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Welcome to the 49th edition of Sfermion’s Collider where we highlight the latest & greatest news in the world of crypto, gaming & entertainment, consumer trends, AI, macro, and more!
Bi-weekly, we aim to drop a curated list of the most exciting stories & updates that we believe are enabling the future of tech and the emergence of the metaverse.
If you're looking forward to reading this edition of Sfermion’s Collider, please don't forget to subscribe below, share within your network, and follow Sfermion on Twitter to get the latest! Check out our Seam bio here :)
Ethereum ETFs Hit $107M Inflows on Debut: 'Very Solid First Day' (link)
Morgan Stanley Advisors Soon Can Offer BTC ETFs to Clients (link)
California DMV Makes History, Digitizes 42M Car Titles on Avalanche Blockchain (link)
Lummis Announces Revolutionary Proposal to Supercharge the Dollar, Bolster U.S. Economy (link)
Trump Pledges to Fire Gensler, Hire People Who ‘Love’ Crypto (link)
Fold to Go Public (link)
Coinbase Asset Management Plans Tokenized Money-Market Fund, a Hot Area After BlackRock's BUIDL Success (link)
OKX Ventures and Aptos Foundation Jointly Launch $10M Ecosystem Growth Fund and Accelerator to Boost Aptos Ecosystem Growth (link)
Ferrari Expands Cryptocurrency Payments Across Europe After US Launch (link)
Proton releases a self-custody bitcoin wallet (link)
Avail DA Mainnet and $AVAIL Token Go Live (link)
English Football Club Owned by Bitcoiner Adds $4.5M Bitcoin to Its Treasury (link)
Marathon Digital Buys $100M of BTC (link)
Russia Legalizes Mining and Approves the Use of Crypto for Int’l Payments, But… (link)
Qatar to Legally Recognize Digital Assets By Q4 2024 (link)
No Other Crypto ETFs In The Foreseeable Future: BlackRock (link)
Atari partners with Coinbase to bring Asteroids and Breakout to blockchain (link)
Manchester United Launches Web3 Game 'Fantasy United' (link)
Telegram Hits 950M Users Amid Crypto Gaming Boom (link)
Monthly Audience of WeChat Mini Games Reached 500M Users
Gaming Startup Funding Fell In Q2 (link)
Monopoly Go transforms back into a board game (link)
Warner Bros Games acquires MultiVersus studio Player First (link)
Roblox announces Team USA Olympic and Paralympic Games partnership (link)
80+ Netflix Stories games in development and plans to release "about one new title per month" (link)
Earn Alliance launches Ally Pass rewards system with TGE on 24th September (link)
EA Sports College Football 25 sold 2.2M $100 copies with early access (link)
Freestyle Chess debuts with $12M in funding for tournament series (link)
Wuthering Waves sails past $100M in under two months (link)
Zenless Zone Zero surpasses $50M in 11 days (link)
Animoca Brands’ Mocaverse, MOCA Foundation, and TON Foundation execute strategic partnership via token swap (link)
Mark Zuckerberg calls for open-source AI as Meta releases Llama 3.1 (link)
Google DeepMind AI Scores 28 Points, Wins Silver at International Mathematical Olympiad with AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2 (link)
Meta moves on from its celebrity lookalike AI chatbots, creates new AI studio for custom chatbots (link)
A match 'made in heaven': Inside Canva’s stunning Leonardo.Ai acquisition (link)
Nvidia preparing version of new flagship AI chip for Chinese market (link)
OpenAI Tests New AI Search Features in Direct Challenge to Google (link)
AI Startup Cohere Valued at $5.5B in New Funding Round (link)
VCs are still pouring billions into generative AI startups (link)
California Governor Newsom to Sign Bill Banning AI-Generated Manipulated Voice Ads (link)
Google Reverses Plan to Phase Out Third-Party Cookies in Chrome, Introduces User Choice (link)
Senate passes the Kids Online Safety Act (link)
Intel to Cut Thousands of Jobs to Reduce Costs, Fund Rebound (link)
FTC launches probe into ‘surveillance pricing’ that it says links cost to customer data (link)
U.S. sues TikTok over ‘massive-scale’ privacy violations of kids under 13 (link)
Alphabet to invest $5B in self-driving car unit Waymo (link)
NBA signs broadcasting deal with Disney, Amazon, Comcast worth $77B (link)
$4.7B NFL Sunday Ticket decision overturned in bombshell (link)
Meta burns another $4.5B on metaverse in Q2, preps for AI growth (link)
Meta to pay $1.4B to settle Texas facial recognition data lawsuit (link)
Pershing Square USA, Ltd. Withdraws IPO (link)
‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Obliterates R-Rated Record With $205M Opening Weekend, Eighth-Biggest in Box Office History (link)
Reddit Teams Up With The NFL, NBA to Boost Revenue (link)
Apple Moves Forward With Foldable iPhone (link)
Former Tesla humanoid head launches a robotics startup (link)
Meta | Open Source AI Is the Path Forward (link)
Konvoy | Fundraising Challenges in Gaming (link)
B3 (NPC Labs, 💰) | Don't build your own app chain. Build on B3. (link)
GAM3S | Deep Dive on TON Ecosystem and Telegram (link)
GAM3S | Web3 Gaming Attracts 40% of All Private Company Financings in Q2 (link)
Variant Fund | The Future of DEX Trading (link)
Decentralised | Layered Bitcoin (link)
Matthew Ball | Interviewing Epic Games Founder/CEO Tim Sweeney and Author/Entrepreneur Neal Stephenson (link)
Sam Altman | The days are long but the decades are short (link)
Legal tech Clio raises $900M at a $3B valuation, plans to double down on AI and fintech (link)
Altana, An AI Platform For Supply Chain Data, Hits Unicorn Status After $200M Raise (link)
Galaxy Asset Mgmt Raises $113M for New Venture Fund (link)
OpenAI-backed legal tech startup Harvey raises $100M (link)
Morpho Labs Raises $50M In Latest Funding Round Led By Ribbit Capital (link)
NPC Labs (💰) raises $18M to bring mainstream games to Web3 (link)
Artificial Agency raises $16M to alter NPC behaviour in games (link)
Web3 Infrastructure Platform Caldera Raises $15M in Early-Stage Funding (link)
Peter Thiel's Founders Fund leads $11M round for Pudgy Penguins' parent as it builds new Layer 2 blockchain (link)
Arbitrum-based DuelNow receives $11M funding as Web3 betting heats up (link)
Layer2 Financial Secures $10.7M to Revolutionize Cross-Border Payments, led by Galaxy Ventures (link)
A16z Crypto leads $9M Series A round for energy DePIN project Daylight (link)
aPriori Raises $8M in Seed Funding for Liquid Staking Protocol with Pantera Capital Lead (link)
Mobile multiplayer app Dusk launches with Gen Z focus, raises $8M in funding (link)
Bitcoin scaling network Mezo raises $7.5M in new funding (link)
New gaming studio Blue Scarab raises $7M in funding round (link)
Polychain and Lightspeed Co-Lead $7M Seed Round for Web3 AI Startup Hyperbolic (link)
OpenSocial Protocol raises $6M in funding from Framework Ventures and North Island Ventures (link)
Aww Raises $6M to Create A Platform for Developing Global Virtual Stars and Their Communities (link)
DAOBase Secures $6M Funding To Enhance DAO Governance (link)
Pengu creator Slay raises $5M for social gaming platform (link)
Google and Coinbase vets raise $5M (led by CoinFund) to build Icebreaker, blockchain’s answer to LinkedIn (link)
Dstlry raises $5M for digital comics publishing and marketplace (link)
Crypto proprietary trading firm Breakout raises $4.5M in seed funding (link)
NFT startup Mintify raises $3.4M in additional funding (link)
Blockchain gaming ecosystem Panda Titan Secures $3M Funding (link)
K-pop Music NFT platform MetaBeat raises $3M in funding from FZF Ventures (link)
JokeRace, the onchain competition platform used by Polygon, Farcaster and Bankless, raises $3M round (link)
17-year-old Eric Zhu’s startup, Aviato raised $2.3M and is emerging from stealth to focus on an analytical platform for private market data (link)
Raad Labs raises $2.25M in quest to revolutionize weather data collection via web3 (link)
Look North World raises $2.25M for its Fortnite UGC games and creator label (link)
Kuru Labs Raises $2M Seed Round Led by Electric Capital (link)
We.Rich, a User-Generated Assets platform, raise $2M in Seed led by Folius Ventures and Animoca Brands (link)
Echo Chunk raises $1.4M to make AI-based puzzle games (link)
Binance Labs Invests in Pluto Studio, aPriori, and Particle Network
Macro
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$1.5T Franklin Templeton has partnered with one of Japan's biggest financial services companies, SBI Holdings, to launch a Bitcoin ETF in Japan - Nikkei
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