Metaversal

In 2021, when NFT trading was at fever pitch, Metaversal launched in Miami with a quieter question than most of its peers: what do you do with a digital collectible after you own it? The firm - co-founded by Yossi Hasson and Daniel Schmerin - began by acquiring, building, and stewarding Web3 intellectual property. It has since gathered more than 2,000 NFTs across upwards of 250 projects. But the collection was always a means, not the end.

Metaversal describes itself as a merchant bank for the digital culture economy. The phrase is deliberate. A merchant bank puts its own capital to work first, then packages what it learns into products for others. Metaversal did exactly that: it moved from holding blue-chip NFTs to lending against them, originating 85+ NFT-backed art loans since 2024. Then it followed the collateral one step further, into the hardware powering the AI boom.

In 2024 the firm helped structure what it calls the first on-chain GPU financing deal in history - a roughly $600,000 transaction that collateralized GPU chips through NFTs, executed with portfolio company MetaStreet. It is a small number with an outsized idea behind it: that the same tools built to make a JPEG borrowable can be used to finance the compute the AI industry is scrambling for.