When we started building NFTfi in February of 2020 the rest of the world hadn’t woken up to just how important NFTs are going to be. While we knew that NFTs would be a core component to the decentralised future we are all building together, we had no idea things would take off quite as fast as they did.
When we first started talking to investors we knew we had to find people who shared our vision for the future of the virtual economy and the pivotal role NFTs would play in it. Given all the attention NFTs have gotten recently you would think that would have been an easy task, but back then most VC firms would have said that NFTs are “too early” for them to invest in.
Luckily for us we managed to connect early on with some really smart investors who believed in us and our vision. With their help we will become a core building block in the inevitable financialization of NFTs.
“NFTfi is at the forefront of a trend that is poised to take the NFT space, and broader blockchain adoption, by storm. They are one of the first companies working on the financialization of NFTs, in particular NFT-based collateral for loans and resulting price discovery. NFTfi’s work further underscores that NFTs is an up and coming financial asset class.” — Jake Brukhman — Founder, Managing Partner at CoinFund
$890K in funding from leading NFT investors
We are happy to announce an investment of $890,000 from leading investors in the NFT space. From the outset it was important for us to have investors on board that brought more than just money; we wanted partners who understood the space and had already been bitten by the NFT bug.
“As NFTs re-imagined how we produce and define ownership of digital content online, we’ll also in turn begin to re-imagine a whole new category of financial services based on these new building blocks. NFTfi is one of the first products out there that aims to serve this new emerging economy.” — Lasse Clausen, Founding Partner at 1kx
The $890k round includes investment from top VC firms with deep experience in the NFT and DeFI space, including; Coinfund, 1KX, Collab+Currency, Maven 11 and The LAO. Animoca Brands also participated in the round as a strategic investor.
The rest of the round includes a number of the leading builders and collectors in the NFT and DeFi space including Roham Gharegozlou (CEO of Dapper Labs, the creators of NBA Top Shot and CryptoKitties), Sebastien Borget (COO of The Sandbox game), Johnathan Gabler (cadCad Edu, Blockscience), Andrew Steinwald (Zima Red, Sfermion), Snowfro (Artbocks) and Roberto Ceresia (ark.gallery, Wrapped Punks) among others.
We are honoured to be building NFTfi with such an amazing group of people and thank them all for believing in us before NFTs became the hot new thing.
Where we are heading
NFTfi will use the funding to expand the capabilities of the platform, add support for additional blockchains like Flow and to fund the development of a governance token to enable community ownership in the platform.
“NFT’s are quickly rising as a new type of asset in which we can capture the value of any (unique) form, content or ownership. Further utilisation of this, through using it as collateral, is an inevitable step. As the digital ownership economy grows so does financilisation of NFT’s. NFTfi is perfectly positioned to capture this market and we are proud to be backing Stephen and his team.” — Balder Bomans, Managing Partner Maven 11 Capital
More details on exactly what this will look like are coming, but here is a sneak peak at what you can expect from us over the next few months.
UI revamp : Since day one we have had fantastic feedback and suggestions from our community that we just haven’t had the time or resources to implement. With the money we raised we have expanded our development team with some rock star designers, front end- and blockchain engineers. The new logo was the first step but expect a lot more to come over the next few months.
Global offers : Ever wanted to make an offer on any Ape CryptoPunk with 3D glasses, or any CryptoKitty with an ID less than 100? Soon you will be able to. Global offers are offers that use asset metadata to allow rules based offers that apply to a set of NFTs instead of just a single NFT. This should make it much easier to always have an active offer in the market.
Flow support : With NBA Topshots taking off and all the behind the scenes activity going on with Flow of course we will be joining the party! Soon you will be able to get a loan on your NBA Topshot and any other Flow based NFT through NFTfi.
Governance token : From the start we wanted to make NFTfi a community owned and operated platform. The governance token is the first step on that journey. We will share more information on this over the coming weeks and months. Make sure you sign up to our newsletter to get the latest updates!
Funds and liquidity pooling : Don’t have the expertise to value NFT’s but want to participate in NFTfi? Funds will allow users to provide liquidity to NFT experts to manage a loan fund and share in the interest earned. We are very excited about funds and believe they will unlock some serious liquidity.
“The market for lending against assets like art and real estate is in the trillions of dollars in traditional finance. NFTfi is leading the charge in mapping lending products to the crypto-equivalents within the NFT space.” — Stephen McKeon, Managing Partner, Collab+Currency
Thank you!
Lastly we wanted to thank our community and all the people who helped and supported us early on. We are blown away by how kind, positive and supportive our community is. We wouldn’t be where we are without you and are more excited than ever to be part of the NFT family.
Stephen Young, Founder and CEO, NFTfi
