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Risk investment funds in the cryptocurrency industry have shown signs of stagnation in recent months, with some companies struggling to secure new financing. Sarah Austin, co-founder of the Titled platform, emphasized this trend. The platform, which focuses on real-world assets (RWA), raised $1.3 million in seed funding earlier this year. Despite the challenging macro environment, Kaden Stadelmann, Chief Technology Officer of the Komodo Platform, stated, "Blockchain infrastructure remains the leader in the crypto space." He noted that key crypto themes still attracting investment include AI, decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), tokenization, payments, and RWA. In June, several prominent funding deals reflected this continued interest, with projects in decentralized finance (DeFi), trading platforms, pre-seed growth funds, and the intersection of digital assets and AI securing funds. The latest VC Roundup delves deeper into these transactions against a backdrop of seasonal fluctuations that may limit recent deals. The cryptocurrency exchange Rails has disclosed two rounds of funding totaling $20 million, with the most recent round completed in April. The company is building a trading platform aimed at combining the utility of centralized exchanges with the advantages of decentralized markets. Rails has received support from crypto exchange Kraken, venture capital firm Slow Ventures, and blockchain security company Quantstamp. Slow Ventures described Rails as a "hybrid perpetual exchange that offers the speed of a CEX for professional traders without sacrificing custody." Stablecoin payment service provider Beam has completed $7 million in funding to expand its compliance work and network capabilities, aimed at further bridging the gap between digital assets and traditional finance. This round of financing was led by Castle Ventures, with participation from Bankless Ventures, Archetype, Arca, Verda Ventures, and others. Beam provides stablecoin payment rails for fintech companies, banks, and consumer platforms, and has already been implemented on Visa Direct, Mastercard Send, and the FedNow system of the U.S. Federal Reserve. With the latest funding, Beam's total funding now stands at $14 million. The company plans to use this new capital to expand its operations in Latin America, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and the European Union. Related report: Digital Asset raises $135 million to expand the Canton blockchain network. Former staking provider Chorus One's CEO, Xavier Meegan, has launched Frachtis, a $20 million pre-seed fund supported by Theta Capital, RockawayX, and others. The fund will support founders building decentralized AI, infrastructure, and consumer applications. Frachtis has already backed eight projects at the pre-seed and seed stages, covering DeFi and AI protocols. Meegan stated he is leveraging his experience at Chorus One, where he led over 40 investments, to identify the next major use case in blockchain. Web3 developer Inference Labs has raised $6.3 million to build a crypto trust layer for AI agents — the company believes this field is still underdeveloped, especially in light of the recent growth of AI tools. This funding round includes support from DACM, Delphi Ventures, Arche Capital, and Lvna Capital. Inference Labs is developing Proof of Inference, a cryptographic method to verify AI outputs using zero-knowledge proofs. Zero-knowledge technology has gained attention in the crypto ecosystem for its ability to ensure transaction security and privacy. With the new funding, Inference Labs has launched a testnet for its Proof of Inference, which includes integrations with EigenLayer and Bittensor. The mainnet is planned to launch in Q3 of this year. Gradient Network, a company developing a decentralized AI runtime on Solana, has received $10 million in seed funding from Pantera, Multicoin Capital, and HSG. This funding will support the expansion of Gradient's decentralized AI infrastructure, with one of its core protocols, Lattica, launching in June. Gradient is also building Parallax, a decentralized inference engine designed to scale large language models and other AI applications. A spokesperson for Gradient Network told Cointelegraph that the company's choice to build on Solana was a key factor in attracting investment from Pantera and Multicoin Capital. Related report: Crypto Biz: AI funding surge could reshape the digital asset industry. The cryptocurrency exchange OKX and the programmable blockchain for intellectual property, Story, have launched a $10 million ecosystem fund to support startups innovating in IP, decentralized IP frameworks, and other applications that treat IP as an asset class. The funding will be distributed via IP tokens (Story's native token, representing intellectual property on-chain) to support use cases involving real-world IP assets, AI, data licensing, and programmable IP applications. Story's developer PIP Labs raised $80 million last August in a Series B funding round co-led by a16z Crypto and Polychain Capital, bringing its total funding to $140 million. Related report: VC Roundup: Twenty One investors inject $100 million into BTC treasury, Jump Crypto supports Securitize. Blockchain startup Yupp has completed a $33 million seed round led by a16z Crypto, the crypto arm of Andreessen Horowitz, to build an AI assessment platform powered by blockchain technology. Yupp is developing a platform where users can compare outputs from leading AI models (including ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek, Llama, and others) and earn cryptocurrency rewards for their assessments. The platform integrates payment services from Coinbase, Stripe, and PayPal. The a16z team described Yupp as turning "human judgment into a renewable economic resource." Blueprint Finance, a multi-chain DeFi infrastructure developer, has raised $9.5 million to expand its product suite after launching the Ethereum-based yield platform Concrete and the Solana-based trading and staking platform Glow Finance. This round of funding was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Yzi Labs, VanEck, Bitpanda Ventures, BitGo, Gate Ventures, and others. This financing comes as the DeFi industry is recovering from the bear market of 2022. While the total value locked (TVL) on DeFi platforms has rebounded significantly from its lows, it remains below the historical highs of the industry three years ago. Units Network, a blockchain ecosystem built on the Waves protocol, has secured a $10 million investment led by Nimbus Capital to expand its infrastructure and address critical scalability and decentralization challenges in the Web3 space. These funds will be used to increase validator capacity, enhance cross-chain liquidity rails, and advance Units Network's AI roadmap. Nimbus Capital is an investment firm supported by In On Capital, which manages $1.2 billion in assets. Magazine: Bitcoin 'bull flag' targets $165,000, Pomp acquires $386 million BTC: Hodler’s Digest, June 22-28

Zhao Changpeng commented on the matter of 'TON providing UAE golden visas to eligible stakers' saying: 'Is it true? If it is true, that would be fantastic. But so far, the information I have received is contradictory. Although TON's news states that investors staking $100,000 on TON plus a $35,000 fee can obtain a golden visa for the UAE, some say that the $35,000 fee is actually for transferring the application to an agent, who typically only charges $10,000. Furthermore, the description on the website is not clear, giving the impression that 'the $35,000 + $100,000 stake' guarantees obtaining a golden visa, but the actual situation has not been confirmed. Some claim that this project has been approved by the DAO of Ras Al Khaimah (RAK), but it has not been verified through official channels. Some say that regulatory authorities VARA, ADGM, and SCA have all indicated that staking is a regulated activity, while the TON Foundation does not have the required licenses. [Coin World]

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, the "insider whale"'s short position has just been liquidated again. In fact, his position was liquidated to only 43.68 million USD on July 3, but after a slight BTC price rebound, he added to the position again. This time the 16.28 million USD short margin has now reduced to only 800,000 USD, resulting in a loss of 15.48 million USD on this short.
Current residual position after multiple liquidations: 47.34 million USD.
40x short position of 368 BTC, valued at 40.05 million USD, opening price 107,724 USD, liquidation price 109,196 USD;