Ethereum-Focused Blockchain Startup Raises $450M With Backing From Microsoft: How Does It Plan To Spend It?

Ethereum ETH/USD co-founder and ConsenSys CEO Joseph Lubin dished out details on what the blockchain start-up plans to do with the $450 million raised through the company’s latest funding round backed by Microsoft Corporation MSFT among others.

What Happened: In an interview with Bloomberg, Lubin said, “We’ve taken in $450 million in our latest raise and we’ve been working on being a crypto native company.”

“We are converting the vast bulk of the proceeds of the raise to Ether — both because we’ve got staking infrastructure where we can generate yield on that, but also in advance of the merge of Ethereum 1.0 and Ethereum 2.0.”

The entrepreneur told Bloomberg the transition of Ethereum from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake is going to bring in an era of "ultrasound money, where the Ethereum token becomes a very important financial instrument in the global economy.”

See Also: How To Buy Ethereum (ETH)

Why It Matters: Lubin spoke about the company’s past activities such as building the consumer and institutional iterations of the MetaMask wallet.

MetaMask has over 30 million monthly active users — an increase of 42% from four months ago. The wallet is of vital importance in the non fungible tokens or NFTs segment driving Web 3.0.

Touching on the adoption of Web 3.0, Lubin said, “We’re seeing a lot of crossing of the chasm…We’re seing cryptocurrencies, [decentralized finance] DeFi and NFTs crossing the chasm into mainstream adoption.”

On Bitcoin BTC/USD versus Ethereum, Lubin said Bitcoin was a very important “construct” and “digitally sound money.” 

However, he pointed out that as more Ethereum tokens were being burned on every transaction, a “huge amount” of Ether was being essentially frozen, reducing its supply. 

Price Action: On Tuesday, Microsoft shares closed 3.9% higher at $287.15 in the regular session. At press time, ETH traded 5.7% higher at $2,698.06.

Read Next: Never Mind The Gas Fee: Ethereum Foundation Says It Is Empowering Artists To Unshackle From YouTube, Spotify

Photo courtesy: ConsenSys