NFT-focused holding company raises $50M Series A

Read the full article by Sam Bourgi here

Nonfungible token projects have raised billions of dollars in venture funding over the past year, underscoring heightened demand in the sector.

Digital asset curator Metaversal announced Tuesday that it has completed a $50 million funding round to further expand its investment capabilities in the nonfungible token (NFT) and metaverse sectors.

This gives Metaversal a valuation of about $181 million.
NFTs were a major factor behind crypto and blockchain’s mainstream success in 2021. The sector generated over $14 billion in sales during the year, with digital art collections and digital collectibles accounting for 91% of transactions, according to industry data. While digital art has largely dominated the NFT market to date, that could soon change with the arrival of music NFTs and fashion-focused collectibles.

Venture funds have also identified NFTs as a major growth vector and have funded projects in this space to the tune of $2.1 billion as of Q3 2021. Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz was responsible for nearly 40% of NFT-focused deal activities, according to PitchBook. As Cointelegraph reported, venture funds invested over $17 billion into crypto- and blockchain-focused startups in the first 10 months of 2021, which was more than three times the amount in all of 2020.