Several high-profile investment firms contributed to the funding round, suggesting interest in the space is far from waning any time soon.
Crypto and nonfungible token (NFT) ecosystem analytics firm BitsCrunch has secured $3.6 million in a funding round led by Animoca Brands, Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com Capital, and others.
BitsCrunch uses AI-based analytical tools to determine the fair price of NFTs, identify wash trading warnings, and determine whether an NFT is a copy or forgery of the genuine asset. The company is based in Germany and India.
The firm believes that investors in the continually growing space need better access to data that will protect them from fakes and getting fooled by ingenuine trading volume.
We are excited to announce that we have completed an oversubscribed private token round of $3.6M USD, led by @animocabrands & with participation from @coinbase @cryptocom @polygonstudios & a few others. A detailed thread pic.twitter.com/a5La2z5jym
— bitsCrunch | #SecureYourNFTs (@bitsCrunch) February 24, 2022
BitsCrunch CEO Vijay Pravin Maharajan told Cointelegraph on Feb. 25 that his company currently supports NFTs on Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), and Avalanche (AVAX), but that he plans to use funds "to expand the team that can focus on securing many prominent blockchains like Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT), Algorand (ALGO), and others."
The firm stated in a Feb. 24 tweet that it hopes the new additions will make the “whole ecosystem more trustworthy & secure for the community.”
Animoca Brands, the round’s leading investor, has been one of the most prolific VC firms investing in the NFT space. Last month it was valued at $5 billion due to the level of profit in its investment portfolio, which includes Axie Infinity, The Sandbox, and many other NFT-based projects.
Animoca co-founder Yat Siu stated in a Feb. 25 announcement that BitsCrunch is in a good position to assist investors in making informed investment decisions. He added that it can “contribute meaningfully to the safety and security of the emerging open metaverse.”
The amount of funds raised for NFT projects just over the past 30 days suggests that demand remains high for development in the field. Crypto fundraising tracker Airtable shows at least 27 other NFT projects have raised a collective $251 million since Jan. 25.
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Although the all-time leading NFT marketplace, OpenSea, has suffered from reduced trading volume interest in the asset class has not faded. Much of the trading volume for the most popular asset other than ETH on Ethereum appears to have shifted from OpenSea over to the LooksRare marketplace because of its lower fees and greater returns for investors.
