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- RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖
RBV Weekly Newsletter🧔📖
Open Deals, Portfolio Updates, Crypto News, RBV Fund I Closing & More
Joshua Howard
April 19, 2023
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Tokenomics is a relatively new type of economics, completely changing its influence on our world. Imagine living in a world where digital currencies and tokens are seamlessly integrated into our daily lives, empowering individuals, businesses, and entire ecosystems to thrive on a global scale. Tokenomics, the art and science of designing effective token models, is a crucial driver of this digital revolution. As the backbone of decentralized finance and blockchain-based platforms, well-crafted tokenomics can create value, incentivize users, and foster sustainable growth in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. Some of the greatest minds in the crypto space dedicate themselves to crafting intricate, complex token systems. We work with these minds to ensure that the deals and projects we share with our LPs are airtight, exploit-resistant, and accrue value to the token holders naturally.
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🚨 TL;DR: This Week in Crypto
FTX considers relaunch, fundraising
BTC dips below $30k in instant 3% drop
SEC’s Gensler grilled by senate committee
Alchemy dev report: building levels high despite bear market
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📣 As a reminder, Red Beard Ventures has both a syndicate and fund:
The Red Beard Ventures Syndicate is stage agnostic and invests in Frontier Technology with a focus on Web3, Space, FinTech, Robotics, Biotech, and Climate. We invest anywhere between $100k - $1.5M.
The Red Beard Ventures Fund I invests $100k - $1M in Pre-seed and Seed blockchain-based companies.
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🔔 Active Investment Opportunities:
Siegelman Stable: Streetwear with a Conscience - Gary Vaynerchuk Lead
Rapidly gaining mass appeal and A-list celebrity endorsements
Nearly one million dollars in gross revenue in 2022
Founded by the son from a top horse racing family, Max Siegelman, past collaborator with Kanye West, NBA teams, Puma, Hypebeast, Lexus, and more
One Earth Rising: Ownable Interoperability for Modern Gaming
Their standard has self-sovereignty and a format game engines can understand
This format seeks to become industry standard
All facets of the asset - items, moments, stats - are able to be minted
Meratas: Expedia for Student Loans - Last check, Oversubscribed Round
This round is led by Jason Calacanis, legendary investor from The All In podcast
Multi-lender marketplace allows users to compare and loan offers to compete
110 schools are current paying customers, at $1300/mo
Projected revenue of $6M in 2023
Toka: Cybersecurity Tools for Modern International Protection
Second year of revenue doubled with multiple government PoCs
Gross margins more than 90%
$22M forecast in 2023
Backed by Andreesen Horowitz
GET protocol: The Premium NFT Ticketing Solution
GET has been building NFT ticketing since 2016
They have a full range of ticketing products for event holders, from self-service to full concierge, and also whitelabel solutions
Issued nearly 3.4 Million tickets (1.7M in 2022 alone), over 17k events
Investment includes a token grant AND discounted token purchase rights
Simply Eggless: The Future of Egg Alternatives
Simply Eggless is the second-largest producer and supplier of plant-based eggs globally, with a revenue of $2M in 2022
Their products are sold in over 2.8k stores in North America and the company is looking to expand to 1k more stores, serving their massive popularity among Gen Z and Millennials
The main ingredient used by Eggless is lupin bean, which offers high protein, excellent baking functionality, and is environmentally friendly
The competitors in vegan egg alternatives all fall behind Simply Eggless, which has a much more versatile and shelf-stable product
Knights of Degen: Co-Founded by Drew Austin! Web3 Sports & Gaming Ecosystem + $10M in Sales + Acquired League DAO Defi Fantasy Protocol
KoD is building RPG Fantasy Sports Games powered by Web3. The Knights gaming ecosystem, rewards degen activities, from betting, to fantasy gaming, to building as a DAO contributor.
Assets of KOD include fantasy gaming software, bet2earn protocol, mobile application, media network, p2e gaming assets and teams, professional sports ownership stakes, nfts, and more.
The KOD Inc. cap table will be allocated 30% of the Degen Token market supply.
BoostVC (Coinbase, Etherscan, Alta, Wyre) is leading the round w/ participation from RBV Fund I
Seed, $16M Pre-Money + Token
Blocklords: GoT Meets Axie - Revolutionizing Play-To-Earn Gaming
Blocklords already has 120k pre-registered for their play-to-earn game
The medieval-based game allows players to craft their narrative while simultaneously earning cryptocurrency for tasks they complete within the game (Play-to-earn model).
Blocklords is focusing on delivering value to the user first to build up the user base and ecosystem first - This approach seems to be working by their massive sign-up and connection numbers
Money earned can be used to progress in the game or traded on crypto exchanges.
Bitscraft, Delphi Digital, and Animoca Brands are all investing
SAFT, $100M FMV
The Sandbox: Global leader and largest metaverse platform
$SAND is a Top 50 Cryptocurrency >$2B
$250M+ current virtual real estate LAND value
>$700M digital asset portfolio
$4.3M highest LAND price paid
~3X more LAND sales than competitor Decentraland
250K+ creators and brands are using the no-code tools to mind new items and experiences each month!
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🥳 Upcoming Events:
In-person events are a great way to stay informed in our industry, so we are planning for a very full 2023. We would love to hear about any other conferences you will be attending this year, so please let us know as we are still planning our event calendar! We have provided our tentative list for 2023 below:
Consensus
VeeCon
Thank you to everyone who came out to our event during NFT.NYC! The Girls Table x Red Beard Ventures would like to give special thanks to our event sponsors: Geo Events NY, Desolas Mezcal, and Mareluna.
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🪙 Crypto News:
Since December, $10M in funds have been stolen from various self-custody wallets
Investigators have narrowed down the exploit vector to something in some wallet providers’ SDK
Investigators have also determined that this isn’t social engineering or phishing links, but rather some previously unknown leak of private keys
Creditor committee and Tribe Capital met to propose a possible relaunch of FTX
The launch plan would be part of a restitution agreement to satisfy bankruptcy proceedings
Tribe Capital also invested in FTX and FTX.us as far back as 2018
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🗃️ Portfolio News:
To popularize the coming LMWR token sale and platform launch, Limewire has created an “early 2000s emulator”
The game mechanic is to download as many legitimate files as possible, without accidentally downloading a virus
Players with the highest score by May 15 can be rewarded with 100,000 LMWR
In a partnership with NINFA Labs marketplace, both are running an exhibition
The exhibit, titled “This Is Not a Dream” will run until April 23 at NINFA Labs in Milan
12 artists will be featured, with the theme being the intersection of crypto art and surrealism
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💸 NFT Alpha
The former President returned to Instagram for the first time in over two years, to sell a second series of his NFT collection
The collection, sold out in a similar time frame, number at 47k (the previous was 45k), a nod towards the upcoming presidential election
The rarest cards depict the 45th President as Elvis on a motorcycle in space, as a King playing card and chess piece, with rocket legs, in hunting gear, grilling burgers, and as a superhero (among others)
A suit filed in the District of California alleges a founder of Rebase, Edmond Truong, stole $2M from a joint wallet
The suit also mentions the filing partner was locked out of business accounts, including those associated with the “Cy-B3lla” Bella hadid NFT project
The filing partner claims these and some statements made by Truong constitute theft, defamation, and breach of contract
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🤝 We are hiring!
We are looking for syndicate vertical leads in the following categories - if you are interested please reach out and we can discuss the opportunity in greater detail:
Biotech
Space
Robotics & Automation
Climate
Fintech & SaaS
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Onwards 🚀
Drew, Elana, Whit, Mitchell, and Lauren