Monthly Mint — 03.2024
A curated selection of hires and promotions from across crypto and web3. If you would like to sign up to receive this newsletter, please visit our website.
We’re Following
It’s no secret that the 90s were trending these last few years. Scrunchies, high-waisted jeans 👖and the Full House remake should have been your first clues. But in the midst of the comeback, one trend reigns supreme — PUNK rock, baby 👅🤘🏽.
Earlier this month, two alien Cryptopunks sold for a combined 9,350 ETH or more than $32M. Those punks might look a little blue, but we guarantee the sellers aren’t.🩵 Despite showing Punk 3100 in his profile photo on X shortly after the sale, the buyer was not, in fact, Alexandre Arnault. Luckily, Arnault’s jewelry-making skills are way-better than his sense of humor…Hopefully, he’s still representing with his Tiffany Punk pendant at Rex Club 🤩. Haven’t you checked your Coachella ticket yet? NFTs are back, and we’re ready for it. 💥
🌡️ On the heels of Bitcoin’s resurgence, ETH fever dominated the news these last few weeks. On March 13th, the Dencun upgrade was officially rolled out on Ethereum mainnet, yielding lower gas fees on L2s and giving us a whole lot of zany lingo — Proto-Danksharding…really? 🤭 Although an SEC decision on the Blackrock Ethereum ETF was unsurprisingly delayed 💤, we did get to welcome the asset management giant’s new real-world asset (RWA) tokenization fund on Ethereum. The ticker BUIDL echoes HODL, so we’re already big fans. 😏👏🏽
Over in fundraising land, startups are raising, funders are funding, and 📚 academia finally seems to think we have our s*** together. Welcome to the pearly gates of HBS case study heaven! We made it, friends 🙌🏻. Across the pond, crypto payments startup Baanx raised a $20M Series A. 🦄 Open-source cryptography firm Zama raised a $73 million Series A 😲. Berachain joined the Unicorn club with a $69M round led by Brevan Howard and Framework. And Mike Cagney of SoFi fame is raising again — $60M to build an ‘everything marketplace’ for blockchain-native assets.
Equity rounds not your thing? Never fear, convertible bonds are here! Taking a page out of Michael Saylor’s book, Coinbase upsized their convertible bond offering to $1.1B, and institutional investors were so hungry for the bonds that the company is only paying a 25 bp coupon. Like the proverb says, you’re only worth as much as you can borrow. 💸
🍣 Cheersing with sushi on FTX rugs,
The Intersection Crew
We’re Backing
This month we chatted with our mate BORED, aka @BoredElonMusk. With 1.6 million Twitter followers, BORED is one of the world’s most successful, hyper-connected and consistently entertaining pseudonymous influencers. He is currently launching Edison, a startup that is pioneering massive multiplayer events.
You’ve amassed more than 1.6 million followers on Twitter as a pseudonymous personality. How did you get here?
It all started in 2013 when Elon Musk released a 40-page whitepaper with instructions on how to build a high-speed underground train called the “Hyperloop.” Basically, while working on cars, space, and energy, he had enough time to come up with another substantial idea during his downtime. I took that premise and made it more silly…what else does he think about when he’s in the shower or on the toilet…when he’s bored? The character was born, and I spent many years after that coming up with silly and over-complicated ideas to solve everyday problems. The account caught fire in Silicon Valley and consistency from me kept it going. Eventually, I got tired of playing a character, so I transitioned away from being a character, and now Bored Elon is really just “me.”
What does being pseudonymous unlock as a creator?
Using your real identity can, paradoxically, make you afraid to be yourself, to take risks that might make you look stupid, or to try new things. The problem is that trying things with a high likelihood of failure is synonymous with being a creator or a founder; building a company or creating something is inherently high-risk/ high-reward.
This is something I personally experienced — I was a bit more willing to try stuff and look dumb with a pseudonym, and most of the things I tried would fail. But once in a while, something would work out, and that only happened because I was more willing to experiment.
You began the Bored persona as a parody of Elon. He’s a mega-polarizing figure, but clearly fond of internet culture and a self-described meme-lord. Have you had direct interaction? Do you know if he’s a fan?
Never in my wildest dreams did I think the guy who I started to parody would eventually buy the social network that I built my presence on. To quote him though, “the most entertaining outcome is also the most likely.” He has tweeted at me a couple of times including one clearly satirical post where he “admitted” that Bored was his secret troll account. This was very clearly a lie, but a lot of people to this day still think that I’m him. But I’ll count the gesture as him being a fan.
As someone who traffics in memes and online culture, what’s your view on memecoins? Speculative foolishness that enables bad actors or something to celebrate?
Human history has been rife with speculation. We like gambling. It all has to do with our stupid cavemen days and getting reinforcement that taking risk (trying to hunt dangerous animals) can result in rewards (you get to eat and probably go make babies because you brought home things to eat). So now instead of hunting animals, we expel a different form of energy on getting more of that energy (more money). Is trying to kill a wildebeest with a spear really any dumber than trading a memecoin called $DeadWilde69? Not really. That said, I do think that people are going way too far with it and not spending more of their mental energy on things that will be far more fulfilling.
What are you working on now?
My latest venture is called Edison, a platform that creates and hosts Massive Multiplayer Events. Think of it as one-off video games that take place in the metaverse, sort of like a concert where you play along with the person on stage. I’m the founder and CEO, and I’m running it as Bored! So far we’ve launched 5 of these events and are looking to bring some of the most notable people on the internet into our network. Ultimately what we’re creating is a new kind of content, one in which you have a deeper connection with fellow community members, hosts, and even the virtual objects and environments you encounter.
Meta rebranded in ’21 but the company seems to have shifted focus to AI. Why have metaverses caught on slower than Zuckerberg and others thought they would?
Most people attempting to create a metaverse have focused on recreating the real world, but in a digital format. That’s boring. In a digital universe, you can do anything and be anyone. It should be an exaggeration of what reality is; it should be gamified, and it should be something that is easily accessible (read: does not require a set of big heavy goggles on your face). I firmly believe that the next iteration of the internet is what the actual metaverse will look like. A 3D immersive version of what we already experience today in 2D. Social connectivity, commerce, love, hate, play, entertainment, education and cats. So many cats.
What’s the most exciting web3 game at the moment? Do you see any of the big studios making another serious crack at on-chain gaming?
I spent a decade in the video game industry. My big takeaway is that players are happy to spend money on digital things they can’t touch or see in the real world. To the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars each year. Is it important for them to feel ownership over those things the same way they own a Pokemon Card? Thus far the answer has largely been “no” because web3 games have not been able to command enough of a player base or attention to compete with incumbent/legacy gaming IP. But I believe the premise that people want to own their digital goods is still true, and it’s really just a matter of when not if. In the meantime, I’m building my own company to enable web3 elements, but not force it on anyone not ready for it.
We’re Tracking
Alchemy: Richard Cho joined as Head of People. Richard was previously Executive Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Charlie Health. Link
Algorand: Marc Vanlerberghe joined as Chief Marketing Officer. We’re grateful for our partnership with Staci Warden and the rest of the Algorand team on this project. Link
Alluvial: Evan Thomas joined as General Counsel. Evan was previously Head of Legal for Crypto at Wealthsimple. Link
Anchorage: TuongVy Le joined as General Counsel. TuongVy was previously Partner and Head of Regulatory and Policy at Bain Capital Crypto. Link
Backpack: Oliver Sleafer was promoted from Head of Treasury to Chief Financial Officer. Link
Circle: Sunil Sharma was promoted from Senior Director to Vice President of Product Management. Link
Crypto.com: Ryan Fennelly joined as Global Head of OTC Sales and Trading. Ryan was previously Head of OTC Sales and Trading for EMEA at Abra. Link
Fireblocks: Michal Ferguson joined as Chief Marketing Officer. Michael was previously Head of Global Demand at Snyk. Link
Haun Ventures: Diogo Mónica joined as General Partner. Diogo was previously Co-Founder and President of Anchorage. Link
Optimism: Sam McIngvale joined as Head of Product. Sam was previously a Co-Founder of Turnkey. Amanda Jacobson joined as Head of Marketing. Amanda was previously a Community Director at Polygon Labs. Link
Prometheum: Albert Meo joined as Chief Financial Officer. Albert was previously Executive Director of Regulatory Policy at Morgan Stanley. Link
Intersection Growth Partners is the leading executive search firm in crypto and frontier fintech. We connect our clients with game-changing talent and invest our own capital for true alignment.
