FTX signs deal with Tom Brady; blockchain startup Nansen raises US$12M | The Daily Forkast

Transcript

Welcome to The Daily Forkast, June 30th, 2021. I’m Angie Lau, Editor-in-Chief of Forkast.News, covering all things blockchain.

Coming up, sports and crypto — NFL star Tom Brady teams up with FTX, blockchain analytics demand soars, and to look at part three of our special series exploring China’s big bet on blockchain. Let’s get you up to speed from Asia to the world.

NFL star Tom Brady and his wife, supermodel Gisele Bündchen, are now shareholders in Hong Kong-based crypto platform. It’s all part of a broader, multi-year deal with the exchange that will see Brady become its ambassador, while Bündchen takes on an advisory role for environmental and social projects. The couple will also be receiving an unspecified amount of money in crypto.

Brady though, sure seemed excited here, celebrating the deal with a little show of Bitcoin force. It’s all part of a bigger picture. FTX has been on quite the sponsorship spree, with endorsements from Major League Baseball to its US$135 million dollar deal for naming rights to the Miami Heat’s arena to e-gaming gaming platforms like TSM.

They’re not the only ones making crypto moves in sports. Hong Kong-based Crypto.com is also revving up its sports partnerships, announcing a multi-year deal with Formula 1 for its new sprint racing format. And it will also become the official cryptocurrency sponsor and NFT partner of F1.

“Formula 1 is a sport deeply rooted in technological innovation, with huge focus in performance and speed. So the prolog to the cryptocurrency industry is quite clear here. Sports, this is the way you go to instant scale in terms of reach. This how you expand the crypto industry and help it mainstream.”

This on top of the company deals already in place with the F1 team of Aston Martin Cognizant and the NHL team, Montreal Canadiens.

All right. Let’s take a look at the markets right now. And starting with Bitcoin, which was up just shy of 1% to close at just over US$35,200 by 4 p.m. local Hong Kong time at the end of the Asian business trading day. And in the top 10 for cryptocurrencies, most seem to stay above water, though Doge and Polkadot weren’t as lucky, they were down 0.5% and 1.8% respectively.

Demand for blockchain data analytics is another area seeing huge investment as crypto adoption grows.

Last week, Chainalysis announced a US$100 million Series E fundraise with a US$4.2 billion valuation.

And now, Singapore-based blockchain analytics startup Nansen has raised US$12 million in its Series A funding round. Nansen’s CEO Alex Svanevik told Forkast that until now, most blockchain analytics companies have been building for regulators, government agencies and law enforcement. But Nansen says it’s for investors and traders in crypto and DeFi.

“People realize that in order to navigate these markets, you need to have really high quality data analytics. If you’re an institutional investor or really any institutional agent that is looking at the crypto space, they will want to get really good data. And so there’s an increasing demand for it organically, and a sign of maturation.”

And finally, in part three of our special three-part series, Asia powers up how the region, led by China, is embracing blockchain and how that will impact the world.

This is a series with support from the Judith Nielsen Institute’s Asian Stories Project.

We explore how blockchain can impact your everyday life from how you shop to how you keep track of your food safety.

“Alan Cheung is the senior director of cybersecurity at the Hong Kong government-backed technology R&D organization (ASTRI). They’ve just completed a trial using blockchain to digitize and enhance the monitoring and control of imported meat.”

“The major point of doing this project is to improve the efficiency of safety control of imported food from mainland China.”

You can read part three, the series finale and see the full video report up now on Forkast.News. And that’s The Daily Forkast from our vantage point right here in Asia. For more, visit Forkast.News. I’m Editor-in-Chief. Angie Lau. Until next time.