Monthly Mint — 04.2024
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
We all know that “April showers bring May flowers,” 🌷 but we didn’t expect it to be quite so metaphorical this time around… Earlier this month, the SEC officially rained on the parade of every crypto startup looking to make a difference in this world. ⛈️ On April 10th, Uniswap received a Wells Notice from the SEC, a preliminary warning of impending law enforcement action 🧑🏽⚖️ and a move we saw used against Coinbase just last year. So what did we learn this month? We can finally use soap 🧼on our cast iron pans, but we still can’t build new financial infrastructure on American soil. We hear you loud and clear, Gary. 🫡 #FightingforDeFi
In other metaphorical precipitation news, VCs made it rain 💸 this month on web3 and crypto startups. On the back of a 53% jump in month-over-month venture funding in March, we saw a host of new companies receiving cash infusions from top crypto investors. 💰 Ellipsis Labs, the company behind the Phoenix Exchange, raised a $20M Series A from Paradigm, Electric Capital and others. IoTeX, a DePIN modular Web3 infrastructure platform, announced a $50M investment into the IoTeX ecosystem from a plethora of DeFi investors. Liquid restaking protocol Puffer raised $18M from the likes of Brevan Howard and Electric Capital. ⚡ Blockchain developer Monad Labs raised a whopping $225M round led by Paradigm, who itself is rumored to be raising up to an $850M fund, 😱the industry’s largest since the crypto winter slump.
⚖️ Balancing out the less-than-stellar regulatory news this month, we saw numerous exciting product launches in the web2 x web3 space. Jack Dorsey’s Block (fka Square) is expanding its bitcoin mining operations — they’re now designing chips and developing a full bitcoin mining system for retail. ⛏️ Nobody should ever question Jack’s commitment to BTC!
Not to be outdone by its fellow one-name fintech infrastructure peer, Stripe announced that it will start supporting global USDC payments as early as this Summer (instant on-chain settlement and conversion to fiat across Solana, Ethereum and Polygon). 🎮 Coincidentally launching on the same day as the Fallout TV series — which we highly, highly recommend — Sui released its handheld gaming device with native web3 capabilities. 🍗 Shake and bake, baby. Fintech, gaming and crypto are cooking. 🔥
💐Cheers to fewer showers & more flowers,
The Intersection Crew
We’re Backing
This month we sat with Robert Materazzi, CEO of Lukka. Founded in 2014, Lukka is a crypto data platform that has raised $200m+ from a gold-plated list of institutional investors including Soros, Marshall Wace and others. Robert began his career as an aviator in the Marines.
For those who aren’t familiar with Lukka, what do you all do?
We make crypto data easy for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Lukka is the global leader in crypto asset data management and data services, offering enterprise-grade data solutions tailored to navigate the intricacies of digital assets. These solutions are designed to meet the standards of the most complex and risk-mature institutions globally.
You spent nine years as a helicopter pilot in the Marines — definitely an atypical background for crypto. How has that experience informed your time in the space?
It’s way more comparable to what we do at Lukka than most realize! A deep understanding of how to apply operational risk management is a basic requirement for military pilots and we are always leading teams and problem-solving in high-pressure environments. You typically have to be comfortable taking risks, but also know how to mitigate them to acceptable levels — we clearly see this in the ever-evolving crypto industry. Every day, I rely on lessons that I learned during my 9 years of service.
You have a front-row seat to TradFi’s adoption of digital assets given your client base. What do you think are the key unlocks needed for traditional players to enter crypto en masse?
I am asked this question all the time, and for the last several years, the answer has been very consistent: education and open-mindedness. I do believe traditional investors and institutions are more knowledgeable than they were three or four years ago, but there is still a long way to go. Risk committees and auditors are still shy to permit or support many businesses in the crypto space, which is disappointing to me as they play a very important role in the long-term maturity of the industry. We do currently see more productive regulatory frameworks globally than we have before, but they are still new and will require a lot of feedback and refinement.
Why is data so hard to get right?
The critical role of data management within the crypto asset ecosystem should not be underestimated, as blockchain data inherently requires unique infrastructure to support it. An easy example is the requirement for more decimal place precision. Bitcoin requires eight digits past the decimal place and Ethereum requires 18 digits. Traditional financial systems are typically limited to no more than two to four digits of precision. As a result, blockchain financial data is not compatible with traditional systems and requires a bespoke approach to critical processes such as transaction reconciliations and gain-loss computations. Adding more types of blockchains to an investment portfolio compounds this complexity as each blockchain protocol typically has different constraints needing to be addressed for these same fundamental requirements.
Crypto asset trading is complex due to varied tickers and identifiers used by different marketplaces, each with its own way of handling crypto transactions. There is a need for extensive reference data systems to standardize, map and categorize the vast number of crypto assets traded globally. The valuation of these assets is further complicated by the absence of designated principal markets and the fact that trading occurs 24/7 without a formal closing time. Moreover, crypto assets are often traded directly for other crypto assets, not involving fiat currencies, which complicates financial reporting as transactions need to be valued in conventional currencies like the U.S. Dollar. Additionally, frequent transfers between marketplaces with varying asset prices and trading pairs are common, which, while beneficial for arbitrage-savvy traders, significantly complicates data management.
For the military aviation nerds — Apache or Viper?
Two great aircraft, but one has better pilots! All joking aside, I am partial to the two-bladed AH-1W Super Cobra that I flew, which is the precursor to the newest four-bladed model, the Marine AH-1Z Viper.
We’re Tracking
a16z crypto: Madan Nagaldinne joined as Partner, People Practices. Madan was previously Chief People Officer at Paxos. Link
Anchorage: Aaron Schnarch joined as Chief Operating Officer. Aaron was previously CEO of Coinbase Custody and VP of Product at Coinbase. Link
Bain Capital Crypto: Irene Wu joined as a Venture Partner. Irene was previously Head of Strategy at LayerZero Labs. Link
Binance: Gabriel Abed was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors. Gabriel was previously the Ambassador of Barbados to the United Arab Emirates. Martin Grant was appointed to the Board of Directors of Binance.US. Martin is currently the Global Head of Regulatory Affairs & Integrity at JST Digital. Link and Link
CMT Digital: Gerald Brant joined as Head of Capital Formation. Grant was previously Director of Capital Formation at BlockTower Capital.
DCG: Aimie Killeen joined as Chief Legal Officer. Aimie was previously Chief Legal Officer at Billtrust. Link
Figure: Michael Tannenbaum joined as CEO. Michael was previously Chief Operating Officer at Brex. Link
Flashbots: Stephen Levin joined as Head of Operations, Finance, People and Legal. Stephen was previously Head of Business Operations at Zapier. Link
Framework Ventures: Tracy Wang joined as Head of Special Projects. Tracy was previously Deputy Managing Editor at CoinDesk. Link
Hack VC: Alex Botte joined as Partner, Investor Relations. Alex was previously Head of Client and Portfolio Solutions at Runa Digital Assets. Link
Matter Labs: Nana Murugesan joined as President. Nana was previously Vice President of Business Development, International and Listings at Coinbase. Link
Ondo Finance: Ian De Bode joined as Chief Strategy Officer. Ian was previously Partner and Head of Digital Assets at McKinsey & Co. Link
Pantera Capital: Franklin Bi and Laura Stephanian were both promoted to General Partner. Link
Reflexive Capital: Kat Sullivan joined as Partner and Head of Investor Relations. Kat was previously Head of Client Partnerships at Brevan Howard Digital. Link
Yuga Labs: Won Kim joined as Head of Brand Partnerships. Won was previously the Co-Founder of Bored Room Ventures. Link
Intersection Growth Partners is the leading executive search firm in web3. We connect our clients with game-changing talent and invest our own capital for true alignment.
