In a record-breaking deal for a Latin American crypto company, Buenbit, an exchange based in Argentina has raised $11M in Series A funding. Buenbit, the leading cryptocurrency platform in South America’s second-biggest economy,  allows users to exchange fiat currency for BTC, ETH, and DAI.  In May, Buenbit launched operations in Peru, and now with their…

In a fresh move to bootstrap Gitcoin’s DAO, holders of the protocol’s GTC token voted to add a $50K category to its grants program. Gitcoin, a funding platform that supports open source development, typically concentrates on what it calls Grant categories. These include “Infrastructure Tech” and “Dapp Tech.” But Gitcoin released its DAO last month…

Investors continue to have an appetite for NFT collectibles despite the recent downturn in crypto markets. Wicked Craniums, an Ethereum-based, algorithmically-generated NFT project, launched on June 20 and all 10,762 pieces were sold out within the first 30 minutes. The NFTs were available to mint for 0.06 ETH, bringing the total raised by the project…

Unsecured loans, long a missing piece in the DeFi puzzle, may finally be coming to open finance. Goldfinch, a DeFi platform that specializes in making no-collateral loans, announced an $11M raise from the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, DeFi Alliance, and other investors. Goldfinch enables borrowers to garner access to unsecured loans without having to go…

Notional Finance, a decentralized fixed-rate lending protocol built on Ethereum, closed a $10M Series A funding round led by Pantera with participation from ParaFi, 1confirmation, Spartan Group, Nascent, Nima Capital, and others.  “Notional’s mission is to bring fixed-rate borrowing and lending to Ethereum and take DeFi to a more mainstream audience that is interested in…

Injective Protocol, a decentralized derivatives exchange, said it raised a $10M at a $1B valuation from investors including Pantera Capital, BlockTower, Hashed, Cadenza Ventures (formerly BitMex Ventures), among others. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban also participated, while Cumberland, DRW’s crypto arm, disclosed its investment in the company. “Raising a sum of money so small relative…

Step Finance, a Solana app which aggregates users’ DeFi activities across the blockchain’s open finance ecosystem has raised $2M in a round led by Alameda Research, Three Comma Capital and others. “The biggest problem in the Solana ecosystem is how most projects are siloed from one another,” Step co-founder Georga Harrap wrote in a press…

zCloak Network, a Polkadot-based and privacy-focused computing platform, announced it closed a $1.3M seed round led by IOSG Ventures and Hypersphere Ventures. Other notable participants include KR1, DFG, Advanced Blockchain AG, PAKA Fund and Digital Renaissance Foundation. zCloak Network enables computation and analysis of personal data without sending them to 3rd party servers with the…

Element Finance raised $4.4M in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Placeholder accompanied by SV Angel, A.Capital, Scalar Capital, and Robot Ventures.  Angels included Joseph Lubin, Fernando Martinelli, Stani Kulechov, Mariano Conti, Robert Leshner and Tarun Chitra. The project aims to bring liquidity to the fixed-rate income and interest markets Users will be…

InsurAce, the Singapore-based insurance protocol, raised $3M in a token-based funding round led by Alameda Research and HashKey Capital. Investors from the project’s $1M seed round, DeFiance Capital, ParaFi Capital, Hashed and Signum Capital, also participated. The round was completed with institutional investors, including, IOSG Ventures, ImToken Ventures, LongHash Ventures, HashGlobal, Tembusu Partners, Factorial Ventures,…