Crypto funding: $24M week for bitcoin miner, crypto lending platform
A new VC going by Vessel Capital also hits the block with $55 million in assets under management
Andrii Yalanskyi/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
Five crypto or blockchain-based firms raised a total of $24 million this week, with bitcoin mining and crypto lending attracting the most attention and capital.
Utah-based bitcoin miner Nodal Power, which doubles as an energy company, took the spotlight with a $13 million haul on Monday.
A collection of a dozen angel investors, most of them based in and around Utah, helped kick in funds for Nodal Power, a firm dedicated to energizing its miners with flared methane gas from landfills.
At present, Nodal Power has two data centers, one in the southwestern United States and the second in the “mountain west.” The company didn’t reveal the specific locations of the data centers, but both of them are powered by landfill gas.
The first operates at 3.2 megawatts (MW) of electricity generation and 15 petahashes per second (PH/s) of computing power.
The second is a 1.6 MW site with a hashing power of 50 PH/s.
The $13 million just raised by the company is going toward constructing a third mining location that’s estimated to operate at 60-70 PH/s once completed in early 2024.
Crypto lender raises $5M
Maple Finance, a lending protocol that just returned to Solana, raised $5 million in a strategic round this week.
The round was led by BlockTower Capital and Tioga Capital, though a number of other parties contributed, including Room40 Ventures, Cherry Crypto, Spartan Capital, GSR Ventures, and Veris Ventures.
The funds, Maple said in a statement, would allow the firm to continue building its decentralized technology.
Maple’s return to Solana was marked by a new offering: on-chain access to US Treasury bill yields. Clients interested in that product can make deposits in the pool using Solana USDC, or USDC-SPL.
The pool specifically passes yields from one-month US Treasury bills — minus fees — to lenders.
This came after Maple introduced its direct lending arm in June and its cash management pool in April. The cash management pool has attracted about $27 million in deposits so far.
Other notable fundraises
- Web3 marketing firm Raleon raised $3.8 million in a seed round led by Blockchange. The new capital will help expand its team and build out Raleon’s customer engagement and retention product.
- Binance Labs told Blockworks that it invested $2.2 million in Delphinus Lab to progress the development of its zkWASM-based application rollup platform, zkWASM Hub.
Vessel Capital emerged from stealth with $55 million in assets under management with a plan to invest in DeFi infrastructure and applications. The venture capital firm will allocate the funds, which could be increased, over a five-year period.
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