Billionaire Mark Cuban invests in NFT data platform CryptoSlam

NFTs • April 17, 2021, 9:40AM EDT
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Billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the basketball team Dallas Mavericks has made a strategic investment in NFT data platform CryptoSlam.

Cuban invested in the startup via his venture capital firm Radical Investments. CryptoSlam declined to share the investment sum but said this is its first external round since its inception in 2018.

"Until now, I'd been bootstrapping CryptoSlam since inception," CryptoSlam founder and CEO Randy Wasinger told The Block.

With fresh capital at hand, CryptoSlam plans to scale its team and add support for more blockchains on the platform. At present, CryptoSlam fetches data from Ethereum, Flow, and WAX blockchains.

Wasinger told The Block that if any blockchain ends up with NFTs that the market cares about, CryptoSlam is committed to adding them. These include Binance Smart Chain, Immutable X, Polygon (formerly Matic Network), and the Ronin sidechain, said Wasinger.

"CryptoSlam has become the industry leader in tracking transactions for NFTs — from watching in real-time what is being listed and sold on NBA Top Shots to being able to trade your NFTs. And that dominance is only growing," said Cuban. "I'm excited to be part of the amazing company Randy is putting together."

Cuban has invested in several NFT-related platforms in recent weeks. These include Lazy, Mintable, and NFT42.

Besides Cuban, Troon Technologies, Aloomii, and GeoAds also contributed to CryptoSlam's "angel" investment round. Aloomii and GeoAds are owned by CryptoSlam's existing employees Yohann Calpu and Ryan Wasinger, respectively.

With their investment, "Yohann and Ryan are now 'minority partners' and integral parts of the CryptoSlam team," Wasinger told The Block. She further said that the two, along with her and David Mancuso of Troon Technologies, now all have board seats in CryptoSlam.