Yuga Labs fetches $450M in funding, Charles Hoskinson’s prediction falls short and

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

NFT creator Yuga Labs raises $450M, bringing company valuation to $4B

The creators of the wildly popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, Yuga Labs, raised $450 million in seed funding at a $4 billion valuation. Unsurprisingly, top venture capital firm and cash cow Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led the round.

Yuga Labs, which also recently launched ApeCoin and announced an upcoming metaverse platform, intends to use the funds to increase its employee base, attract more creative, engineering and operations talent, as well as support joint ventures and partnerships.

Yuga Labs has been stacking wins over the past 12 months, with CEO Nicole Muniz emphasizing that “there‘s a lot to come” given the “new economy” of intellectual properties in the company’s roster. Yuga Labs recently bought the IP of CryptoPunks and Meebits from Larva Labs and plans to give full commercial rights to NFT holders.

Charles Hoskinson cheekily admits: ‘I was wrong’ about DApp rollout

In a bit of self-aware humor, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson pointed out that his prediction about there being “thousands of assets and DApps” on the network by 2021 fell short significantly.

He made the comments on Twitter but appeared to misremember his own words, as he had predicted back in July 2020 that, by 2021, there would be “hundreds of assets and thousands of DApps” on Cardano.

The number of assets appears to have exceeded expectations thanks to NFT minting platforms; however, DeFi Llama lists a mere seven DApps on the blockchain, accounting for a total of $315.72 million total value locked (TVL).

SEC could approve spot Bitcoin ETFs as early as 2023 — Bloomberg analysts

Bloomberg’s highly clued-in ETF analysts Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart have suggested that a proposed rule change within the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) could result in the regulator approving a BTC spot ETF by mid-2023.

Balchunas stated on Thursday that crypto platforms could fall under the SEC’s regulatory framework if the commission were to approve the amendment to the Exchange Act proposed in January, which would change the definition of “exchange.” The move would enable crypto platforms “trading any type of security” to be included under the act.

“Once crypto exchanges are compliant, the SEC’s primary reason for denying spot Bitcoin ETFs would no longer be valid, likely clearing the way for approval,” said the analysts in a joint statement.

Stargate Finance attracts $1.9B in six days

Cross-chain protocol Stargate Finance has attracted more than $1.9 billion worth of TVL in less than a week since launching.

The platform’s rapidly growing TVL is most likely a result of the cap of 26% APY offered for farming stablecoin deposits. Stargate Finance touts itself as a protocol that enables users to transact native assets across various chains. Users can also stake assets in pools to receive Stargate token (STG) rewards.

Alameda Research CEO Sam Trabucco announced that the firm had heavily backed the project, snapping up all available Stargate tokens that had been auctioned off during Stargate’s launch on March 17.

Crypto users in Africa grew by 2,500% in 2021: Report

Crypto use in Africa surged a mammoth 2,500% in 2021, according to a report from crypto exchange KuCoin.

The report cited interesting data, such as “more than 88.5% of cryptocurrency transactions made by Africans” being cross-border transfers. It argued that the low fees mean that “users pay less than 0.01% of the overall amount of the transaction transferred in cryptocurrencies.”

Johnny Lyu, CEO of KuCoin, told Cointelegraph that “the adoption of digital assets in…