News linked to both this project and an event.
: Solana ecosystem multi-signature protocol Squads announced the completion of an $18 million strategic funding round, led by Solana Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, L1D, and others. Its total cumulative funding has now reached $42.9 million. According to reports, Squads' stablecoin payment platform Altitude allows enterprises to conduct 24/7 global payment settlements in stablecoins through self-custodial wallets, and connects to the global payment network via its compliance and risk control system. (The Block)
According to The Block, Squads, a multi-signature protocol in the Solana ecosystem, has announced the completion of an $18 million strategic funding round led by Solana Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, L1D, and others. This round is an equity financing, bringing Squads’ total funding to $42.9 million. Squads will use the funds from this round to expand its stablecoin-based corporate finance platform, Altitude.
According to The Block, Nuva Digital has completed a $5.2 million seed funding round, led by Morgan Creek Digital with participation from Ulu Ventures. The round was closed in a single tranche and marks the company’s first external funding. Nuva Digital was jointly incubated by Animoca Brands and Nuva Labs (formerly Provenance Blockchain Labs) and is building Nuva Finance, a real-world asset (RWA) yield platform. The financing structure consists of a priced equity seed round accompanied by token purchase warrants; the valuation was not disclosed.
Odaily Odaily Planet Daily reports that investors including Pantera Capital Management are pushing UK Bitcoin reserve company Satsuma to sell its $50 million Bitcoin reserve. In August 2025, Satsuma shifted to an "AI-driven" Bitcoin reserve strategy, successfully raising £164 million (approximately $221 million) through convertible loan notes. The round was led by ParaFi Capital, with participation from Pantera, Digital Currency Group (DCG), Kraken, Arrington Capital, and others.It is reported that Satsuma confirmed that some shareholders have "demanded a return of capital," but did not disclose the specific identities of those shareholders. In an email statement, Satsuma's Executive Chairman Ranald McGregor-Smith said the company is exploring options to facilitate these requests while protecting the interests of all shareholders. (The Block)
According to The Block, Cluster Protocol—an AI-native infrastructure company building for Web3—has raised $5 million in funding, led by DAO5, with participation from Paper Ventures, JPEG Trading, and Mapleblock Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to $7.75 million. The new capital will accelerate the development of CodeXero, its browser-native IDE built for the EVM ecosystem, expand its product and engineering teams, and enhance its AI systems, developer workflows, deployment infrastructure, and ecosystem growth. Cluster Protocol stated that CodeXero has already connected over 300,000 wallets, processed more than 3 billion AI tokens, and supported the deployment of over 25,000 dApps.
According to The Block, the cryptocurrency venture capital sector is undergoing a structural shift. Investors now broadly require startups to demonstrate real users and revenue before committing capital—marking the end of the era when early-stage fundraising was easy. Token-based exit strategies have become significantly less reliable; low-liquidity, high-valuation token launches continue to underperform the broader market, prompting investors to revert to traditional equity-oriented thinking. Meanwhile, the rise of the AI sector has siphoned off substantial LP capital and entrepreneurial talent, further intensifying fundraising challenges for crypto VCs. Nonetheless, several investors note that reduced competition, more rational valuations, and an improving regulatory environment point to 2026–2027 as the strongest investment years since 2018. Future capital will focus on areas with clear business models—including stablecoins, payments, tokenization, real-world assets (RWAs), and financial infrastructure—while the boundaries between crypto VCs and traditional VCs accelerate toward convergence.
According to The Block, Jim Esposito, President of Citadel Securities, stated on Thursday at the Semafor World Economic Forum in Washington, D.C., that the firm is “fully capable” of providing liquidity to prediction markets—but explicitly expressed no interest in sports-event contracts. Instead, he emphasized the value of prediction markets for hedging geopolitical risks, citing the U.S. midterm elections this November as “one of the greatest risks facing investors’ portfolios.” Esposito noted that as platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket continue to grow rapidly, the prediction market is poised for sustained expansion—naturally drawing Citadel Securities into the space. Notably, Zhao Peng, CEO of Citadel Securities, participated last year in Kalshi’s $185 million funding round.
According to The Block, Tether has confirmed its participation in the previously announced $134 million private financing round of publicly listed Stablecoin Development Corporation (SDEV). SDEV positions itself as a vehicle offering public-market investors exposure to the stablecoin sector, with core holdings including the Sky Protocol governance token SKY and the stablecoin USDS. As of March 31, SDEV held approximately 2.15 billion SKY tokens, representing roughly 9.15% of the total supply. This financing was completed in January and included the deposit of 943.6 million SKY tokens, along with $25 million in cash and $51 million in stablecoins, which were used to acquire an additional ~1.17 billion SKY tokens.
According to The Block, Brix—a startup focused on tokenizing emerging-market assets—has announced a $5.5 million funding round. Participants include Yapi Kredi’s venture capital arm, FRWRD, IS Asset Management, and crypto investment firms Circle Ventures, ConsenSys, and Borderless Capital. Brix plans to launch on the MegaETH network, aiming to bring traditionally institutional trading strategies—such as Turkish lira arbitrage—on-chain.
According to The Block, Bitcoin mining company TeraWulf raised $900 million through a stock offering, with the funds earmarked for building AI data centers. Following the announcement, TeraWulf’s stock price declined.
Odaily News Bitcoin treasury company Strategy's perpetual preferred shares, STRC, recorded approximately $1.1 billion in trading volume on April 13, representing a nearly 47% increase from the previous record. This has become a core financing tool for the company to accelerate its Bitcoin accumulation. Strategy raises capital by selling preferred shares like STRC and uses the funds for high-frequency Bitcoin purchases.Data shows that Strategy recently purchased 13,927 BTC for approximately $1 billion, bringing its total holdings to 780,897 BTC. The related funds primarily came from the issuance of over 10 million STRC shares. Within the overall capital plan, STRC, along with STRK, STRF, STRD, and common stock financing, constitutes its "42/42" financing framework. The goal is to raise $84 billion by 2027 for continuous Bitcoin purchases. Current market views suggest that STRC is gradually becoming the dominant instrument within this financing system. (The Block)
According to The Block, Visa, Stripe, and Zodia Custody—a digital asset custody firm backed by Standard Chartered Bank—have become the first validators on the Tempo payment blockchain. Tempo is an Ethereum-compatible Layer 1 blockchain designed specifically for high-throughput payments and stablecoin settlement, primarily targeting large institutions. Validators are responsible for verifying, ordering, and finalizing on-chain transactions, and are typically mature organizations with global operational capabilities. Tempo was incubated by Stripe and Paradigm, launched its private testnet in September 2025, and closed a $500 million Series A funding round in October at a valuation of approximately $5 billion. Recently, Tempo introduced its “Agent Payments” protocol—executed by AI agents—and has attracted infrastructure integrations including RedStone.
According to The Block, renowned startup accelerator Y Combinator has completed its first fully stablecoin investment, paying $500,000 in USDC to prediction market startup Totalis via three on-chain transactions on Solana. The funds are held in custody by Ramp, a financial operations platform. Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan stated that the accelerator will make stablecoin payments available to all YC-backed startups—not limited to crypto-related companies. Totalis plans to use Ramp to execute both stablecoin and fiat transactions simultaneously and to pay credit card bills from its stablecoin account.
According to The Block, AlphaTON Capital has announced plans to raise $43 million through a strategic partnership with Vertical Data Inc. to expand its AI compute infrastructure; the transaction is expected to close in Q2 2026. AlphaTON CEO Brittany Kaiser stated that the funding will be used to deploy additional NVIDIA B300 GPUs, with the core objective of advancing the convergence of AI, digital assets, and confidential computing—and scaling up the platform’s overall compute capacity. On the business front, AlphaTON not only holds a substantial amount of TON tokens as corporate treasury assets but also actively participates in building infrastructure for the Telegram and TON ecosystems, with key investment focus areas including Cocoon, Telegram’s decentralized AI platform. Background-wise, AlphaTON was formed through the restructuring and transformation of former biotech public company Portage Biotech Inc., which had previously focused on cancer therapy research; the company completed the spin-off of its cancer therapy subsidiary in February this year.