Crypto funding: Asset manager GoldenTree tucks into SUSHI; NFT game maker Horizon raises $40m

Following on from our funding roundup earlier in the week, there’s been further notable investing and capital raising in the crypto space – for, among others, DeFi player SushiSwap and NFT game developer Horizon.

GoldenTree reveals stake in SushiSwap

Although it isn’t the biggest investment sum you’ll read in this article, GoldenTree‘s US$5.2 million stake in the decentralised finance protocol SushiSwap grabs lead headline spot.

And that’s because of who/what GoldenTree is – an absolute asset management beast with almost US$50 billion assets under management, specialising largely in the traditional finance credit universe, e.g. high-yield bonds, leveraged loans, private credit, and so on.

The credit-focused company has been increasing its recent foray into, and focus on, crypto – unveiling a new investment manager (GoldenChain Asset Manager) and related fund in recent months.

GoldenTree has invested about $5.2 million the SushiSwap governance token SUSHI, the asset manager revealed in a SushiSwap forum announcement midweek.

And yep, as pointed out by The Defiant (a US-based DeFi news channel) below, the SUSHI token has risen on the news. In fact, it’s now up about 19% over the past seven days at the time of writing.

GoldenTree, with $50B in AUM, has bought and staked $5.2M worth of $SUSHI tokens 🍣

The asset manager disclosed its position on Oct. 5 in @SushiSwap’s governance forum$SUSHI rose 10% as market participants cheered the news

🔗: @tarangkhaitanhttps://t.co/rv2BDpDYz6 pic.twitter.com/pkcKrk0rd6

— The Defiant (@DefiantNews) October 7, 2022

“We’ve been following Sushi for a while (some of us for several years now),” noted GoldenTree in its announcement. “And with the launch of GoldenChain, we are psyched to be more active in all things Sushi.”

SushiSwap is a competitor to Uniswap, which was also in the funding news this week. In fact, Sushi was created as a “vampire attack” direct copy of Uniswap, with an aim to improve on the original with added liquidity mining and governance capabilities.

The asset manager’s announcement said that the protocol has “incredible potential” despite also referencing some of the structural/organisational challenges SushiSwap has faced over the past year with its founder “0xMaki” departing in September last year, followed by its Chief Technical Officer Joseph Delong a few months later.

“Although the community has certainly been through some tough challenges, we’ve been amazed at the resilience of both the core team and the community in the face of these speed bumps, as you all have continued to build and release top-tier products,” enthused GoldenTree.

Earlier this week, the Sushi DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation) community elected a new CEO – Jared Grey.

Congrats @jaredgrey! I’ve been eagerly awaiting this announcement. As one of sushi’s largest protocols and biggest supporters, we’d love to have you on Illuvitalks to discuss your plans for the moving forward! https://t.co/y0I1z8oXtd

— Kieran.eth ♊️ (@KieranWarwick) October 4, 2022

Horizon pulls in funding from Brevan Howard and Ubisoft

Toronto-based Horizon Blockchain Games has secured US$40 million to help it build its Sequence developer platform, Niftyswap digital-asset marketplace further develop its popular Skyweaver NFT trading card game.

The Series A round was led by Brevan Howard Digital and Morgan Creek Digital, and included investments from traditional gaming companies Ubisoft and Take-Two Interactive.

(Yep, we see you, Ubisoft – further showing your NFT-gaming hand.) Other participants included Polygon, Bitkraft Ventures, CMT Digital, Quantstamp, Round13 Capital, Xchange and Everyrealm.

“Key individual investors” also took part, including Shopify’s CEO Tobias Lütke, The Sandbox’s co-founder Sebastien Borget, Sky Mavis and Axie Infinity co-founder Aleks Larsen, Lolli’s co-founder Alex Adelman, and Ethereum educator and The Daily Gwei founder Anthony Sassano.

Skyweaver is a fantasy-based NFT trading card battler that’s gained a lot of user traction (according to Skyweaver). As of June, at least 407k accounts had been created on the platform to sign up and play.

So @Ubisoft is back and this time investing into @0xHorizon @SkyweaverGame @0xsequence

I’ve been playing a ton of Skyweaver this past week and what I can tell you is that they’ve done things right.

Subtle and proper use of NFTs in a FUN gamehttps://t.co/VajQD6sPaw

— richcabrera.eth 🎮 (@ReadyPlayerRich) October 5, 2022