Hello 
Welcome to the 49th edition of Sfermion’s Collider where we highlight the latest & greatest news in the world of crypto, gaming & entertainment, consumer trends, AI, macro, and more!
Bi-weekly, we aim to drop a curated list of the most exciting stories & updates that we believe are enabling the future of tech and the emergence of the metaverse.
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Crypto Updates
Ethereum ETFs Hit $107M Inflows on Debut: 'Very Solid First Day' (link)
Morgan Stanley Advisors Soon Can Offer BTC ETFs to Clients (link)
California DMV Makes History, Digitizes 42M Car Titles on Avalanche Blockchain (link)
Lummis Announces Revolutionary Proposal to Supercharge the Dollar, Bolster U.S. Economy (link)
Trump Pledges to Fire Gensler, Hire People Who ‘Love’ Crypto (link)
Fold to Go Public (link)
Coinbase Asset Management Plans Tokenized Money-Market Fund, a Hot Area After BlackRock's BUIDL Success (link)
OKX Ventures and Aptos Foundation Jointly Launch $10M Ecosystem Growth Fund and Accelerator to Boost Aptos Ecosystem Growth (link)
Ferrari Expands Cryptocurrency Payments Across Europe After US Launch (link)
Proton releases a self-custody bitcoin wallet (link)
Avail DA Mainnet and $AVAIL Token Go Live (link)
English Football Club Owned by Bitcoiner Adds $4.5M Bitcoin to Its Treasury (link)
Marathon Digital Buys $100M of BTC (link)
Russia Legalizes Mining and Approves the Use of Crypto for Int’l Payments, But… (link)
Qatar to Legally Recognize Digital Assets By Q4 2024 (link)
No Other Crypto ETFs In The Foreseeable Future: BlackRock (link)
Gaming Updates
Atari partners with Coinbase to bring Asteroids and Breakout to blockchain (link)
Manchester United Launches Web3 Game 'Fantasy United' (link)
Telegram Hits 950M Users Amid Crypto Gaming Boom (link)
Monthly Audience of WeChat Mini Games Reached 500M Users
Gaming Startup Funding Fell In Q2 (link)
Monopoly Go transforms back into a board game (link)
Warner Bros Games acquires MultiVersus studio Player First (link)
Roblox announces Team USA Olympic and Paralympic Games partnership (link)
80+ Netflix Stories games in development and plans to release "about one new title per month" (link)
Earn Alliance launches Ally Pass rewards system with TGE on 24th September (link)
EA Sports College Football 25 sold 2.2M $100 copies with early access (link)
Freestyle Chess debuts with $12M in funding for tournament series (link)
Wuthering Waves sails past $100M in under two months (link)
Zenless Zone Zero surpasses $50M in 11 days (link)
Animoca Brands’ Mocaverse, MOCA Foundation, and TON Foundation execute strategic partnership via token swap (link)
AI Updates
Mark Zuckerberg calls for open-source AI as Meta releases Llama 3.1 (link)
Google DeepMind AI Scores 28 Points, Wins Silver at International Mathematical Olympiad with AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2 (link)
Meta moves on from its celebrity lookalike AI chatbots, creates new AI studio for custom chatbots (link)
A match 'made in heaven': Inside Canva’s stunning Leonardo.Ai acquisition (link)
Nvidia preparing version of new flagship AI chip for Chinese market (link)
OpenAI Tests New AI Search Features in Direct Challenge to Google (link)
AI Startup Cohere Valued at $5.5B in New Funding Round (link)
VCs are still pouring billions into generative AI startups (link)
California Governor Newsom to Sign Bill Banning AI-Generated Manipulated Voice Ads (link)
Other Updates
Google Reverses Plan to Phase Out Third-Party Cookies in Chrome, Introduces User Choice (link)
Senate passes the Kids Online Safety Act (link)
Intel to Cut Thousands of Jobs to Reduce Costs, Fund Rebound (link)
FTC launches probe into ‘surveillance pricing’ that it says links cost to customer data (link)
U.S. sues TikTok over ‘massive-scale’ privacy violations of kids under 13 (link)
Alphabet to invest $5B in self-driving car unit Waymo (link)
NBA signs broadcasting deal with Disney, Amazon, Comcast worth $77B (link)
$4.7B NFL Sunday Ticket decision overturned in bombshell (link)
Meta burns another $4.5B on metaverse in Q2, preps for AI growth (link)
Meta to pay $1.4B to settle Texas facial recognition data lawsuit (link)
Pershing Square USA, Ltd. Withdraws IPO (link)
‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Obliterates R-Rated Record With $205M Opening Weekend, Eighth-Biggest in Box Office History (link)
Reddit Teams Up With The NFL, NBA to Boost Revenue (link)
Apple Moves Forward With Foldable iPhone (link)
Former Tesla humanoid head launches a robotics startup (link)
Research & Interesting Reads
Meta | Open Source AI Is the Path Forward (link)
Konvoy | Fundraising Challenges in Gaming (link)
B3 (NPC Labs, 
) | Don't build your own app chain. Build on B3. (link)
GAM3S | Deep Dive on TON Ecosystem and Telegram (link)
GAM3S | Web3 Gaming Attracts 40% of All Private Company Financings in Q2 (link)
Variant Fund | The Future of DEX Trading (link)
Decentralised | Layered Bitcoin (link)
Matthew Ball | Interviewing Epic Games Founder/CEO Tim Sweeney and Author/Entrepreneur Neal Stephenson (link)
Sam Altman | The days are long but the decades are short (link)
Notable Raises
Legal tech Clio raises $900M at a $3B valuation, plans to double down on AI and fintech (link)
Altana, An AI Platform For Supply Chain Data, Hits Unicorn Status After $200M Raise (link)
Galaxy Asset Mgmt Raises $113M for New Venture Fund (link)
OpenAI-backed legal tech startup Harvey raises $100M (link)
Morpho Labs Raises $50M In Latest Funding Round Led By Ribbit Capital (link)
NPC Labs () raises $18M to bring mainstream games to Web3 (link)
Artificial Agency raises $16M to alter NPC behaviour in games (link)
Web3 Infrastructure Platform Caldera Raises $15M in Early-Stage Funding (link)
Peter Thiel's Founders Fund leads $11M round for Pudgy Penguins' parent as it builds new Layer 2 blockchain (link)
Arbitrum-based DuelNow receives $11M funding as Web3 betting heats up (link)
Layer2 Financial Secures $10.7M to Revolutionize Cross-Border Payments, led by Galaxy Ventures (link)
A16z Crypto leads $9M Series A round for energy DePIN project Daylight (link)
aPriori Raises $8M in Seed Funding for Liquid Staking Protocol with Pantera Capital Lead (link)
Mobile multiplayer app Dusk launches with Gen Z focus, raises $8M in funding (link)
Bitcoin scaling network Mezo raises $7.5M in new funding (link)
New gaming studio Blue Scarab raises $7M in funding round (link)
Polychain and Lightspeed Co-Lead $7M Seed Round for Web3 AI Startup Hyperbolic (link)
OpenSocial Protocol raises $6M in funding from Framework Ventures and North Island Ventures (link)
Aww Raises $6M to Create A Platform for Developing Global Virtual Stars and Their Communities (link)
DAOBase Secures $6M Funding To Enhance DAO Governance (link)
Pengu creator Slay raises $5M for social gaming platform (link)
Google and Coinbase vets raise $5M (led by CoinFund) to build Icebreaker, blockchain’s answer to LinkedIn (link)
Dstlry raises $5M for digital comics publishing and marketplace (link)
Crypto proprietary trading firm Breakout raises $4.5M in seed funding (link)
NFT startup Mintify raises $3.4M in additional funding (link)
Blockchain gaming ecosystem Panda Titan Secures $3M Funding (link)
K-pop Music NFT platform MetaBeat raises $3M in funding from FZF Ventures (link)
JokeRace, the onchain competition platform used by Polygon, Farcaster and Bankless, raises $3M round (link)
17-year-old Eric Zhu’s startup, Aviato raised $2.3M and is emerging from stealth to focus on an analytical platform for private market data (link)
Raad Labs raises $2.25M in quest to revolutionize weather data collection via web3 (link)
Look North World raises $2.25M for its Fortnite UGC games and creator label (link)
Kuru Labs Raises $2M Seed Round Led by Electric Capital (link)
We.Rich, a User-Generated Assets platform, raise $2M in Seed led by Folius Ventures and Animoca Brands (link)
Echo Chunk raises $1.4M to make AI-based puzzle games (link)
Binance Labs Invests in Pluto Studio, aPriori, and Particle Network
Mo & Andrew's Curated
Macro
1m
Consumer spending was the key (+2.3% in the quarter). Biz investment and gov't spending also helped.
Bottom line: The economy keeps…
Crypto
- US to become crypto capital of the world
- To create strategic Bitcoin reserve for US
- To fire Gary Gensler on day 1
- Views stablecoins as pro dollar
- To end Operation Chokepoint 2.0
- To bring Bitcoin mining to the US
$1.5T Franklin Templeton has partnered with one of Japan's biggest financial services companies, SBI Holdings, to launch a Bitcoin ETF in Japan - Nikkei
1.ethw.bitwise.eth -> 0xa15c...2A69
2.ethw.bitwise.eth -> 0xEd92...b4eF
3.ethw.bitwise.eth -> 0x3339...7cB5
4.ethw.bitwise.eth…
The California DMV is launching its own chain on Avalanche to modernize the vehicle title transfer experience for CA's 39M+ residents
In partnership with @oxheadalpha, the @CA_DMV has already successfully digitized 42M car titles on-chain.…
Tens of millions of Californians having and using a crypto wallet over the next 5 years or however long it takes , normalizes the use of wallets and crypto…
Cloud support, blockchain analytics, node infra, free testnet ETH, validator for several big L1s and L2s, integration into search, and more.
Do not sleep on this.
But have you even heard of their latest chain abstraction product MagicSpend?
Strategically this expands Coinbase's territory across all rollups, and it's going unnoticed. Here's the breakdown:…
Firstly, every election cycle since 2008 has seen the emergence of a go-to prediction market with mainstream press coverage. We've had Intrade, Hubdub (which I co-founded), IEM, Predictit and a bunch of others.
They definitely aren't new.…
NFT
Through @IglooInc; @foundersfund, @fenbushi, @1kxnetwork and others will contribute towards bringing the next generation of crypto users, onchain.
Learn more and how to participate below:
a next gen, direct-to-community media platform that bridges the gap between artists & communities, enabling them to experience and own a piece of the cultural moments that matter, before anyone else
create
collect
connectall on Doodlesᵗᵛ
Mint this custom Persona x Base NFT: zora.co/collect/base:0…
Available from July 25th to August 24th
the official trailer for 'Dullsville and the Doodleverse' is here:
With open mints & burns there is a lot to keep track of so I made a new dashboard you can reference
Some interesting takeaways from the collection so far:
Gaming
The heart of $GOAT The key to greatness Up onlyAre you GOAT enough?
I think it's got a good shot. Here's a breakdown of why.
First things first, what is a "Super App"?
My simple take: a Super App is any app that allows users to perform multiple tasks in a single place. Typically…
@Pixelmon
We're happy to announce our partnership with Pixelmon, the monster-collecting IP of Web3.
Over the past year, the team has been working to rapidly expand its library of games.
The team released Kevin the Adventurer in October '23, an endless runner game.…
AI
Our vision is to make Gnosis the Schelling point for AI agents in web3.
Details ↓
Other
It is the longest podcast I've ever done!
It's a fascinating, super technical, and wide-ranging conversation.It's here on X & everywhere else, including YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=Kbk9Bi…
On X, it's split up…
A realisation after a health scare.
= Sfermion Portfolio Company
Curated by @mopat1214 + @AndrewSteinwold
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