The announcement, made on Jan. 5, stated that the round was led by Hong Kong-based game software and venture capital company Animoca Brands.
CryptoSlam is a provider of data and transparency for the NFT industry, ranking the top NFT collections by sales volume on secondary markets.
Additional investors include the venture arm of the OKEx exchange, Blockdream Ventures, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, and a number of other venture firms.
Also contributing to the $9 million strategic round was a number of individuals and angel investors. These included Reid Hoffman from LinkedIn, James Park from Fitbit, Randall Kaplan at Akamai Technologies), The Sandbox’s Sebastien Borget and Rotten Tomatoes co-founders, Stephen Wang and Patrick Lee.
There was also participation from CryptoSlam pre-seed investors Mark Cuban and Sound Ventures.
On Jan. 5, CryptoPotato reported that Animoca had led a $5 million investment round into the Solana-based Exotic Markets DAO.
Thrilled to announce our $9m strategic seed round led by Animoca Brands!
HUGE thanks to @animocabrands, @mcuban, @OKEx, @sound_ventures_, @aplusk, @guyoseary, @KCRiseFund, @markpinc, @reidhoffman, @BinanceChain, @0xPolygon, @rottendoubt & many more! https://t.co/U8WqqBvknl pic.twitter.com/m8Yrc6BiYO
— CryptoSlam! (@cryptoslamio) January 5, 2022
NFT Growth Continues
CryptoSlam has become the NFT equivalent of CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko, and it shares the analytics space with Nonfungible.com. The portal has seen massive growth in traffic in tandem with the explosion in interest in NFTs over the past year.
Founder and CEO of CryptoSlam, Randy Wasinger, commented on this monumental growth before adding that NFTs are “here to stay.” Billionaire investor Mark Cuban added to the sentiment commenting:
“I’m excited about what CryptoSlam has accomplished to be the de facto source of information and pricing on all things NFT.”
The platform team has grown to 20 members, and the investment will be used to expand this even further. Funding will also be channeled into further developing the platform itself, adding more blockchains, launching new branded products, and launching an API for developers to build on top of the platform.
NFTs are continuing to surge this year despite the heavy crypto market pullback. Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary commented that the NFT market could even surpass that of Bitcoin.
Leading NFT marketplace OpenSea has seen a surge in trading volume this year, with $1.17 billion already reported for January alone, and the year is barely a week old!
Ape Mania Leading NFT Sales
CryptoSlam currently lists the Mutant Ape Yacht Club as the top-selling NFT collection over the past seven days, with a sale volume of $94 million. The sibling collection of Bored Apes is in second place, with $87 million sold on secondary markets in the past week.