$100k Bitcoin in 2024 Post-Halving?

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∆ Tech in the News

U.S. x UAE Tech Deal - Microsoft will invest $1.5B in UAE tech giant G42. The deal was made "in close consultation" with the two nations’ governments and includes a $1B UAE AI developer talent fund.

TED: "A Digital Species" - AI pioneers took to the TED stage this week to discuss AI optimism, including DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Microsoft AI exec Mustafa Suleyman, and Investor Vinod Khosla.

Dynamic Humanoids - Boston Dynamics unveiled its new hyperflexible, All-electric Atlas humanoid robot to replace the retired hydraulic model. A startup also revealed the "MenteeBot" that “uses AI across its operations” to learn.

Llama 3 Arrives - Meta is adding a free chatbot powered by its latest multimodal LLM accessible via the search bars of Facebook and its other apps.

Chipping Away - The U.S. will award up to $6.1B in CHIPS Act grants to Micron to help build semiconductor factories in New York and Idaho.

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The Hottest Thing in Tech this Week

Why Does Today’s Bitcoin Halving Matter?

The fourth-ever Bitcoin Halving is set for 19 April 2024, 22:10 UTC. This “halving” event means Bitcoin's transaction “mining” reward is cut in half, which reduces the rate at which BTC is introduced into the market thus lowering the available amount of new supply. In theory, this sounds like a recipe for “up-only” prices. Historical trends tend to agree but not all analysts are convinced.

BTC analyst and inventor of the “Stock-to-Flow Model” PlanB claims all BTCs price increases have occurred following previous halvings and thinks this halving will NOT be any different, predicting: “BTC > $100k in 2024 and BTC top > $300k in 2025.” Research and brokerage firm Bernstein say Bitcoin mining CEOs also remain 'upbeat' ahead of this week’s halving event, expecting BTC to resume its bullish path post-halving and expecting a mining market consolidation favoring larger players like CleanSpark, or Marathon.

Sell The News?

However, some analysts believe this time IS different. Goldman Sachs suggests current economic conditions, with high inflation and interest rates, might disrupt the historical pattern. They believe the supply-demand dynamic and growing Bitcoin ETF interest will be more significant factors in medium-term price action. Bitcoin is a relatively young asset, thus all previous halvings have occurred after 2008 in a macro bull market with high money supply and low interest rates, favoring risk-off investments. Goldman advises caution against assuming the same price surge will happen again in prevailing macro conditions. Coinify CEO Rikke Staer also suggests the halving is a "sell the news" event.

Billions in speculative TVL

What are traders doing? Bitcoin ETF products saw net outflows of $82.5M last week and digital asset markets experienced over $1.5B in long liquidations, suggesting many insiders are sensing the post-halving bump has already been priced into the massive surge in BTC in 2023 and 2024. However, in the halving lead-up retail investors are still depositing billions into speculative investments including Merlin Chain, a non-operational Bitcoin layer 2 which has attracted over $3B of BTC due to its support for Bitcoin NFTs like Ordinals, Runes and BRC-20 memecoins. This is larger than the biggest Ethereum L2 Arbitrum.

Missed the Bitcoin boat? Other ways to get crypto exposure:

• [Mining Startups] California Bitcoin Mining Equipment startup Auradine closed a $80M Series B from StepStone, Top Tier, & MVP.

• [World Chain] An Eth L2 by Sam Altman’s Worldcoin project. 

• [Crypto Fund] Colorado-based long-only liquid crypto fund (True Code) currently raising $100M in IRA investments to deploy this cycle.

Deals We’re Watching

Founders to Watch and Opportunities to Catch

Open Deals:

Looking to invest? Let us know if you want a warm intro —> [email protected]

1. Nanocomposite materials for Robotics - Alb., NM - Creating resilient nanocomposite materials for extreme environments using precision machining and robotics. Raised >$12M undiluted funding via federal government innovation R&D contracts. $3M in federal contract pipeline. (Seed)

2. Biometric Firearm Security - Colorado - Advanced safety through biometric technology. $ Millions sold in pre-orders already. >$25M raised so far. (Series A)

Raising for your startup? Send us your Open Round —> [email protected]

Closed Deals:

AI-Enhanced Server Tech - Santa Clara startup Rivos raised a $250M+ Series A-3 round from Intel, Dell, and Koch to develop Nvidia rivalling chips to enhance data analytics and genAI applications. 

 $7.65B Valuation - Corporate Card Fintech startup Ramp raised a $150M Series D extension “up round” led by Khosla and backed by Founders Fund to enhance AI capabilities and explore acquisitions.

Healthcare Spatial Data - New York company Kontakt.io raised a $47.5M Series C led by Goldman Sachs to track assets, people, and spaces in real-time.

AI ITOps Copilot - San Fran startup NeuBird raised a $22M seed round for its Hawkeye AI DevOps co-workers for complex cloud-native environments.

Scaling Institutional DeFi Adoption - Centrifuge raised a $15M Series A for its efficient, user-friendly, onchain fund management platform supporting opening funds, RWA tokenization, and hosting tokenized funding rounds.

Companies to Watch:

Rippling - Parker Conrad’s San Fran HR/payroll startup is in talks with Coatue to raise at a $13.5B valuation (up from $11.2B PM 2023) and including $310M from Founders Fund. ARR 2xd to $350M+ in 2023 and an IPO is on the cards.

Mercury - Startup-focused Silicon Valley neobank Mercury launched a consumer product. Its’ customer base is up 60% and transaction volume up 90% by Jan. 2024, with 7 Quarters of cash flow & EBITDA profitability.

Cloud Consolidation - Cloud security startup Wiz is in talks to acquire another rival, Lacework ($8.3B pmv in 2022 and ~$100M ARR ) for $150-$200M as it aims to hit $1B ARR by its 2025 IPO.

The Funding Buzz

[OPEN FUND] Bay Bridge Ventures - The Berkeley ESG and sustainability-focused firm is raising an inaugural $200M fund to invest in climate tech.

[OPEN FUND] Infinity Ventures - Palo Alto fintech VC firm raising $150M for its 2nd fund focused on multi-stage B2B fintech and commerce enablement.

Andreessen Horowitz - The Silicon Valley VC raised a massive $7.2B  oversubscribed (above the $6.9B target) for five new funds, including a $3.75B late-stage growth fund, $1.25B for AI infrastructure, and $1B for AI startups.

Evolution Equity Partners - The New York firm raised a $1.1B fund for investments in early-growth-stage cybersecurity and AI/ML startups.

SOSV - The N.J. multi-stage deep tech VC firm secured $306M for its fifth and largest fund to back deep tech in the climate tech and health tech sectors.

Trending Tools and Buzzy Tech

Tools

Bluedot - An AI Chrome Extension for Google Meet. The first AI Note Taker backed by Google to record meetings without bots joining your calls. Install Free Chrome Extension Now*

LinkedIn - Premium Company Pages integrates AI-assisted content creation for SMB profiles.

Reka Core - 128k token multimodal model matches/beats leading LLMs.

Tech

Google - Infini-attention gives LLMs infinite context with the same compute.

DeepMind / Cambridge - Mini humanoid robots learn to play soccer.

Superfast Drone - Hypersonic 'rotating detonation rocket engine' trialled

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