Mobile-focused blockchain payments startup Celo has raised $20 million from the likes of Andreesen Horowitz (a16z), Greenfield One and Electric Capital. According to a press release on Wednesday, the funding will go towards fleshing out its suite of offerings. Celo is a proof-of-stake blockchain built on Ethereum, designed to support stablecoins and tokenized assets, while utilizing cellphone...Read More

An offline mobile map for travelers has raised $50 million in a funding round led by Alameda Research. Announced Monday, the fresh capital will go toward the launch of a multi-currency wallet on Maps.me and enable a decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem on the platform. Cryptocurrency lender Genesis Capital and institutional cryptocurrency firm CMS Holdings also...Read More

Seattle-based venture capital firm Bloccelerate closed a $12 million fund on Nov. 30 to bet on both enterprise blockchain adoption and Ethereum-based financial applications. The firm’s general partners, Kate Mitselmakher and Sam Yilmaz, told CoinDesk in a call the fund will allocate 80% of its equity investing in the infrastructures enabling enterprise adoption, with examples...Read More

Cryptocurrency firm Pantera Capital has raised $134 million for its bitcoin fund, according to a form D filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Formed in 2013, the Pantera Bitcoin Fund Ltd. was the first U.S.-based bitcoin fund. In an investor letter at the end of 2017, Pantera boasted a 25,004% return on the...Read More

Axelar, a decentralized protocol designed by the founding members of Algorand to allow cross-blockchain communication, has raised $3.75 million in seed funding. Announced Thursday, the round saw participation from investors including Binance X, the investment arm and accelerator of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, as well as San Fransisco-based venture capital firm DCVC (Data Collective). Other participants...Read More

PayPal’s cryptocurrency service is going to expand rapidly in 2021, executives said on the payments giant’s third-quarter earnings call Monday evening. That includes crypto services coming to Venmo and international customers in the first half of 2021, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said.  Currently, only 10% of customers in the U.S. have access to the new...Read More

The Graph has raised $12 million in a public sale of its native GRT token. The foundation building out the decentralized data protocol announced the close of its sale Wednesday in a blog post. The token sale reached 4,500 individuals, the foundation said, with the team geofencing U.S. investors from participating due to compliance reasons....Read More

Venture capitalist Tim Draper’s investment office Draper Goren Holm is sinking larger investments in virtual currency-only startups. Draper Goren Holm, a cryptocurrency investment firm in Los Angeles, told CoinDesk that it raised $25 million for its first venture capital fund to buffer its startup accelerator and back blockchain companies at higher investment valuations.  The venture...Read More

European crypto brokerage Bitpanda, based in Vienna and founded in 2014, is announcing the completion of a $52 million Series A led by PayPal legend Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures. This fundraising round, plus a seed round in 2016 and an initial exchange offering in 2019, means the 240-employee company raised roughly $100 million to date,...Read More

Chia Network, led by BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen with the aim of creating a programmable money platform, just raised another $5 million in an equity round led by Slow Ventures. Despite the resurgence of token sales this summer, Cohen said the plan since 2018 has been to go the IPO route and rely on venture...Read More