OpenSea Backs Latin American NFT Marketplace Minteo in $4.3M Raise

Quick take:

• OpenSea Ventures has invested in Minteo.
• The Latin American NFT marketplace raised $4.3 million in a seed round backed by Fabric Ventures, Dune Ventures and CMT Digital, among others.
• The Web3 startup is tapping into a rapidly growing appetite for non-fungible tokens in the region.

OpenSea has invested in Minteo. The Latin American NFT marketplace has raised $4.3 million in a seed round, which attracted participation from OpenSea Ventures, the venture arm of the world’s largest NFT marketplace.

The fundraising also attracted participation from open economy-focused venture firm Fabric Ventures, Dune Ventures – a VC investing in the creative economy, CMT Group’s cryptocentric venture fund (CMT Digital), Impatient VC, Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, SevenX Ventures, FJ Labs, Big Brain Holdings , G20 Ventures, Alliance DAO, Zero Knowledge and several angel investors, TechCrunch reported.

The Web3 startup wants to pounce on the rapid adoption of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in the region.

An NFT is a digital representation of a music track, a JPEG, a piece of art, a collectible or a video clip stored on the blockchain. Since the start of 2021, NFTs have taken the crypto market by storm, becoming one of the most popular buzzwords in the digital economy.

As a result, celebrities, brands and even government organizations have launched products to take advantage of the burgeoning segment of the crypto market.

Europe, Asia and North America were early adopters. But now it seems that other parts of the world are quickly following suit. Latin America’s Minteo growth to a $4.3 million seed round illustrates the speed of growth of the industry in the region.

And as the web3 startup prepares to accelerate development of its platform after the seed round, some of the early investors will be buoyed by the fact that the world’s largest NFT marketplace OpenSea is among its backers. If your plan is to dominate the Latin American NFT market, there is no better support than receiving support from the global market leader.

From the perspective of William Durán, CMO of Minteo, the LATAM-based NFT platform is not a direct competitor to OpenSea. Speaking to TechCrunch, Minteo’s co-founder said: “On OpenSea there are a bunch of categories, it’s hard to navigate and unless you’re in the top collection, it’s hard to reach an audience if you’re a creator.”

“We’re trying to simplify the user experience from the infrastructure part and at the same time make it easier for them to access local content on mobile,” added the Cube Ventures mentor and investor.

The company sees its focus on infrastructure as a key differentiator from LATAM-based NFT platforms. In addition, Minteo wants to focus on local talent and brands to drive community building, according to company CEO Santiago Rodríguez.

Before co-founding Minteo, Rodriguez co-founded Vlipco, a fintech startup focused on financial payment experiences. The startup was acquired by NYSE-listed Colombian financial services Bancolombian in November 2021 for 10.52 billion Colombian pesos.

“In Latin America we are all funny, good dancers and love music and art. That’s when we realized that what has taken off in NFTs so far are the cultural communities, and that has a huge cultural opportunity for Latin America,” Rodríguez told TechCrunch. “But right now, crypto is hard to get hold of in the first place… a lot of exchanges don’t work well, only very technical people use it. Outside of technical circles, its use is currently limited.”

The announcement of the fundraising comes at a time when web3 venture capital funding has slowed compared to previous months.

According to CrunchBase tracking, web3 funding is around $719 million for Q3 2022. Based on these numbers, web3 startups are likely to raise less than $1 billion in a quarter for the first time since Q1 2020.

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