Welcome to TechCrunch Crypto!
Greetings and salutations to all the crypto enthusiasts out there! We are excited to announce that your go-to source for all things crypto, formerly known as Chain Reaction, has now been rebranded as TechCrunch Crypto.
Get ready to receive a weekly dose of the biggest and most significant news stories from the crypto world, delivered right to your inbox every Thursday at 12 p.m. PT. If you haven’t done so already, make sure to subscribe here.
Hello and Welcome Back!
It’s that time of the week again – time for the latest edition of the TechCrunch Crypto newsletter. We have plenty to cover, so let’s dive right in.
This Week’s Headlines
This week, Starbucks made headlines as they announced the discontinuation of their Odyssey NFT program, which launched back in 2022. Meanwhile, Solana continued to capture the attention of mainstream media with its meme-coins, and India faced new challenges in the world of crypto as government agencies cracked down on it.
Now, let’s take a look at what happened This Week in Web3.
Crunching Numbers
While the crypto market prices saw a slight dip this week, they still remain relatively strong compared to previous months. Bitcoin saw a 6.5% decrease at $67,300, but was 32% higher on the month at the time of publication. Ether, the second largest crypto, fell 8.6% to $3,550, according to CoinMarketCap data. The total crypto market cap also saw a 6.3% decrease during the same time frame, currently standing at $2.55 trillion.
Listen to the Latest Episode of Chain Reaction
As part of our monthly series diving into different topics and themes in crypto, this month we’re focusing on blockchain and AI integrations. In this week’s episode, our host interviews Tegan Kline, the CEO and co-founder of Edge & Node.
Edge & Node is a company dedicated to creating and supporting decentralized applications and protocols. They were also the initial team behind The Graph, an indexing and query protocol also known as the Google of web3, which aims to organize open blockchain data and make it a public good. Tegan’s experience in investment banking and AI-powered patent analysis played a significant role in her career shift towards web3 and data solutions.
In this episode, our guest discusses The Graph network, indexing data, and its potential for the internet as well as the “New Era roadmap” released in November 2023. Other topics include The Graph’s implementation of AI solutions, the long-term potential of dApps for AI, and Tegan’s thoughts on the relationship between AI and crypto.
Be sure to subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite pod platform for the latest episodes. Don’t forget to leave us a review if you enjoy what you hear!
Follow the Money
Here’s a roundup of notable funding announcements and investments from the world of web3 this week:
- Former Grindr exec and a married couple launch Rails with $6.2 million in funding for its decentralized FTX alternative
- Avalanche Foundation announces $1 million liquidity mining incentive program
- Memecoin Rush Morph raises $20 million in seed and angel investment for its EVM layer-2
- Mantra raises $11 million to expand real-world asset tokenization in MENA region
- Ago raises $2.5 million to make DeFi more accessible through all-in-one platform
This list was compiled with information from Messari as well as TechCrunch’s own reporting.
What Else We’re Writing
If you’re looking to step out of the world of web3 and into other tech topics, here are some articles from TechCrunch that caught our attention this week:
- Article #1
- Article #2
- Article #3
