Europe Chooses 10 Best Luxembourg Startups

Today’s Weekend Read will honor the 30th anniversary of the World Wide Web which happened this Tuesday. Yes, you heard it right, the beginning of the Internet as we know it today was set not too long ago and generations are now growing up in a completely new reality. Since then, new technologies have been born that promise to reshape how we see the world today. Blockchain and broader financial technologies which are continuously reinvented by small startups are just one example. Read on and, as always, a fun journalistic treat awaits at the end of today’s post. We also have some exciting news for our own community in the Top of Mind section.

Top of Mind

EU-Startups has featured VNX Exchange in its list of 10 startups to look out for in 2019. As Mary Loritz rightly points out, Luxembourg is not just about enchanting forests and beautiful architecture. It has a very unique startup ecosystem and many companies offer great blockchain and crypto solutions. VNX Exchange is a trading platform for tokenized VC portfolios. It leverages blockchain technology to make a safe and more advanced platform for its digital asset marketplace.

What’s Hot

At VNX Exchange we are big proponents of using the latest technology advancements to offer the best possible market solution for your industry. For us it happens to be blockchain. Distributed ledger technology is gaining broader industry recognition and venture capital firms are taking advantage of it.

The cryptocurrency company Ripple announced its plans to integrate blockchain technology into video games. “The plan, which features a $100 million fund for developers, could remake the gaming industry by creating a new way to create in-game marketplaces for digital goods,” writes Fortune. “The fund will be overseen by Forte, a San Francisco company founded this year by prominent gaming executives, and which is backed and advised by a host of big Silicon Valley names, including Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures and Battery Ventures,” it adds. This is just one example of a promising use case of this new technology that works for multiple industries: VC, fintech and gaming. “Blockchain technology, which provides an indelible ledger run across multiple computers, holds promise for video games because it offers a verifiable way to track digital assets—say a sword or even a character—across different owners in a game,” writes Jeff John Roberts.

Newsworthy

• Fidelity is now rolling out its crypto trading and custody business full steam. Fidelity’s crypto chief Tom Jessop tells more: “[W]e’ve seen interest from hedge funds that have convinced their management to allocate reasonably large amounts of capital to the asset class, which is a positive. We have gotten inquiries from family offices, some of whom already are allocated, and want to move assets into our custody, others that have dollar-based mandates, but won’t activate until there’s a custodian.”
• Amun, a year-old Switzerland-based cryptocurrency startup behind the world’s first listed exchange product that tracks multiple cryptocurrencies, raised $4.2 million in seed funding. ETFS Capital led the round, and other investors included Boost VC, Hard Yaka, and four family offices. 
• Stash, a New York-based wealth management startup targeting people who are new to investing, has raised $65 million in Series E funding from undisclosed investors to grow its business, writes TechCrunch. 

Weekend Read

World Wide Web was born three decades ago and the Verge has put together an infinitely fun list of websites, companies and people that helped reshape how we live our daily lives. The list includes Amazon and Buzzfeed and offers a perfect throwback into what these websites looked like when it all began and why they mattered.

VNX Weekend Read has been curated by the VNX Exchange Head of Content Olga Razumovskaya.

Disclaimer: This news digest does not represent the position of the VNX Exchange management and is not meant to serve as a forecast.