SBF sentenced, Worldcoin hit with another ban order and big web3 pre-seed rounds are back

Welcome to TechCrunch Crypto, previously referred to as Chain Response.

That is the final version of this article. I need to personally thank every of you for studying this and if you want to remain in contact, you’ll be able to comply with me on X here for future updates.

With that mentioned, the present goes on. This week, Sam Bankman-Fried, the previous FTX CEO who was found guilty on seven counts related to money laundering and fraud in November, was sentenced, Borderless Capital acquired CFT Capital, Worldcoin faces one other ban in Europe and extra.

Particulars under.

This week in web3

1. Sam Bankman-Fried gets 25 years in prison for fraud and money-laundering at FTX
2. Web3 investment firm Borderless Capital acquires CTF Capital to bring AI and quant expertise
3. Worldcoin hit with another ban order in Europe citing risks to kids
4. A new web3 network is being built right now that wants to end Big Tech’s control of your data
5. 0G Labs launches with whopping $35M pre-seed to build a modular AI blockchain

Crunching numbers

This week the crypto market costs had been a bit extra chipper, with the highest cryptocurrencies being inexperienced on the week.

Bitcoin was up 7.4% on the week, round $71,300 on the time of publication. The second-largest crypto, ether, elevated 2.6% on the week to $3,550, in accordance with CoinMarketCap data. The total crypto market cap elevated 6.4% throughout the identical timeframe to $2.67 trillion.

The most recent pod

Chain Response is doing a month-to-month collection diving into completely different subjects and themes in crypto. This month we’re specializing in blockchain and AI integrations.

For this week’s episode, I interviewed Scott Dykstra, CTO and co-founder of Area and Time.

Earlier than diving into web3, Scott spent virtually eight years on the cloud analytics and information platform Teradata the place he held roles of senior architect, director of cloud options and labored his means as much as VP of the agency’s world cloud.

As for Area and Time, the corporate goals to be a verifiable compute layer for web3 that scales zero-knowledge proofs, or ZK proofs, on a decentralized information warehouse. Zero-knowledge proofs are a cryptographic motion used to show one thing a couple of piece of information, with out revealing the origin information itself.

Area and Time has listed information each off-chain and on-chain from Ethereum, Bitcoin, Polygon, Sui, Avalanche, Sei and Aptos and is including help for extra chains to energy the way forward for AI x blockchain.

This episode is wrapping up Chain Response’s month-to-month collection diving into completely different subjects and themes in crypto. This month’s targeted on blockchain and AI integrations.

Scott and I focus on Area and Time’s origin story, how information warehouses work in Internet 2.0 versus web3 and the significance of information transparency.

We additionally dive into:

• Blockchain and AI potential
• Its OpenAI and blockchain information developments
• Future use instances for information and on-chain AI
• Recommendation all through the bull and bear markets

Subscribe to Chain Response on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite pod platform, and please go away us a assessment in case you like what you hear!

Observe the cash

1. web3 gaming-focused startup Illuvium raised $12 million in a Collection A spherical to increase its choices
2. Avalanche-based Gunzilla raised $30 million to assist launch its new sport, Off The Grid
3. OrdinalsBot raised over $3 million to construct out its Bitcoin blockchain-focused information layer
4. Reya Community raised $10 million for its trading-centric modular layer-2 blockchain
5. Crypto-powered on-line on line casino MyPrize raised $13 million

This listing was compiled with info from Messari in addition to TechCrunch’s personal reporting.

What else we’re writing

Need to department out from the world of web3? Listed below are some articles on TechCrunch that caught our consideration this week.

1. Liquid Death is just one of many VC-backed beverage startups ready to disrupt Coke and Pepsi
2. New study of unicorn founders finds most are ‘underdogs,’ and female founders are rising
3. Facebook snooped on users’ Snapchat traffic in secret project, documents reveal
4. Nvidia could be primed to be the next AWS
5. New Summit is raising a new $100 million fund to back climate tech and underrepresented fund managers