Spanish football powerhouse FC Barcelona has received a €120 million ($132 million) capital injection from Libero Football Finance AG and Nipa Capital BV to fund its Web 3.0 and blockchain efforts under the Barça Vision initiative.
In exchange for the investment, the club gave the firms a 29.5% stake in Barça Vision’s holding company Bridgeburg Invest. Barça Vision aims to integrate NFTs, the metaverse and other Web 3.0 technologies into FC Barcelona’s digital strategy.
The deal is expected to finalize in Q4 2023 pending shareholder approval. FC Barcelona has pushed for NFT and metaverse projects over the past year to expand its digital presence.
Meanwhile, decentralized finance platform Curve Finance vowed to reimburse users affected by a recent $62 million hack. Investigations have recovered about 79% of stolen funds so far.
Curve said fairly compensating each impacted user is its priority. The July 30th hack exploited a vulnerability in Curve’s Vyper compiler.
In other news, the SEC rejected a spot bitcoin ETF proposal from ARK 21 Shares. The regulator is seeking more input on the application and has extended its review period by 21 days.
This marks the latest spot bitcoin ETF rejection, with the SEC unconvinced such products are sufficiently designed to prevent fraud and manipulation. The proposal aimed to list on the Cboe BZX Exchange.
