Gm. Everyone say hello to Homescreen’s newest writer, Noah.

Noah is a sophomore at Northwestern and will be helping out with writing duties for the next few months. He’s a psychology major and also writes a dope newsletter called WTFcrypto so if you have any questions about your childhood or on-chain liquidations, he’s your guy.

FRESH POWDER

Looking at three funds that recently topped up their coffers. 

Startup to watch: Magic Eden, the largest NFT marketplace built on Solana, raised a $130 million Series B at a $1.6 billion valuation from a star-studded lineup of Greylock, Paradigm, and Sequoia. Despite being launched less than a year ago, Eden is already the third-largest NFT marketplace in the world and plans to use the fresh funds to expand onto new blockchains.

CRYPTO 

The bears get some ammo 

ProShares, an exchange traded fund provider, is giving the NGMI crowd a chance to put their money where their mouth is—it rolled out a new ETF yesterday called the Inverse Bitcoin ETF that lets investors bet against the price of the cryptocurrency. 

• Inverse ETFs allow investors to make money when an underlying asset declines without having to actually sell anything. So while the Inverse Bitcoin ETF represents an opportunity for bears to bet against bitcoin, it also allows bulls to profit from market dips without selling their holdings. 

It couldn’t have picked a better time to launch 

ProShares seems to have an uncanny knack for capturing the prevailing market sentiment when launching its investment vehicles. With the crypto market down 70% from its November peak, ProShares is introducing the ETF at crypto’s most bearish moment in recent memory. 

• It timed the bull run to perfection too: ProShares launched a first-of-its-kind bitcoin ETF last year when the crypto market was at its frothiest. That launch, which attracted over $1.24 billion in inflows, ended up marking almost the exact peak of the latest cycle. Here's to hoping that the same is true for the inverse ETF and predicting the bottom. 

We don’t have any data as of writing on the amount of inflows it drew on its first day of trading on the NYSE, but when the numbers come out it will be an interesting proxy to judge bearish sentiment. 

Zoom out: One additional factor to consider when analyzing the inflow numbers is the fee structure. ProShares’ ETF, like most inverse financial products, is designed mostly for short-term use. Investors who HODL for longer periods of time run the risk of underperforming given the ongoing 0.95% annual expense ratio that ProShares charges.  

STARTUPS 

Toto might need to start a venture fund...

Because it’s raining VC money down in Africa. The African tech sector has attracted more than $2.7 billion in inflows since the start of the year, more than twice the amount raised in the first five months of last year. 

Two big names to watch that attracted the lion's share of the funding are Flutterwave ($250 million) and Esusu ($130 million), both fintechs that help with payments in the region.

• Fintechs dominating the African startup scene is nothing new. Last year the sector accounted for 53% of all funding. 

• But Africa is not a monolith, and one particularly exciting region to watch is West Africa. Featuring a common currency, robust trade block, sizable population, and an increasingly tech-savvy youth, it’s become a fertile ground for startup activity. 

Zoom out: Despite the increase in total investment in the region, year over year growth is slowing a tad compared to last year’s absurd growth rate. But it’s all about perspective—more money has been raised in 5 months of this year than in all of 2019. 

QUICK HITS

Seed Round

Stat: New meme stock just dropped. Revlon, the struggling makeup retailer that recently filed for bankruptcy, jumped as much as 80% yesterday and is now up 456% since its low last Thursday. Much like the AMC and Gamestop craze of days gone by, retail traders are doing most of the pumping—they’ve bought $10 million of Revlon stock over the past week, per VandaTrack Research.

Story we’re watching: Sam Bankman-Fried fancies himself the Federal Reserve of the crypto world. His company FTX extended a $250 million revolving line of credit to troubled crypto brokerage firm BlockFi yesterday. It's not the first time Bankman-Fried has donned his Robin Hood tights to help a firm in need. Last week, his trading firm Alameda Research extended a similar line of credit to struggling crypto broker Voyager Digital over concerns of insolvency. 

Rabbit hole: What the heck is decentralized science (Future).

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON

• Docusign's Dan Springer stepped down as CEO amidst a post-pandemic slump.

• Twitter asked shareholders to approve Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover bid.

• Microsoft eliminated features from its AI facial recognition tool over ethical concerns that facial analysis can be biased and intrusive.

• NASA contracted three companies to start working on building nuclear fission stations on the moon. 

THREE HEADLINES AND A LIE

A. “Hong Kong’s floating restaurant sinks more than 1,000 meters into the sea”

B. “Britney Spears placed under conservatorship again after court determines she’s having too much fun”

C. “China says it may have detected signals from alien civilizations”

D. “Encouraging report says most of planet will still be habitable in 2023”

Layoffs Tracker

Aggregating recently laid-off tech talent looking for new roles.  

Unacademy

• Industry: Education

• Amount laid off: 150

• $ of workforce: 3%

• Date of layoffs: June 18

Trax

• Industry: Analytics

• Amount laid off: 100

• $ of workforce: 12%

• Date of layoffs: June 20

FOUNDERS CORNER

The best resources we came across that will help you become a better founder, builder, or investor.

💵 An explainer of token compensation

🔓 How to get more senior applicants, a Hacker News discussion

🚣‍♀️ A podcast on navigating through uncertainty

THREE HEADLINES ANSWER

Jumbo Kingdom, a famous Hong Kong restaurant situated on a three-story boat, capsized last week.