Yo, Happy Friday!

Here are the 5 most interesting crypto fundraises (according to me) for the week ending 10/18/24:

Decentralized network state startup Praxis raised $525M 🤯 from GEM Digital Limited, Arch Lending, Manifold, and a few angels.

Praxis will create a new internet-native city with fewer regulations for tech companies in AI, crypto, biotech, energy, and advanced manufacturing.

I’d move there!

African crypto exchange Yellow Card Financial raised $33M in a Series C round led by Blockchain Capital, with participation from Polychain, the Winklevii, Castle Island Ventures, and others.

Yellow Card has become the largest and first licensed Stablecoin on/off ramp on the African continent. 

Africa is a huge, largely untapped market for crypto and Yellow Card aims to change that!

On-chain community platform Towns raised $25.5M in a Series A from a16z crypto, Benchmark, and Framework.

Towns lets users build blockchain-based online communities that allow for on-chain ownership and actions, composability with smart contracts, end-to-end encryption, and more.

This is Towns' second fundraise of exactly $25.5M, which is interesante.

Decentralized content delivery network Blockcast raised $2.85M in a Seed round led by Lattice Fund, with participation from Alliance DAO, Protocol Labs, and others.

Blockcast aims to use a network of community-operated nodes to deliver high-quality content, such as live-streamed video, audio, software updates, and more all around the world.

DEPIN for the win!

Congrats to all the teams for their fundraises! If you enjoyed this thread, please recast the first cast:

Congrats to all the teams for their fundraises! If you enjoyed this thread, please recast the first cast:

https://warpcast.com/mikewchan/0x94533167

Sticking with stables, stablecoin platform Mento Labs raised $10M from T-Capital, Hashkey Capital, and others.

Mento is a platform for launching and operating stable assets on Celo. They’ve launched cEUR, cREAL, cUSD, and others, and look to further develop stablecoins in regions like Kenya, the Philippines, and Colombia.

Emerging markets need access to currency pegged to stable fiat like USD, and Mento is making it happen for them.