Crypto funding: Mythical Games, One Trading come out on top in $90M week

Crypto startups raised just over $90 million this week, with Web3 gaming studio Mythical Games bringing in $37 million of that total. 

The first part of the Series C1 fundraise was led by digital asset manager Scytale Digital. Additional investors included Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest, Animoca Brands, MoonPay and a litany of existing investors, including Andreessen Horowitz. 

Mythical’s $37 million raise maintains its unicorn status and will also be key in achieving profitability in 12 months, according to a press release.

Mythical is behind mobile game NFL Rivals and open-world multiplayer game Blankos Block Party. Its next title will be Nitro Nation World Tour, a mobile racing game that sells NFT cars.

Mythical CEO John Linden gave more insight into the company’s goals following the latest cash injection.

“With over a million mobile downloads of NFL Rivals since launch last month and averaging over $1 million in daily transactions via the Mythical Chain, we are focused on getting the company to profitability and are seeing our vision realized and our strategy paying off,” Linden said in a statement.

Mythical’s C1 round is expected to conclude later in 2023 with “an additional $20-30 million.”

New centralized exchange forms, splits from Bitpanda

One Trading, the crypto exchange formerly known as Bitpanda Pro, secured about $33 million in a series A round led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures. 

Bitpanda Pro was Bitpanda’s idea for a platform that catered to retail traders and institutional investors alike. With this fundraise, however, Bitpanda Pro rebranded to One Trading and will split from the company that created it.

Bitpanda wished the fledgling exchange good luck in a statement Wednesday, but mentioned it will retain minority ownership of One Trading.

“While Bitpanda will retain a small stake in the company, One Trading will have complete independence as they embark on this journey with full autonomy to innovate and grow more dynamically,” Bitpanda wrote.

One Trading announced on Twitter Thursday that it would “gradually” begin reopening the platform and listed out the trading pairs it will initially allow.

One Trading will also keep its CEO and former JPMorgan executive Joshua Barraclough who joined Bitpanda in 2021.

Other notable fundraises

• Pixion Games raised $5.5 million to invent a more accessible way to on-chain assets in game.
• Metablaze, another game developer, locked down $4 million to prepare for a Sept. 15 launch.
• Web3 infrastructure developer Startale Labs got $3.5 million from and partnered up with Sony Network Communications, a subsidiary of Sony. 
• Hook Protocol, a DeFi options startup for NFTs, raised $3 million from a slew of investors, with the main ones being Collab+Currency and venture capital fund Lattice.
• DeFi protocol AlloyX secured $2 million and announced a liquid real-world asset (RWA) vault product, tapping into a $537 million loan market.

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