Coinbase's ad backfires terribly. But it’s genius!??; Polygon’s $450M raise to fund Web 3’s take on AWS ??; Web3 Super App of Africa ??

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February was another hot month when it comes to the world of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency.?We will look at Polygon’s $450M raise to fund Web 3’s take on Amazon Web Services; Coinbase's ad that's the best marketing campaign in FinTech ever; Web3 Super App of Africa, and other interesting news and developments.

Without further ado, let us dive into what has happened in the Blockchain & Crypto sector the last month. Let’s connect the dots.

Polygon’s $450M raise to fund Web 3’s take on Amazon Web Services ??

The money ???Polygon, a secondary scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain, raised $450M in a round of funding led by Sequoia Capital India to support the firm’s Web 3 plans.

The round included funding from 40 venture capital firms, including SoftBank, Michael Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital, Tiger Global, Republic Capital, and hedge fund manager Alan Howard as well as Kevin O'Leary of ABC's "Shark Tank."

The USP ???Polygon is among a handful of so-called Layer-2 or side-chain firms that are attempting to help Ethereum’s network solve its growing pains by employing techniques to move a wide range of transaction information off the blockchain.

Moving a lot of details off the Ethereum blockchain allows Polygon to pack more transaction details on an Ethereum block and significantly scale the number of transactions it can process.

?? THE TAKEAWAY

If Ethereum is the future, Polygon has its place too.?The growth in Web 3, which is the third generation of internet services and has been made possible by decentralized networks, has been crazy in the last year alone. Building on the early Internet's open-source ideals and hence enabling users to create value, control the network and reap the rewards, Web3 has been attracting both top talent and some of the biggest funding rounds to date. Polygon is a very important part of it. The platform had processed more than 23M blocks and 1.3B transactions. Over 7,000 decentralized applications — including DeFi platforms Aave, Curve, Sushiswap, Pool, Uniswap, and giant NFT marketplace OpenSea, and metaverse projects Decentraland and Sandbox — have deployed on Polygon. Hence, it’s pretty obvious that if Ethereum is the future, Polygon is too.

Coinbase's ad backfires terribly. But it’s genius! ??

Super Bowl ???Crypto exchange giant?Coinbase?briefly crashed on Sunday after an eccentric Super Bowl ad sparked a surge in traffic. But that’s genius. Continue reading.

The ad ???The 60-second ad featured a floating and colorful QR code bouncing around the screen, similar to a bouncing DVD logo. The QR code directed people to a link offering $15 in Bitcoin to those who sign up for a Coinbase account before February 15. Meanwhile, existing users had the chance to opt-in for a chance of winning a $3M prize.

The crash ???The ad proved so popular that the app crashed for about an hour.

To be more precise, Coinbase had more than 20M hits on its landing page in one minute and the engagement was 6 times higher than previous benchmarks. It was hence historic and unprecedented.

As an effect, the Coinbase app also skyrocketed in popularity, rising from 186th place to 2nd on Apple's App Store.

The effect ?????Given how the major sporting event regularly attracts more than?100M?viewers, critics argued that Coinbase really should have seen this coming. In fact, many said that all would have been fine if Coinbase would have handled the load.

I disagree with that and actually believe this is probably one of the best marketing campaigns the FinTech industry has ever seen. Here’s why????

?? THE TAKEAWAY

Epic play ???Let me say that again - Coinbase’s Super Bowl ad might be the best marketing campaign in FinTech ever. The crypto exchange reportedly paid nearly $14M for a minute-long ad. That sounds huge but think about it for a second. Given they got 20M website visits in just ONE minute, it’s around $0.7 per click. That’s nearly x2 cheaper than Facebook ads and almost the same as Google (Search). Which is a massive win. Furthermore, because of the crash, even more people started talking about it, which in turn facilitated even more exposure and engagement. So now everybody’s talking about Coinbase. And we all know that?there?is?no such thing as bad publicity.?Therefore, whether this was intentional or not, Coinbase won big time here and their Super Bowl play was an epic touchdown. Well played ??

Web3 Super App of Africa ??

The funding???Jambo, a Congo-based startup building Africa’s web3 user acquisition portal through “learn, play, earn” and democratizing access to crypto-based income-generation opportunities, has raised $7.5M in seed funding.

The USP ???One of the most popular play-to-earn games these days is Axie Infinity, which allows users to earn an income while playing games under a revenue-sharing model.

Jambo is taking a different approach. There are three key pillars:

• Data.?Users can save their data spend when they use Jambo. The startup partners with telecom providers to get an almost 70% discount and sell directly to its users at a 50% discount from the original cost. It’s one of their main user acquisition strategies, according to their CEO.
• Social media.?Jambo is partnering with social media companies so users can earn tokens (which they can convert to income) while watching their content on its app.
• Play-to-earn.?There are currently no popularized play-to-earn web3 games from Africa and this is because the infrastructure to create them, which is through Guilds, is lacking. Different from the traditional approach, Jambo’s revenues would come not from profit sharing but from web2 models — charging advertising dollars and commissions from selling airtime and data.

?? THE TAKEAWAY

Following the footsteps of WeChat??One of Jambo’s investors said that?what WeChat did in China, Jambo will do in Africa. And he might not be entirely too much off the ground. The continent has a fast-growing population, which is the youngest globally, solid smartphone penetration, increasing crypto adoption, as well as low GDP per capita, which makes the play-to-earn approach in potentially high demand. If they manage to acquire a solid user base and scale this across multiple markets, it might be one of the most interesting startups to watch as of right now.

BlackRock to offer crypto trading ??

The news ???BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is preparing to offer a cryptocurrency trading service to its investor clients, according to three people with knowledge of the plans.

More to this ???The New York-based company, which manages over $10 trillion in assets for institutions, plans to enter the cryptocurrency space with “client support trading and then with their own credit facility,” one of the people said. In other words, clients would be able to borrow from BlackRock by pledging crypto assets as collateral.

Aladdin ???One of the people said BlackRock will allow its clients – which include public pension schemes, endowments, and sovereign wealth funds – to trade cryptocurrency through Aladdin (short for “Asset, Liability, Debt and Derivative Investment Network”), the asset manager’s integrated investment management platform. The timetable for unveiling the service is unclear.

?? THE TAKEAWAY

Institutions are coming ???First and foremost, it must be noted that BlackRock has already sent some positive signals to the market regarding crypto, including trading CME bitcoin futures, as per a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company also has plans to launch the iShares Blockchain and Tech ETF, an exchange-traded fund tracking an index composed of companies involved in crypto technologies in the U.S. and abroad. Furthermore, BlackRock also owns 16.3% of MicroStrategy, whose CEO, Michael Saylor is one of the most active Bitcoin maximalists while MicroStrategy is one of the biggest publicly-traded Bitcoin treasuries. Looking at the bigger picture, it’s clear that institutions are coming, and they are coming for digital assets. Wall Street banks and large financial institutions are edging into crypto, with the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citi carefully choosing strategies. This is a positive and huge move to further legitimize the space and make it even more mainstream.

Extra Reads & Quick Bites for Curious Minds??

• NFT Zynga ???One of the world's best-known mobile gaming companies is planning to launch an NFT-based title this year, according to?Axios.?Zynga — whose titles include FarmVille and Words With Friends — also intends to go on a hiring spree.?Its blockchain chief Matt Wolf said "things are really frothy right now," meaning the company plans to find an opportune time to jump in.?NFTs are unlikely to be added to Zynga's existing games amid fears that it could end up confusing existing players.
• Property-backed NFTs? ???A property backed by a non-fungible token has been sold for the first time in the U.S.?More than 7,000 people were interested in bidding on the five-bedroom house in Florida, but only two bids were made above the asking price of $650,000.?It eventually sold for?210 ETH?at auction. Propy — the blockchain-focused company behind the transaction — described the purchase as "historic" for the real estate world.?The NFT grants the investor access to a U.S.-based entity that owns the property.
• No universal case for CBDCs ??♂??The managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has urged policymakers to consider the trade-offs of central bank digital currencies, saying there is no universal case for CBDC. CBDCs could offer more financial inclusion in some countries and form a backup payment system in others,?Kristalina Georgieva?on Bloomberg News. However, she warned that their design should also consider financial stability and privacy to prevent a potential legislative “deal-breaker.” “Policymakers will need to resolve many open questions, technical obstacles, and policy trade-offs,” Georgieva said. “If CBDCs are designed prudently, they can potentially offer more resilience, more safety, greater availability and lower costs than private forms of digital money” like “unbacked crypto-assets.”

Money Moves??

• Ethereum NFT marketplace?Ethernity?raised?$20M?to launch its Ethernal Labs creative studio to enable celebrities and brands to enter the NFT space and expand into play-to-earn (P2E) gaming and metaverse initiatives.
• Ethereum-focused multi-chain network?SKALE?established a?$100M?grant program to fund blockchain gaming development.?
• US-based Bitcoin payments processor?OpenNode?has raised $20M in new funding led by Kingsway, bringing its valuation to $220M. The Series A funding round also saw additional investment from Twitter, Fidelity Investments affiliated Avon Ventures, and Bitcoin supporter Tim Draper. OpenNode operates a secure Bitcoin processing infrastructure for businesses that allows for payments and payouts, invoicing, conversion and settlements.

Continue reading by subscribing to?Linas's Newsletter.?You will receive fresh news about FinTech, Blockchain, and Crypto with hot takeaways every day.

P.S.?You might enjoy my earlier pieces as well:

?? Bitcoin in 2021: a story in 5 graphs, and what might come in 2022

???A Wise pitch deck that led to London’s biggest and most successful direct listing ever

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About: I am?a business developer, sales professional, FinTech strategist, as well as Cryptocurrency and Blockchain enthusiast. I'm highly passionate about Financial Technology and Digital Innovation, and strongly believe that it will change the world for the better. Apart from my daily job at a global payments startup where I'm leading the company's expansion into Europe, I'm an active member of the FinTech community and a TechFin evangelist.

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