NWD's Adrian Cheng increases investment in Web 3.0

New World Development CEO Adrian Cheng has increased his personal investment in Asia's digital asset custodian Hex Trust, as well as Ethereum and decentralised protocols software company ConsenSys via his venture capital C Venture.

Recently, Hex Trust raises US$88 million in Series B funding co-led by Animoca Brands and Liberty City Ventures. Participants include Cheng, Ripple, Terra, Morgan Creek, Primavera Venture Partners and LeadBlock Partners, to name a few. Several blockchain companies also participated in the round, including BlockFi, CoinList, Protocol Labs, Pulsar Trading, and Wintermute. Hex Trust’s Series B includes US$61 million of primary capital and US$27 million from secondary investors.

The new funding will be used to scale to Europe and the Middle East, obtain additional licenses, continue the development and innovation of Hex Safe, and further enhance new business services such as financing and structured solutions.

“It was a tremendous year of growth for Hex Trust and this funding round enables us to continue scaling and become a global leader in digital asset custody. Our mission at Hex Trust remains the same: to stay ahead of the curve in terms of licensing and compliance, integrating the latest developments such as new protocols, DeFi, NFTs, GameFi, and the metaverse, and providing innovative services and financing solutions to enable our clients to monetize digital assets held in custody with us," said Alessio Quaglini, CEO and co-founder of Hex Trust.

Currently, Hex Trust has over 100 employees across offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vietnam.

Meanwhile, Cheng also invested in ConsenSys through his venture capital company C Ventures. ConsenSys announced the close of a US$450 million financing round, bringing its valuation to US$7 billion. All proceeds from the round will be converted to ETH to further build ConsenSys’ ultra sound money position as a rebalance to its ETH to fiat ratio in line with ConsenSys’ treasury strategy. Funding will also support the rapid expansion of MetaMask with a major redesign scheduled for release later in 2022, as well as the rollout of a plug-in extensibility system that will allow integration with a wide
variety of blockchain protocols and account security schemes

ConsenSys said the acceleration of Web 3.0 adoption globally is illustrated by the rise of leading self-custodial wallet MetaMask, which now supports more than 30 million monthly active users, growing 42% in only four months.

"This round takes in digital assets as well as fiat and converts all immediately to ETH. The next round will be our ‘Series ETH’ where we will assist investors in getting fully crypto native and contributing ETH as a symbol of and commitment to the ongoing paradigm shift," said Joseph Lubin, founder and CEO of ConsenSys.

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