August 31 – September 6 (Published September 10th)
PERSPECTIVES by Adlee Heshmat & Steve Payne
21 Crypto Private Financings Raised: $1,210M
Rolling 3-Month Average: $326M
Rolling 52-Week Average: $425M
Deals Over $50M: 2
Polymarket’s $1B round at a $21B post-money was most of last week’s $1.21B, but the deal we found most interesting was Félix, the Miami remittance company built inside WhatsApp.
Félix announced a $200M package: an $87M Series C led by a16z, plus a $113M credit facility from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund. It said only that its valuation had tripled since the 2025 Series B, which Crunchbase puts at $484.5M, so roughly $1.4B to $1.5B.
A customer opens a WhatsApp chat, an AI agent handles the transfer, the money settles mostly in USDC, and a partner pays out local currency, so nobody touches crypto. Félix says it has processed more than $8B, serves six million people, and grew revenue more than 2.5x in the past year.
The timing helps: the 1% federal tax on cash-funded transfers that took effect January 1 exempts card- and bank-funded transfers, and Remitly cited the same shift to digital in a quarter where send volume grew 27%.
Our Part 4 payments report found that proven volume commands a premium. The disclosed figures imply $5B to $6B of volume a year and roughly 25 cents of valuation per dollar moved, versus about 6 cents at Remitly, 5 cents at Wise, and 2 cents in Western Union’s pending Intermex purchase. Our read is that a16z is valuing this based on the WhatsApp distribution and a customer relationship it can lend into, not for the rail.
