

Jouanneau said now is the “perfect time” to invest as “we are seeing a lot of valuations being dragged down by effectively the lack of capital to be deployed” — a common bear market narrative among crypto VCs. 

“From a risk-reward perspective and frankly from a VC perspective, it’s definitely a good time to invest and for institutions to invest in several VCs that are taking that view,” he added.

TradFi venturing into crypto

With an increasing number of traditional financial institutions including BlackRock showing interest in spot Bitcoin ETFs, Olivier Dang, Laser’s general partner and head of ventures, is hopeful that the crypto industry can mature.

“We fundamentally believe that more institutions will come into the space,” Dang said. “[This] will gradually increase the quality of the deal flow, [and] the quality of the transactions done on the venture side. On the asset management and trading side, we need more robust institutional-grade infrastructure to be able to support those institutions.”

Dang added Laser’s Nomura backing has helped gain trust among investors.

“People have not necessarily been comfortable investing into crypto funds or VC funds focusing on crypto because they may have had questions around the quality of their due diligence,” Dang said.

Raising third-party capital

With its fund currently backed exclusively by Nomura, Laser has now started to raise third-party capital, according to Dang. It has invested in early-stage startups that focus on DeFi, CeFi, web3 tooling and infrastructure. Its portfolio companies include DeFi protocol Infinity Exchange and the crypto trading firm CrossX.

Laser wouldn’t disclose the size of its fund, but Dang said for the rest of this year, the team aims to make another 10 investments in addition to the dozen or so deals it has completed so far.

“We see almost 100 deals per month, so we are extremely selective when it comes to assessment of those opportunities,” Dang said. 

“We tend to prioritize projects that are really focusing on institutional use cases,” he continued, adding that Laser stays away from projects that are “too focused on gaming and NFTs” as the team doesn’t know enough about the space to confidently invest in it. 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire touted the advantages of stablecoins over central bank digital currencies (CBDC), in an interview with South China Morning Post.

The CPI sank to 4% in May and has been trending downward, although the Federal Reserve seems likely to follow through on an intended rate hike later this month.

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Trying to pin down just how popular blockchain-powered video games are is still a bit of a head scratcher. But by just about any measure available, it appears the hotly-hyped, play-to-earn crypto game Axie Infinity is waning in popularity, and that’s despite a soft launch on Apple’s App Store in mid-May.

Instead of adding new gamers, Axie Infinity has lost more than 6,000 users in the past 30 days, according to the gaming data site Activeplayer.

Crypto researcher DappRadar appears to second the decline, publishing statistics showing the number of digital wallets engaging with the game have decreased by about 19%, also during the last 30 days. Transaction and trading volume are also both down about 30% during the last month, according to the site.

Another data source found on Dune Analytics paints a picture of meager growth, with the Axie Infinity dashboard suggesting that the game’s total user numbers have grown since the May launch, but by less than 7,000 gamers. And that is with the game becoming available to iPhone users in new territories including Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Venezuela, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Sky Mavis, the game’s developer, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

New beginning stalls

Nearly two months ago, Sky Mavis announced that the latest iteration of its game, ‘Axie Infinity: Origins,’ was launching on Apple’s App Store in select nations throughout Latin America and Southeast Asia. Sky Mavis hoped it would be a major step toward not only adding more users and going mainstream but also help the company shed its reliance on its main market, the Philippines.

While it does not track how many users are playing or have downloaded Axie Infinity, CryptoSlam! data is also able to provide insight into the game’s popularity by tallying the trading volume created by players buying and selling the in-game NFTs. In June, Axie Infinity NFT trading sank to $1.4 million from $2.1 million in May, according to CryptoSlam!.

At its height during the pandemic Axie Infinity monthly trading exceeded $700 million in single month.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The head of research for digital asset manager 3iQ wrote that the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is still riding tailwinds from multiple spot bitcoin ETF filings and other June events.

The new third-party payment service claims to be independent of the Damus iPhone app that Apple has tried to restrict, and lets users tip one another on any app that runs on the Nostr protocol.

Berenberg Capital Market’s bull case for Michael Saylor’s Microstrategy is underpinned by the upcoming Bitcoin halving, the firm said in a research note shared with The Block Monday. 

The equity research shop, which has a bullish price target of $430 for the Virginia-based software firm, said in the note that the firm derives most of its value from the more than 150,000 bitcoin it holds on its balance sheet, adding that it expects the historical trend of bitcoin rallying post-halving to play out again. 

Halving events reduce the rate of new coin issuance by 50%, effectively decelerating the pace at which new tokens enter the market. The fourth Bitcoin halving is expected to occur on April 26, 2024.

Pre-halving rally

“If the historical pattern established by the first three bitcoin halvings continues to play out with the fourth halving, then the pre-halving rally would begin about four months from now,” the firm wrote. “If a rally were to occur after the fourth halving, and if it were as long-lived as the rallies that occurred after the past couple of halvings, then it would continue until around October 2025.”

“If the fourth bitcoin halving features the kind of strong rally in the price of bitcoin that occurred prior to and following the first three halvings, then we believe it is likely that MSTR’s stock would rally along with it; the correlation between the company’s share price and the price of bitcoin is ~0.90,” the firm added.

Microstrategy is up more than 181% since the beginning of the year, according to TradingView. It increased 7% on Monday to close the day at $407.71.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The company had already angered the crypto community Monday with a service that unmasks anonymous crypto users. Then came allegations it used an easy-to-decipher method for hiding customers’ email addresses.

The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization could appreciate in price by nearly $100,000 by the end of 2024, according to financial services giant Standard Chartered Bank. 

In a Monday research report, the UK-based global banking giant said that it increased its bitcoin price target from $100,000 — which it forecasted in April — to $120,000. The firm said the price of bitcoin could increase to $50,000 by the end of 2023.

The report points to an increase in miner profitability as one potential tailwind that could trigger an appreciation in the price of the cryptocurrency. 

“The rationale here is that as well as maintaining the bitcoin ledger, miners play a key role in determining net supply of newly mined BTC,” said Geoff Kendrick, head of FX and digital assets research at the firm.

Bitcoin was trading up 2.3% to $30,865 Monday afternoon in New York, adding to gains since the beginning of the year that’s brought it to appreciate by about 48%, according to CoinGecko.  

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.