🛍️ Secondhand vs Fast Fashion, Ethereum updates, and trendy European cities… The Seed #25
Welcome to your Weekly News Digest!
Hi everyone,
We hope you are doing well! Welcome to your Weekly News Digest, with the latest news and trends in Tech and Entrepreneurship.
📅 Now let’s check out today’s program:
The secondhand market will overtake fast fashion
Ethereum evolutions
European fundraisings
How the secondhand market will overtake fast fashion
The fashion industry is responsible for 8-10% of global carbon emissions - and while we cannot stop wearing clothes and buying new ones occasionally, there are alternatives to fast fashion, such as the secondhand market. But the concept can be successfully adapted to other sectors (luxury, furniture, etc.)
🛍️ Secondhand for fashion is booming. By 2025, the market is expected to double to $77 billion and could represent the double of the fast fashion market! Almost half of the executives in fashion companies think that secondhand will be a crucial part of their business in 5 years.
To learn more about this fascinating topic, you can download the ThreadUp report below.
🥈✋ Danggeun Market, which develops Karrot - a Korean local secondhand marketplace - has raised $162 million in Series D. It has now reached the unicorn status! That is not so surprising when we know it has grown 300% year over year for the past three years! The funds will help the company grow internationally (first in the US, the UK, Canada & Japan) and diversify its activities in South Korea.
❤️ Our weekly Crush: Could the next step be Artificial Clothing? Could you imagine yourself wearing virtual clothes in meetings, for example, a bit like the filters that currently exist in Zoom or Google Meet? It’s the bet of Dressx, an LA-based startup!
Ethereum evolutions
As you may know, we keep following news on blockchain technologies. This year, we saw key changes in Ethereum. Their objective is to consolidate its position as a reference for blockchain technologies and to stabilize it.
⛓️ Last week, a major update happened on Ethereum. It mainly affected two things: the ability for miners to get rewards for mining and the volatility of trade prices. These trade prices, which have become unpredictable, will be smoothed, and in the short term, miners will make less money than they used to.
🌳 If you missed the announcement a few months ago, Ethereum is also planning an update that focuses on the environmental impact of this cryptocurrency. Indeed, it will change its consensus mechanism to write new blocks from proof of work (PoW) to proof of stake (PoS) by 2022. With PoS, writing new blocks on the Ethereum blockchain will require only a fraction of the current electricity cost.
European Fundraisings
European startups are currently on fire, and we keep telling you about its recent biggest fundraisings, but if you missed the latest news: here is a recap.
🇫🇷 First of all let's take a look at Paris' hottest startups! You will find in this report some of the most exciting French unicorns and trendy startups like Sorare we already presented here!
🇳🇱 We rarely mention the Dutch ecosystem, but it contains many promising and interesting startups! With companies like Dott or GitLab, the Netherlands is increasingly competitive, as they benefit from the multicultural city of Amsterdam. In 2020, they had 12 unicorns, the fourth-highest total in Europe behind England, Germany, and France!