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Hello and welcome back to the third edition of the new and improved TechCrunch Crypto newsletter. As mentioned before, alongside our regularly scheduled news, I’ll be adding some fresh recurring segments and features — so if you like what you see (or don’t), let me know at jacquelyn@techcrunch.com.
Happy February, friends! We made it a twelfth of the year. it wasn’t that hard was it? You only have to do it 11 times to get to 2025.
As January came to a close, hackers got busy and stole very XRP tokens, Polygon lays off, new reports show demand for AI and blockchain collaboration, Ethereum developer interest hits new highs last year, and Tether reports record profit from Q4 2023. More details below.
This week on web3
- Polygon Labs is laying off 60 employees, about 19% of its staff, CEO says
- Artificial intelligence and blockchains may need each other to evolve, new report finds (TC+)
- Hackers Steal $112 Million Of XRP Ripple Cryptocurrency
- Ethereum Developer Interest Hits New All-Time High in 2023 Despite Bear Market (TC+)
- Solana Mobile still has a long way to go before breaking even (TC+)
Crisp numbers
This week the cryptocurrency market was quite bullish as the two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, bitcoin and ether, rose 7% and 4.4%, respectively, on the week, according to CoinMarketCap data. Global cryptocurrency market capitalization rose 5.2% over a seven-day period to $1.62 trillion.
Separately, Tether mentionted that the fourth quarter of 2023 brought a “record” net profit of $2.85 billion, making up 46% of last year’s total net profit of $6.2 billion. Tether is the world’s largest stablecoin by market capitalization and volume, and the third largest cryptocurrency behind bitcoin and ethereum. Its total assets (backed by its stablecoins) are at $97 billion as of December 31, 2023. Its liabilities were about $91.6 billion and it has about $5.4 billion in excess reserves, which “fully cover ” its outstanding loans of $4.8 billion, the report added.
If you’re thinking, “those are big numbers,” you’re right. See below.
Our favorite “Crypto Twitter” post.
After all the talk about Tether…
This Position at X by Bitwise Asset Management CIO Matt Hougan speaks for itself. Sorry Goldman Sachs, better luck next quarter:
Tether made more money last quarter than Goldman Sachs. Tether: $2.85 billion Goldman: $2.01 billion
The last pod
For this week episodeI interviewed Chris Dixon, general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
Chris has been with the company since 2012 and founded and leads the crypto team at a16z, which invests in the web3 world through four mega-funds with over $7 billion under management. He is also the author of the recently released book "Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of Internet".
Prior to a16z, Chris co-founded two startups, SiteAdvisor and Hunch, which were acquired by McAfee in 2006 and eBay in 2011, respectively. He also attended Columbia University for his BA and MA in philosophy and has an MBA from Harvard University.
In this episode, we discuss the new book, how the perception of cryptocurrencies has changed, and what purpose blockchains can ultimately bring to the world.
We also deal with:
- Big Tech vs crypto
- Importance of decentralization
- a16z web3 investments
- Blockchain games
- Embracing the future
Sign up to Chain reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to catch up on the latest episodes and leave us a review if you like what you hear!
Follow the money
- Squid has raised $4 million in a strategic round to help support cross-chain interoperability
- Velar raised $3.5 million to build a sustainable Bitcoin decentralized exchange
- Web3 gaming startup Yooldo raises $1.5 million, raising its valuation to $13 million
- Options Focused Protocol Ithaca Finance has raised $2.5 million in pre-funding
- Portal has raised $34 million in a seed round to develop its decentralized bitcoin ecosystem
This list was compiled with information from Messari as well as reports from TechCrunch itself.
What else are we writing?
Want to escape the web3 world? Here are some TechCrunch articles that caught our attention this week.
- Why There's No Clear Winning Pricing Strategy in B2B SaaS (TC+)
- Three San Francisco Supervisors Receive Threats After YC President Garry Tan's Tweet
- Apple Vision Pro will launch with more than 600 apps and games optimized for the new handset
- The Senate hearing with five social media CEOs was a missed opportunity
- Technical redundancies are scaled to three quarters (TC+)
