The global crypto market cap is $2.52T 2.44%▲ with a 24-hour market volume of $92.29B 40.97%▼. Bitcoin's dominance is currently 48.01% 1.10%▲. CURRENT PRICES BY MARKET CAP | # | Name | Price | 24h % | | 1 | Bitcoin BTC | $64,213.60 | 5.03% ▲ | | 2 | Ethereum ETH | $3,814.66 | 2.19% ▲ | | 3 | Binance Coin BNB | $482.92 | 0.54%▲ | | 4 | Cardano ADA | $2.10 | 1.52%▼ | | 5 | XRP XRP | $1.08 | 0.15% ▼ | Source: CoinMarketCap, 5:00 EST
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 Investments in European crypto and DeFi projects already reached an all-time high in Q4. The previous record of $834M in Q1 2021 was broken in just the first three weeks of Q4. More: - Q4 investments surpassed $925M, with only six investments made so far in the quarter.
- Q1 2021 saw 25 investments for a total of around $834M.
- Major funding rounds included $400M for MoonPay and Celsius Network and a $60M funding round for Elliptic.
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TOP ETHEREUM NFT COLLECTIONS | # | Name | 24h Volume | 24h % | | 1 | Axie Infinity | $18.86M | 1.53%▲ | | 2 | Party Degenerates | $3.69M | 84.54% ▼ | | 3 | CryptoPunks | $3.51M | 19.09%▲ | | 4 | Kaiju Kingz | $2.98M | 24.06%▼ | | 5 | Doodles V4 | $2.92M | 88.98% ▼ | Source: DappRadar, 5:00 pm EST
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 RECAP: Stephan Zhang Presents The Value of Community in NFTs Stephan Zhang is the CTO and co-founder of the on-chain social app UTU.one. Not only did UTU.one sponsor the event, but Stephan also provided some insight into how NFTs will become the fundamental building blocks of the future of web3. Using Loot as an example, Stephan explained how NFTs completely transform the game development experience. With the blockchain and NFTs, you no longer need to do traditional top-to-bottom game development. Things like characters, maps, and storylines don’t need to be developed because they already exist on the blockchain as NFTs. With the community of NFT holders, developers also don’t need to worry about acquiring players because they are there before the game is even built. Stephan highlights this realization with a discussion of Loot NFTs. Loot is essentially a collection of randomly generated text on the Ethereum blockchain. Specifically, the text represents different gear or features that would be depicted in the game. These Loot NFTs have grown incredibly popular, with over $230M in Loot sold to date. When you receive Loot, you are free to use it in any way you want. Because it is just a string of text, Loot holders are free to build games, avatars, storylines, or even an entire metaverse on top of the NFTs. As more games continue to be developed using Loot, the community surrounding Loot grows, and so does Loot’s value. For this reason, Stephan believes NFTs are becoming the fundamental building blocks of the future of web3.
For more from Stephan Zhang, check out Inside’s YouTube channel for the entire presentation, along with his contributions to the community-led Q&A session.
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 🍋Fresh Funding🍋 Element Finance, DeFi/Yield: $32M ⮕ The funding round was led by Polychain Capital and participated in by Republic, Advanced Blockchain, Rarestone, and others. More: - Element Finance is a DeFi product service provider offering discount yield tokens and interest-bearing crypto products.
- The fresh funding will be used to build Element’s engineering, research, and design teams.
- Element Finance has over 9K active users and $167.14M in total value locked.
Manta Network: Privacy: $5.5M ⮕ The seed funding round was participated in by Coinfund, Parafi Capital, LongHash Ventures, CMS Holdings, Digital Coin Group, Consensys, and others. More: - Manta network is an interoperable privacy layer built on the Polkadot (DOT) blockchain.
- The fresh funding will be used to scale the Manta network for more DeFi solutions.
- Like Zcash (ZEC), the Manta protocol uses zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge (zk-SNARK) with Groth16 proofs.
- Manta previously raised $1.1M in a funding round led by Polychain Capital back in February.
Sublime Finance, DeFi/Lending: $2.5M ⮕ The seed funding round was led by Galaxy Digital and Electric Capital with participation from FinTech Collective, Collab+Currency, Jill Carlson Gunter, and others. More: - Sublime Finance is a DeFi lending platform that lets borrowers use their digital reputations to obtain loans through social capital.
- Lenders can access online profiles, previous lenders, and past loan performance of a borrower before lending them capital.
- Sublime plans to launch its LIME token in December to enable governance as the project looks to transition into a DAO.
- In addition to social capital and traditional loan collateral, Sublime is also looking to allow borrowers to use CrytpoPunks and other NFTs for collateral.
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▲ TOP GAINERS | # | Name | Price | 24h % | | 1 | OKB OKB | $19.40 | 18.38% ▲ | | 2 | KuCoin Token KCS | $13.82 | 7.05% ▲ | | 3 | Cosmos AOTM | $13.82 | 6.08% ▲ | | 4 | Fantom FTM | $2.35 | 5.49% ▲ | | 5 | Harmony ONE | $0.2335 | 5.48% ▲ | ▼ TOP LOSERS | # | Name | Price | 24h % | | 1 | Flow FLOW | $13.29 | 9.00%▼ | | 2 | dYdX DYDX | $19.04 | 6.93%▼ | | 3 | Perpetual Protocol PERP | $15.89 | 6.91%▼ | | 4 | eCash XEC | $0.0001857 | 4.89%▼ | | 5 | Telcoin TEL | $0.01901 | 4.81%▼ | Source: CoinMarketCap, 5:00 EST
*Limited to cryptocurrencies in the Top 100
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 Outlier Ventures announced the launch of the Polygon Base Camp Accelerator. The Polygon (MATIC) x Base Camp Accelerator will select eight teams for early 2022. More: - Outlier Ventures has accelerated over 90 Web3 startups since it launched in 2014.
- Polygon has played a vital role in scaling Ethereum dapps and Web3 projects.
- Over $10B in value are locked in the Polygon ecosystem via Ethereum bridges.
- Applications are currently open for the program, which is set to offer fundraising, mentoring, and implementation support over the course of the five-month program.
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 A message from TESSIAN We’ve all had at least one “Oh Sh*t!” moment. In fact, 85% of data breaches are caused by human error. It could be sending an email to the wrong person, clicking on a phishing link, or attaching the wrong file… But why are we so prone to making mistakes like this? Stanford University professor, Jeff Hancock, explains the psychology behind human error and how to prevent "Oh Sh*t" moments, before they turn into breaches. Download the report to learn: - How stress and burnout play a role
- What age group is most likely to click on a phishing email
- Why training, policies, and legacy solutions aren’t enough
Download The Report
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 Andreessen Horowitz launched a $110M crypto fund for the "ownership economy." Variant Fund II will invest in gaming, music, and art projects using a tokenized incentive model. More: - The fund is being led by Jesse Walden and Li Jin, who have previously invested in creator-economy projects like Substack and Patreon.
- The fund will continue to invest in these "passion economy" projects, specifically those built on web 3 with tokenized economic models.
- In addition to the launch, Andreessen Horowitz announced that Walden's Variant firm and Jin's Atelier Ventures would merge into Variant Fund II.
Analyst Trevor Grant's take on the ownership economy: - Under the current model, only a small group of insiders (i.e., founders, investors, and early employees) reap the rewards from the ownership of a company.
- The broader community of users, who are often instrumental to the success of a company, are not given access to the wealth creation brought on by ownership.
- Imagine if early Uber drivers received $5,000 worth of stock when the company was young — those shares would be worth millions at IPO.
- Before tokenization, legal contracts and legacy financial infrastructure made distributed ownership at the scale unrealistic.
- Now with the aid of tokenization, companies can better align incentives toward building networks that grow bigger, faster.
- The main belief is that the next generation of products and platforms will be built, operated, and owned by their users.
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 Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital raised $325M for an investment fund led by the Galaxy Interactive division. The new fund will be led by Sam Englebardt and focus on investing in crypto gaming and art. More: - The Galaxy Interactive fund has already invested $150M in Mythical Games and Masterworks.
- The fund will receive tokens as a return for their investments rather than a direct stake in the company.
- Englebardt stated that the improvements in blockchain architecture over the years had made crypto investing more mainstream than when Galaxy Digital launched in 2017.
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- Chainalysis added (BTC) bitcoin to its balance sheet and stated that it plans to invest in other cryptos in the future.
- Facebook’s Novi wallet will launch a pilot for its stablecoin Diem (formerly Libra) in Guatemala.
- Coinbase announced that it would provide custody services for Novi’s stablecoin pilot.
- NYSE traded crypto payment platform Bakkt (BKKT) fell 6.4% on its first trading day since it merged with SPAC VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings (VIH).
- DraftKings partnered with Polygon (MATIC) to scale the DraftKings Marketplace on NFT platform Autograph.
- ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) began trading on the NYSE today.
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 |  | Griffin McShane is a New York transplant currently living in Brooklyn, NY. He is a graduate of Providence College, where he studied both computer science and business, and the University of Maine School of Law, where he earned his JD. Beyond his work at Inside, Griffin has written articles for CoinDesk and is a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP). |  | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
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