Monthly Mint — 06.2024
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
With everyone’s favorite watermelon 🍉 and firework-filled holiday nearly upon us, it’s no surprise that folks have the 2024 Presidential election at the top of their minds; and with the world-class dialogue we witnessed last Thursday night, how could you not? 🙄 Current US geotag: Stuck between an incapacitated rock and an incendiary hard place. 🪨🤦🏼♀️
Call it the All-In Podcast Effect, but billionaires have been flocking to Trump like a moth to a flame 🔥…or shall we say a cicada to any yard in the Midwest this summer. Silicon Valley investors and podcast co-hosts 🎙️ David Sacks and Chamath Palihapitiya threw a fundraiser for the former President in San Francisco earlier this month with a $300k suggested donation ($1M if you’re a twin…👯♂️). My how times have changed since 2016…
🎆 Speaking of the Fourth of July, summer sales came early this year. Web3 gaming platform Sandbox raised a $20M round in June, shaving a massive $3B from its previous $4B 2022 valuation. 😱 And they’re not the only ones slashing numbers. Despite having over $500M in the bank, stablecoin issuer Paxos laid off 20% of its workforce or ~65 FTEs. Petition to make tech sector America employed again. 🇺🇲 Now that’s a slogan we can get behind.
Over in fundraising land — and across the entire US these last two weeks 🥵 — things continue to heat up. Fresh off a $27M Seed round earlier this year, Polygon spinoff and data availability company Avail raised a $43M Series A led by Founders Fund, Dragonfly and Cyber Fund. Stablecoin project M⁰ raised a $35M Series A to modernize monetary infrastructure 🧮with a federated framework for cryptodollar issuance. Even the new NEAR Foundation darling Nuffle Labs raised a $13M round from Electric Capital and a host of other venture investors. We’re no mathematicians, but given the whopping $850M price tag on Paradigm’s newly launched fund 💰, we’re excited to see their name popping up on every other cap table these days! That’s a whole lot of Series A checks to deploy…🤑
Elsewhere in crypto news, Kanav Kariya is stepping down, the SEC is stepping out (all hail the ETH gods 🙌🏻) and Robinhood is stepping up to the plate. Starkware announced plans to bring its zero-knowledge tech to Bitcoin, scaling the network to many thousands of transactions per second. ⚡Why scale one when you can scale two? That’s always been our summer motto with hotdogs vs. hamburgers 🌭🍔, so why not ETH vs. BTC too. 😋
☕ Cheersing with the song of the summer,
The Intersection Crew
We’re Tracking
21.co: Federico Brokate joined as VP, Head of US Business. Federico was previously Director, Americas iShares Business Strategy at BlackRock. Link
Anchorage: Connie Shoemaker joined the Board of Directors. Connie is currently Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer at Bridgewater Associates. Link
BlockTower Capital: David Burke joined as Head of Client and Partner Strategy. David was formerly Global Head of Distribution and Investor Relations at Orchard Global. Link
Centrifuge: Julia Merkel joined as Chief Operating Officer. Julia was previously Chief Financial Officer at BlueYard Capital. Sonam Joshi joined as Head of Product. Sonam was previously Director of Product at Abra. Link
Covalent: Arthur Hayes joined as a strategic advisor. Arthur is the Chief Investment Officer of Maelstrom. Link
Eco: Jay Kurahashi-Sofue joined as Chief Marketing Officer. Jay was previously VP of Marketing at Ava Labs. Link
INX: Michael Moro joined as Chief Strategy Officer. Michael was previously CEO of Ankex. Link
Movement Labs: Franck Cassez joined as Head of Research. Frank was previously Head of Blockchain Research at Windranger Labs. Link
Nuklai: Shodipo Ayomide joined as Head of Developer Relations. Shodipo was previously VP of Developer Relations at INTMAX. Link
Paradigm: Georgios Konstantopoulos was promoted to General Partner, alongside his existing duties as Chief Technology Officer. Link
Polygon: Sandeep Nailwal added the role of Chief Business Officer, alongside his existing duties as Co-Founder and Executive Chairman. Link
Tools for Humanity: Elliot Suthers joined as Head of Communications for EMEA. Elliot was previously Head of Corporate and Global Communications at Coinbase. Link
Uniswap: Katherine Minarik joined as Chief Legal Officer. Katherine was previously Vice President of Legal and Deputy General Counsel at Coinbase. Link
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