Crypto Firm Raises $87 Million from Gal Gadot, Justin Bieber and More Celebrities To Bolster ‘Creative Crypto Renaissance’

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Crypto payments infrastructure company MoonPay announced that it has raised $87 million from a slew of celebrities to launch the “creative crypto renaissance.”

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The 60 personalities and organizations from the music, sports, media and entertainment worlds include Ashton Kutcher, Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Steve Aoki, Gwyneth Paltrow, Maria Sharapova, Gal Gadot, Diplo, The Weeknd, Matthew McConaughey and Justin Bieber, Snoop Dogg and Bruce Willis, according to a press release.

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“Web3 is radically changing how we think about creative value,” said Ivan Soto-Wright, co-founder and CEO of MoonPay, in the press release. “We are on the cusp of a creative crypto renaissance, and our strategic investors are helping to lead this movement. We are honored to work with them to help bring the world to Web3.”

Soto-Wright told Bloomberg that NFTs are more than just JPEGs and offer artists and creators a way to manage royalties. The company wants to help them think about strategies for the emerging blockchain-based web — or Web3 — he said.

Alex DiNunzio, CEO of Jambb, a comedy-focused digital collectibles marketplace, told GOBankingRates that one of the key indicators Jambb has seen since it integrated MoonPay’s credit card checkout flow into its platform, “that nearly 80% of our NFT buyers are first time buyers.”

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“They also pay with credit cards. This is fantastic for the industry as we strive to attract the next billion subscribers. If this trend continues, we expect products like MoonPay’s to find more demand beyond today’s crypto-first NFT buyers as it becomes as easy to buy an NFT as it is to buy your coffee at Starbucks.” , DiNunuzio said.

DiNunzio said that “the trick of the Web3 ecosystem” is to obscure the complexity of the technology itself: the less a consumer needs to understand about a blockchain or wallet or how cryptocurrencies work, the more likely they are to engage with it employs A product.

“This fundamentally shapes our product strategy at Jambb and our decision to work with MoonPay, for example. Ideally, the inclusion of celebrities in MoonPay’s funding round is an indicator that global, non-crypto-native fan bases are interested in getting involved in developing products in the Web3 world, and this should accelerate the adoption of this technology and in turn, expand the scope of those who participate. It’s great to see!”

MoonPay — which describes itself as the “PayPal of crypto,” according to Bloomberg — said the funding is part of its $555 million Series A funding round, which the company raised in November with $3.4 billion assessed and led by Tiger Global Management and Coatue. with participation from Blossom Capital, Thrive Capital, Paradigm and NEA, according to the press release. The funding helped the company establish partnerships with organizations such as OpenSea, Michael Jordan’s Heir Jordan, Tom Brady’s Autograph, and FaZe Clan. It has also enabled it to expand its global footprint by launching products like NFT Checkout – an NFT solution that allows users to buy an NFT instantly using a credit or debit card.

Colin Zarzour, head of operations at Koii, a company building decentralized infrastructure for developers in the Web3 economy, told GOBankingRates that there’s an ever-present tension in crypto between (on the one hand) creating simple financial instruments and (on the other hand). others) the goals of decentralization, transparency and security.

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“MoonPay definitely seems to fall in the first camp – Justin Bieber, Maria Sharapova, Snoop Dogg, Drake and other big household names are investing to drive adoption of an app dedicated to simplicity. This is probably good for mass crypto adoption. As a startup founder in this space, I can certainly say that there is a need for better payment solutions for crypto, and thus I wouldn’t be surprised to see many more MoonPay-like announcements in the coming months and years,” said Zarzour . “However, what I would like to draw attention to is how few, if any, of these services seem to bridge the 7-10 split and achieve the goal of providing a user-friendly experience while also maintaining a decentralized platform that is run and owned by its users. This is how the “PayPal for crypto” slogan works – MoonPay looks a lot like a financial instrument from the e-commerce era that crypto wanted to transcend.”

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About the author

Jaël Bizouati-Kennedy is a full-time financial journalist and has written for several publications including Dow Jones, Financial Times Group, Bloomberg and Business Insider. She has also worked as a Vice President/Senior Content Writer for major financial firms based in New York, including New York Life and MSCI. Jaël is now a freelancer and most recently worked together with Dr. Sean Manion authored the book Blockchain for Medical Research: Accelerating Trust in Healthcare. (CRC Press, April 2020) She holds two master’s degrees, including one in Journalism from New York University and one in Russian Studies from Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, France.