The Block: Coinbase Ventures participates in $4.2 million funding round for NiftyApes

NiftyApes, a firm that lets users take out loans on any NFT collection, has raised $4.2 million in seed funding.

The firm joins a trend of NFT-focused debt financiers receiving interest from venture capitalists.

Variant and FinTech Collective led the round. Additional participants include Robot Ventures, Polygon, Coinbase Ventures, The LAO, FlamingoDAO, Ryan Sean Adams, David Hoffman, Eric Conner, Anthony Sassano, Cyrus Younessi, DC Investor, James Young, James Duncan, Nadav Hollander and Brendan Forster.

NiftyApes will use the funds to grow its team and continue expanding the firm, founders Zach Herring and Kevin Seagraves told The Block.

NiftyApes intends to augment the secondary debt economy for NFTs, moving it away from the predatory lending practices that benefit the wealthy in web2 settings. NiftyApes intends to do this through facilitating market competition to refinance an NFT loan automatically.

Another NFT-focused debt financing firm to recently receive funding is MetaStreet, which raised $10 million on Oct. 13 with help from OpenSea and Dragonfly Capital.

While NFT floor prices have fallen due to the bear market, so-called blue-chip NFTs, or popular NFT projects, remain highly valuable, making them as attractive an asset to use on collateral in the debt economy.

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