ChainCatcher news, the AI-native entertainment application chain Infinity Ground has announced the completion of a $2 million seed round financing, with investors including Animoca Brands, MARBLEX, MH Ventures, Frachtis, KuCoin Ventures, KnightFury, PAKA, and Presto. The protocol supports developers in creating Agent applications on Base, BNB Chain, and Kaia using a customized proxy IDE and IDK based on Initia Stack.According to RootData, Infinity Ground is a pioneering AI-native entertainment application chain built on SVM. It not only creates its own AI games and interactive narratives but also provides developers with advanced tools to simplify the creation of AI-driven casual games. By nurturing a unified and rich AI-native gaming ecosystem, Infinity Ground is reshaping the landscape of digital entertainment.

ChainCatcher news, AI VC Agent HeyAni officially debuted at the Portfolio Day hosted by Animoca Brands in Hong Kong.HeyAni is co-developed by Animoca Brands and FLock.io, aiming to provide more comprehensive and professional investment and operational advice to projects through decentralized AI technology, lowering the entry barriers for Web3 entrepreneurs and investors.The underlying technology of HeyAni is fully built by FLock.io, relying on its decentralized AI training and verification network to achieve three core functions:Web3 projects can submit business plans, and AI will conduct intelligent assessments and provide optimization suggestions;Investors can query token codes, and AI will generate relevant analysis comments based on publicly available token information;HeyAni Alpha regularly analyzes and publishes a list of high-potential projects through AI.FLock.io provides a complete set of decentralized AI training and computing solutions, ensuring the transparency, fairness, and verifiability of AI assessments.HeyAni is based on the AI models trained on FLock.io platform Mainnet Task2 and Testnet Task 16, integrating Animoca Brands' investment and operational experience from over 540 Web3 ecosystem projects, creating an enterprise-level + retail-end crypto investment analysis platform based on decentralized AI, and promoting the Web3 ecosystem towards a smarter and fairer new phase.

ChainCatcher news, according to official sources, Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong), Animoca Brands, and Hong Kong Telecommunications (HKT) have announced the establishment of a joint venture, planning to apply for a license from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to issue a Hong Kong dollar stablecoin. The joint venture will combine Standard Chartered Bank's infrastructure and governance experience, Animoca Brands' Web3 ecosystem resources, and HKT's mobile payment technology.The three parties have participated in the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's regulatory sandbox program for stablecoin issuers since July 2024, committed to connecting Web3 with traditional finance through stablecoins, and consolidating Hong Kong's position as a global digital asset hub.

ChainCatcher news, according to official sources, Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Limited "SCBHK", Animoca Brands, and Hong Kong Telecommunications have signed an agreement to jointly establish a joint venture, planning to apply for a license under the new regulatory framework of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to issue a Hong Kong dollar-backed stablecoin.

ChainCatcher news, the DePIN project Hivello has received a strategic investment led by Animoca Brands. The specific amount has not been disclosed. The funds raised will be used for further innovation to simplify DePIN nodes and make them more user-friendly.Hivello is a DePIN aggregator that allows users to monetize idle computing resources across multiple decentralized networks to earn income. Previously, Hivello completed a $1.5 million funding round in February last year, with participation from Blockchange and others.

ChainCatcher news, Bitwise announced that after acquiring ETC Group last year, the company has completed the rebranding of all exchange-traded products (ETPs) in its European product suite. The newly named European market ETPs include: Bitwise Core Bitcoin ETP (BTC1), Bitwise Ethereum Staking ETP (ET32), Bitwise MSCI Digital Assets Select 20 ETP (DA20), and Bitwise Physical Bitcoin ETP (BTCE), among others.

ChainCatcher news, liquidity strategic investment company Unicorn Verse announces the acquisition of Sweepy. Sweepy will officially be renamed UnicornX. UnicornX aims to become an on-chain trading ecosystem, committed to leading industry development through innovation.

ChainCatcher message, Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu suggested on social platform X that the Trump Coin ($TRUMP) team should carefully consider supporting important charitable foundations and public welfare causes. He pointed out that the way the token is handled will have a ripple effect on the trust and reputation of the entire cryptocurrency and Web3 industry.

ChainCatcher news, according to official sources, Virtuals Protocol announced a joint initiative with Agentstarter and Animoca Brands, aimed at investing in and accelerating next-generation projects to promote the integration of agent-driven technology and gaming, with a focus on areas including: sentient AI NPCs, AI games, AI avatars, and more.

ChainCatcher message, Binance has completed the token swap of Mines of Dalarnia (DAR) and the brand upgrade to Dar Open Network (D), and has opened the deposit and withdrawal services for the new D token.Binance has opened D/USDT and D/TRY spot trading on January 9, 2025, at 16:00 (UTC+8).

ChainCatcher news, aixbt posted that the Memecoin space is becoming more mature. BABYSHARK is collaborating with real IP owners, rather than just being another Dogecoin clone. The original content has reached 14 billion views on YouTube.Subsequently, Animoca Brands co-founder retweeted aixbt's praise for BABYSHARK and interacted with BABYSHARK in a selfie.

ChainCatcher news, according to statistics from the Web3 asset data platform RootData, the total financing amount in the cryptocurrency market reached $10.112 billion in 2024, an increase of 8.3% compared to $9.337 billion in 2023. A total of 1,548 financing events occurred throughout the year, with 102 merger and acquisition events, a 34.2% increase from 76 in 2023, setting a historical high. The average financing amount was $9.1352 million, with a median financing amount of $4.1 million. In terms of financing scale, the most projects were in the $1-3 million range, totaling 408, followed by 244 in the $5-10 million range and 219 in the $3-5 million range; in terms of financing rounds, seed rounds dominated with 426 occurrences.From the perspective of sector distribution, the infrastructure sector was the most favored by capital, with a total financing amount of $3.995 billion in 2024, an 18.2% increase from $3.379 billion in 2023; the DeFi sector ranked second with $1.493 billion, nearly doubling from $759 million in 2023; the gaming sector's financing amount increased from $669 million in 2023 to $813 million. Notably, the CeFi sector's financing amount decreased from $990 million in 2023 to $679 million in 2024. The largest financing event of the year was Stripe's acquisition of the stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion, followed by Bitcoin mining company Iris Energy's $413 million financing, and Avalanche's $250 million OTC financing.In terms of the activity of investment institutions, Animoca Brands topped the list with 95 investments, followed by OKX Ventures with 72 and MH Ventures with 56. In terms of leading investments, Polychain was the most active, completing 30 lead investments throughout the year, with Hack VC in second place with 24, and both Lemniscap and Animoca Brands completing 17 lead investments, ranking third.

ChainCatcher news, Moca verse on the X platform stated that this morning, the official X account of Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu @ysiuhas was compromised despite having two-factor authentication (2FA) set up. Unauthorized individuals used the account to post false information and links regarding a counterfeit SOLANA token. It has been confirmed that the X platform has regained control of the @ysiuhas account and is currently verifying the true ownership of the account.Evidence suggests that this may be a case of identity theft, as the account had implemented standard security measures (such as two-factor authentication). Stronger security measures are being considered and implemented. The official accounts of Animoca Brands, Moca Network, or the MOCA Foundation have not been compromised, and strict security measures have been taken. As a precaution, all key members and official accounts have updated all authentication. No other vulnerabilities or unauthorized activities have been detected.

ChainCatcher news, Animoca Brands officially confirmed that the X account of co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu has been hacked. The attacker is using this account to publish false token information.Animoca Brands officially stated that the company currently has no plans for any new token or NFT issuance, and reminds users not to interact with any related suspicious contracts or tokens.

ChainCatcher news, Animoca Brands released its unaudited financial report for the second and third quarters of 2024. The data shows that the company's total booking revenue for the third quarter reached $69 million, a quarter-on-quarter increase of 43.8% and a year-on-year increase of 165%. Revenue primarily comes from three major business segments: Digital Asset Advisory (DAA) contributed $25 million, Web3 operations generated $39 million, and investment management revenue was $5 million.As of the end of September 2024, the company held $248 million in cash and stablecoins, and $330 million in liquid digital assets (including $218 million in available-for-sale assets and $112 million in unlocked tokens), mainly consisting of ETH, BTC, APE, and others. The company also holds $1.6 billion in off-balance-sheet token reserves, including SAND, EDU, MOCA, REVV, TOWER, GMEE, and others.In terms of operating expenses, the third quarter amounted to $59 million, a quarter-on-quarter increase of 13.5%, primarily due to one-time consulting fees incurred from the MOCA token issuance in July.

ChainCatcher news, according to Bitcoin.com, the gamified social trading platform XYRO has completed a $1.4 million private fundraising round, led by Animoca Brands.According to the Web3 asset data platform RootData, XYRO is a gamified social trading platform designed to make cryptocurrency more accessible and engaging. Users can test their ability to predict cryptocurrency prices, earn rewards, compete with others, and share trading ideas.

ChainCatcher news, according to Cointelegraph, Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu stated at the Bitcoin MENA event in Abu Dhabi that the NFT market is set for a strong rebound.Regarding the recent shutdown of projects like RTFKT under Nike, Siu believes this is a natural phenomenon in business development and emphasizes that the failure of certain projects does not represent the future of the entire NFT space.Yat Siu added that despite some failures in the field, he believes NFTs will continue to rise as status identity commodities.

ChainCatcher news, the next-generation PayFi infrastructure - the decentralized P2P trading platform BountyBay, recently announced that it has received investment from Animoca Brands and will collaborate deeply with Animoca and its community and projects to advance product development.In addition, BountyBay announced a partnership with Kaia to participate in the launch of the Line Mini App, further exploring the high-quality Web3 market and building a diverse user value ecosystem.Meanwhile, BountyBay is also developing a strategic partnership with Aethir to conduct in-depth exploration in the AI field. Leveraging Aethir's advantages in artificial intelligence and computing power, it aims to create innovative cross-chain and cross-platform AI application scenarios.It is reported that BountyBay's new decentralized PayFi trading module - TradeOS is about to be launched, which will support multi-chain decentralized asset and service collaborative trading. TradeOS is a significant milestone for BountyBay, not only enhancing trading efficiency but also innovating traditional systems around a trustworthy and verifiable blockchain system, providing safer and more efficient trading solutions.

ChainCatcher message, according to the popularity index data from the Web3 asset data platform RootData, as of December 11 at 12:30, Bounty Bay has surged 964 places to rank 6 in the Top 50 rising projects list. The project previously announced investment from Animoca Brands and will collaborate deeply with Animoca and its community and projects.BountyBay is a Web3 native social viral marketing platform based on Telegram and the TON ecosystem. BountyBay aims to leverage the power of social viral dissemination and social gamification tools to help brands reach over 900 million active users on Telegram each month and sell products to them. BountyBay is supported by the TON Foundation and the Hashkey Future3 Campus, co-hosting the TON funding and accelerator program.It is reported that RootData has launched the first "Web3 Hot Projects Ranking." This popularity ranking helps users capture the real pulse of attention through 4.3 million real user behavior data, improving the accuracy of user investment decisions. The ranking calculates the project popularity value in real-time based on weighted factors such as the frequency of searches by platform users, project clicks, user votes, and the popularity and influence on the X platform.