SNEAK PEEK
- This quarter, Animoca Brands Corp. plans to raise almost $1 billion for its new Web3 and metaverse investment fund.
- The FTX exchange failed early in November, upending the bitcoin market and causing several important players to declare bankruptcy and shut down.
- Venture capital firms continue to invest in the bitcoin business despite the industry’s impending death.
Animoca Brands Corp. is seeking to raise approximately $1 billion this quarter for its new Web3 and metaverse investment fund, drastically reducing its goals in light of the current collapse of the cryptocurrency market.
In a Twitter Spaces chat with Bloomberg in Hong Kong on Thursday, co-founder Yat Siu, who is also the chairman of Animoca Brands, stated that Animoca Capital is in discussions with possible investors and will utilize the funds to promote blockchain and metaverse firms.
Early in November, the FTX exchange collapsed, upending the cryptocurrency market and forcing several key participants to file for bankruptcy and shut down. Beyond the general market decline, about a dozen of Animoca’s portfolio companies were negatively impacted by the incident, according to Siu.
They included NFT starship vendor Star Atlas, whose treasury was mostly housed on the now-defunct trading platform of Sam Bankman-Fried.
“Q1 is the target and then let’s see what happens,” Siu said of Animoca Capital. “It’s fair to argue that the market is difficult. However, we are pretty interested. A fragile market, he continued, can finally result in raising just a little bit less money than anticipated.
Despite the industry’s doom, venture capital firms keep investing in the cryptocurrency market. Siu stated that one of Animoca’s portfolio businesses had recently finished a funding round, but she would not specify which one. He claimed that “top-name, top-tiered VCs” had provided the funding.
Throughout the talk, Siu was upbeat about Asia’s potential to be a leader in the cryptocurrency industry, even joking that his company now prefers Hong Kong to the US as the ideal location for an IPO.
After accepting Temasek’s investment in September, Animoca Brands, which owns shares in more than 380 companies, indicated it would not be soliciting money on its own going forward, according to Siu.
Because of the decline in the value of digital assets, Siu claimed that the market turmoil had hurt Animoca’s revenue.
The entire revenue in currency terms will also be impacted because our revenues are reliant on tokens.
