Weekly update #72

Welcome to this edition of the weekly newsletter. The idea behind this is to gather all the information in the startup ecosystem in one place, with a special focus on the fintech market and the VC industry.

The latest episode of Builders has been released this week. In this episode, I sit down with Miguel Armaza, partner and founder at Gilgamesh Ventures.

Miguel is a very well known figure in the fintech ecosystem, with multiple years of experience in financial services from Citi to MUFG across the globe. Over time, he became a real fintech enthusiast, launching multiple podcasts on this industry like Fintech Leaders and Wharton Fintech, but most importantly he launched Gilgamesh venture.

You can find the link to the full episode here on YouTube, or you can listen to it here on Spotify and here on Apple Podcast.

Gilgames Venture is a Venture Capital vertical in the fintech industry, based in New York but active worldwide. Main focus of the fund is pre-seed and seed fintech startups globally, with multiple stories of success like Affiniti, Niva and Pomelo.

With him, we will deep dive on the experience of launching a VC from scratch, but also the importance of your public figure in investments, how they choose founders and his point of view on the fintech market.

Coming back to us, I’ve been reading a very interesting report this week, the “Guide to Crypto Markets: Q1 2025” by Coinbase . In the report, the popular crypto exchange partners with Glassnode to give an extensive overview of crypto markets in 2024 and Q1 2025, including stablecoin use in payments and the current status in the cycle. Here my main takeaways:

The cryptocurrency market is entering a new stage of maturity in 2025, with stablecoins playing a pivotal role in integrating crypto and traditional banking. Institutional investors are increasingly optimistic, particularly in the U.S., following regulatory support for digital assets. Central banks and financial institutions worldwide are exploring blockchain for asset issuance and trading efficiency. Bitcoin's volatility has decreased, reinforcing crypto's role as a portfolio diversifier.

More investors, both new and long-term, are driving innovation in blockchain technology, solidifying crypto as a lasting asset class. Key themes this quarter include the rise of stablecoins, Layer-2 solutions, and ownership shifts. On top of that, mobile wallets hit a new milestone at 36M in Q4 2024, highlighting the role of this technology in the market development.

The current adoption trend can be spotted also by taking a look at US Spot Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) ETFs over time. The BTC ETF chart shows strong cumulative inflows, reaching around $40 billion by early 2025, with consistent daily flows and occasional spikes. Despite some outflows, the overall trend remains upward. In contrast, the ETH ETF saw significant outflows initially, leading to negative cumulative flows for most of 2024.

However, in late 2024, inflows surged, pushing cumulative flows above $2 billion by early 2025. The difference in trends highlights stronger investor confidence in Bitcoin ETFs, while Ethereum ETFs experienced a more volatile adoption curve before gaining traction.

Even with adoption growth, virtual assets seem to remain uncorrelated with many standard markets. Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) show a strong positive correlation (0.71), indicating that they move in tandem. BTC and ETH also exhibit moderate correlation with the stock market (SPX), suggesting some connection between crypto and traditional equities. Gold and silver are highly correlated (0.78), reinforcing their role as related safe-haven assets.

The S&P 500 (SPX) has a strong negative correlation (-0.81) with market volatility (VIX), confirming that rising equity prices often coincide with lower volatility. Interestingly, BTC and ETH have weak or negative correlations with gold, bonds, and the US dollar index (DXY), suggesting limited safe-haven properties. Meanwhile, interest rates (US 2Y, US 10Y) are strongly correlated with bond indices (US AGG), while VIX and MOVE (a bond volatility index) also exhibit moderate correlations with other macroeconomic indicators.

The stablecoin market has experienced significant growth, with total supply surpassing $200 billion by early 2025. Tether (USDT) remains the dominant stablecoin, followed by USDC, while other stablecoins like DAI and USDe have a comparatively smaller share. After a period of stagnation in 2022-2023, stablecoin supply surged in 2024, reflecting renewed demand.

Transaction volumes have also risen sharply, reaching a record high of nearly $5 trillion in early 2025. USDT and USDC continue to drive most of the volume, while other stablecoins, including BUSD and DAI, contribute marginally. The increasing role of stablecoins in financial markets highlights their growing use in trading, payments, and decentralized finance (DeFi).

Anyway we saw some very interesting news in the market this week. Binance got a huge $2 billion investment from MGX. Lot of acquisitions! Coinbase acquired Iron Fish Foundation, MoonPay acquired Iron, to testify the interest in the stablecoin market. Kraken Digital Asset Exchange is aiming at an IPO in 2026, while Ebury is looking to go public with a $3 billion valuation. In the VC market we saw the launch of Project Europe this week, but also some new funds from 8VC, Homegrown Capital and Vento. In the Italian ecosystem Lexroom.ai closed a $2 million round and Quickfisco closed a $1.5 million round. And finally some very interesting funding round from fintech startups like Numeral, Zolve, Synctera, Plata Card, Mimo, Curve and many others.

But let's take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days.

Closed deals

• Irish startup SQUID raises $1.4 million through crowdfunding in 6 hours
• UAE based fintech KLAIM.AI raises $26 million to expand in the region
• a16z crypto leds a $7 million seed round in blockchain startup Seismic
• Numeral secures a $18 million round led by Benchmark
• Neobank Zolve raises a $51 million equity round and $200 million in debt facility to expand in the US and Canada
• BaaS startup Synctera raises a $15 million round
• Worth AI closes a $20 million seed round
• Mexican neobank Plata Card raises a $160 million series A and reaches $1.5 billion valuation
• Mesh secures a $82 million series B round led by Paradigm
• Tallinn based fintech Hoovi secures a $8 million seed round
• Binance secures historic $2 billion investment from Abu Dhabi's MGX
• Mimo secures $8.5 million to scale up financial management platform for SMBs
• Norm Ai secures $48 million to advance AI-Driven Compliance Automation
• BLK secures £50 million investment from Nimbus Capital, eyes 2025 IPO
• London based fintech Curve raises £37 million and launches Curve Pay
• 1337 Ventures invests in Malaysian PFM Finory.tech

Insights on the VC industry

• Homegrown Capital is looking to raise $30 million for a second fund
• I wanted to shine a light on a very interesting project launched today, Project Europe
• 8VC closes a sixth flagship fund at $998 million
• Bessemer Venture Partners launches $350 million fund to back AI-Driven startups in Indi

News on the market

• Ebury is looking for a potential $3 billion IPO
• Coinbase acquires Iron Fish Foundation to boost security on the crypto platform
• Marqeta and Spendesk strikes a partnership on expenses management for European SMEs
• American Express acquires expense management software company Center (getcenter.com)
• Kraken Digital Asset Exchange could potentially go public in 2026
• Nubank partners with OpenAI to smooth customer experience for its 114 million customer base
• OpenAI strikes a $12 billion deal with CoreWeave to secure cloud computing power. Or maybe they're looking forward to the provider's IPO?
• Satispay partners with myPOS to offer payments solutions for businesses in Italy
• Lunar launches a new money app for kids
• Revolut releases its POS solution Revolut Terminal in Spain
• Brazilian digital bank Inter&Co expands to Argentina with Global Accounts
• MoonPay acquires Iron and aims to expand in Stablecoins payments
• Rapyd completes $610 million acquisition of PayU's global payments business from Prosus Group

A special look in the Italian market

• Vento closes a $75 million fund to back Italian founders, no matter where they live
• Lexroom.ai chiude un seed round da 2 milioni di Euro
• Quickfisco closes a 1,5 million Euro round
• Cyber Guru acquisisce la startup francese di cybersecurity Mantra.ms

And here some useful resources for everyone involved in the ecosystem:

Events you don’t want to miss

• Hello Tomorrow global summit - Paris, France | 13-14.03.2025 (Link to the event)
• Start summit - St. Gallen, Switzerland | 20-21.03.2025 (Link to the event)
• Nordic startup challenge - Hamburg, Germany | 24-26.03.2025 (Link to the event)
• Tech.eu Summit - London, UK | 25-26.03.2025 (Link to the event)

You have a cool event you want to mention or to sponsor? Feel free to send me a DM.

Startups raising funds

• Loyyal - Loyalty platform from the MENA region, with entities in the US and South East Asia, provides a B2B2C platform to handle multiple loyalty programs and earn rewards all over the world. Raising a $6M Series A
• Freedhome - Proptech and fintech platform, enabling people to be able to gain profit from real estate by renting them to intermediaries. Raising a $1M seed round

• Tutornow - Edtech that provides an online tutoring platform for students with learning disorders. Raising $500k to $1M.
• Weagle - B2B Tech startup that provides the very first browser designed for company, with total security for sensitive data. Raising $6 millions for their seed round.

• Shoppy Code:Gift card platform that offers a points based loyalty program. They share part of the profits coming from marketing budgets with their customers. Raising $500k.

Take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #71