No one was home at Gillespie\u2019s Birkenhead address when the Herald visited, and no response was received to messages left in his letterbox.<\/p>\n
Emails and social media messages to Los Angeles-based venture capitalist Shara Senderoff, Futureverse\u2019s co-founder and chief strategy officer who bills herself as an \u201cArchitect of Magic\u201d, also went unanswered.<\/p>\n
Futureverse co-founders Aaron McDonald and Shara Senderoff, in publicity images released on the raising of US$54m in 2023. <\/p>\n
Emailed questions to Futureverse shareholder 50T Holdings, a New York crypto venture capital fund that held the general security agreement that triggered insolvency appointments in late 2025, also received no answer.<\/p>\n
This story is instead built from corporate announcements, insolvency filings, and a rich vein of interviews company principals conducted with crypto and start-up-friendly podcasts and media outlets before what seems to be the most spectacular tech flameout in New Zealand history.<\/p>\n
\u2018Discrepancies in the financial information\u2019<\/p>\n
During its ramp-up, and also while it was apparently free-falling downwards, Futureverse received millions in funding from government agencies. Significant public debts remain, with write-offs likely, and questions are being asked in Wellington.<\/p>\n
Callaghan Innovation confirmed it had advanced $400,000 as a short-term research and development loan in 2020 to a Futureverse precursor that was absorbed into the merged entity. With interest, it said $432,173 remained outstanding.<\/p>\n
Callaghan, in the process of being dissolved into the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, said its published write-up that described Futureverse as \u201cthe world\u2019s first M\u0101ori-founded unicorn\u201d relied on claims made in a 2023 interview it had conducted with McDonald.<\/p>\n
New Zealand on Air confirmed Futureverse was one of the largest individual recipients of newly-established Game Development Sector Rebate funding.<\/p>\n
In 2024, it received $3m, the maximum claimable, suggesting Futureverse was at this point spending at least $15m annually on game development. And in July 2025 another $2.3m was paid out.<\/p>\n
But a few months after that last payment was made, Futureverse entered receivership and then liquidation and questions about its state of solvency started to be asked.<\/p>\n
NZ on Air chief executive Cameron Harland said his agency appointed Deloitte to engage with administrators over concerns about disclosures made by Futureverse to prove solvency as part of the funding process.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese concerns were raised as a result of discrepancies in the financial information provided as part of the application, and the financial status of the company six months later as disclosed to creditors,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Harland acknowledged, given the current state of affairs, that attempts to now claw back the funding would likely be futile: \u201cWe are advised a return of any funds to NZ On Air is unlikely.\u201d<\/p>\n
The zebra herd<\/p>\n
The constituents of the Futureverse whole rolled up in 2023 were a mixture of non-fungible token (NFT) digital art producers and fintech payment start-ups. <\/p>\n
Their prior public works included NFT bunnies (the Fluf rabbit avatars), ursines (the Party Bear collection) and automobiles, and the computer game Untamed Isles that made headlines in 2022 after raising more than $1m on Kickstarter for development but failed to launch.<\/p>\n
As Senderoff put it in early 2025, after the roll-up had added yet more NFTs to its stockpile: \u201cEverything we do is tell stories. We\u2019re just sitting here right now telling a story. So you have to be able to make sure that your vision is clear. And so we, my co-founder Aaron and I, we merged 11 companies into Futureverse and became one company, and overnight we had 300 people. And so this was no small thing: Wow!\u201d<\/p>\n
Futureverse, an agglomeration of crypto and metaverse start-ups, launched in 2022 and boasted of a billion-dollar valuation \u2013 but three years later it was in liquidation.<\/p>\n
Senderoff and McDonald were front-and-centre as Futureverse sketched out its ambitions, to underpin the future operations of a globe-spanning metaverse ecosystem.<\/p>\n
Gillespie, chief business officer with a background in investment banking, maintained a lower profile than his co-founders, but McDonald described him as a grounding influence. \u201cI have on my team Dan Gillespie, who joined me very early on, and is kind of ruthlessly operational and brings that more cautious optimism to the table,\u201d he told Morgo.<\/p>\n
Shortly after merging, Futureverse secured its first big capital endorsement when it announced raising US$54m in Series A funding led by 50T Holdings. A new shareholder, who would also back Born Ready, was California-based cryptocurrency firm Ripple Labs.<\/p>\n
(Ripple has had regular run-ins with US regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission, and also donated to Donald Trump\u2019s second inauguration and his controversial White House ballroom project. The firm has also poured tens of millions of dollars into pro-crypto political campaigns.)<\/p>\n
Futureverse\u2019s highest-profile new project was announced in early 2024 as the \u201cReadyverse\u201d, a partnership with Ready Player One author Ernest Cline to bring the novel\u2019s vision of an online metaverse to life. (The project did not launch before the company\u2019s collapse and its website is now offline.)<\/p>\n
But in the early days, Futureverse considered NFTs to be its foundational play, with Senderoff claiming in 2022 that the roll-up had \u201ccollectively, the largest number of NFTs held in the existence of the current NFT market\u201d.<\/p>\n
The NFT bubble earlier this decade led to this digital rabbit created by Futureverse changing hands for $12,250. The market subsequently crashed by 99.7%.<\/p>\n
In hindsight, it appears Futureverse was flogging a dead zebra by doubling down on bubbles that had already, and catastrophically, deflated. <\/p>\n
Demand for NFTs peaked in mid-2021 (Futureverse\u2019s rabbit NFTs were then trading hands for tens of thousands of dollars apiece) but the market then collapsed faster than that for 15th-century Dutch tulips.<\/p>\n
Metaverse fever peaked at the same time, led by Facebook\u2019s rebranding as Meta with the social media giant pouring tens of billions of dollars into building out a virtual world it assumed its many users would want to live and work in.<\/p>\n
But by early 2023, as Futureverse was just getting started, Mark Zuckerberg announced artificial intelligence, not the metaverse, was the actual future and redirected billions in capital accordingly.<\/p>\n
(Futureverse was not the only local business caught up in this curious billion-dollar metaverse frenzy. Game developer Unity paid out $2.2b to buy Weta Digital<\/a> in late 2021, intending to use the graphics technologies developed by the film-maker to flesh out its version of the metaverse. Less than two years later Unity backed out of the deal and wrote off the entire endeavour<\/a>, leaving Miramar resident Sir Peter Jackson holding his original business and a billion in change.)<\/p>\n McDonald, at least, seems to have sensed the wind changing back in 2023 when he told Fortune that many of his investment targets for Born Ready were urging him not to even use the word \u201cmetaverse\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not talking about it in the public domain because it\u2019s not fashionable any more, but they\u2019re certainly building strategies around it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But from late 2024, as venture capital dried up but development continued burning cash, Futureverse began cannibalising itself. In December, Centrapay and its digital wallet app \u2013 one of the zebras merged a year earlier \u2013 was sold to BNZ. While the purchase price was not publicly disclosed, filings by BNZ and minority shareholders suggest this netted Futureverse $18m.<\/p>\n But from the outside, Futureverse was still receiving hype into 2025. Fast Company listed it as one of the world\u2019s most innovative companies in March. An August update posted on LinkedIn by the company said it was continuing operations and \u201cdriving loyalty, creativity and cultural relevance at scale\u201d.<\/p>\n That update also noted the company\u2019s rabbit origin story had marked a significant milestone: \u201cFluf World, one of our original IPs, marked four years, proving digital IP can adapt and hold cultural value.\u201d<\/p>\n According to crypto-tracker Coingecko, the price of Fluf World rabbits at that time had been dead cat bouncing on zero for over a year. The month the announcement was made, the market was 99.7% down from its peak in January 2022.<\/p>\n But, most significantly, in May 2025 major shareholder 50T Holdings took out a general security agreement over Futureverse, apparently either extending a fresh loan or converting part of its equity stake into debt. This would prove a Chekhov\u2019s gun.<\/p>\n \u2018Almost comically complicated\u2019<\/p>\n More recently, questions have also started being asked about Futureverse\u2019s origin story, particularly the 2023 roll-up merger deal.<\/p>\n In April 2025, a few months before the enterprise collapsed, Land Information New Zealand (Linz) issued a curious retrospective approval for that deal. Futureverse was fined $40,000 for this late application, but also issued a stamp of approval stating the deal was worth \u201capproximately $530,000,000\u2033.<\/p>\n Linz\u2019s Overseas Investment Office is required by law to vet business sales to foreign interests where transactions exceed $100m in value.<\/p>\n A request under the Official Information Act this year, seemingly from a creditor or investor, raised concerns over the \u201cvery large transaction value\u201d recorded without evidence of cash changing hands.<\/p>\n The requester said they sought underlying information provided to Linz \u201cfor current legal and forensic analysis concerning ownership, funding source, and consideration structure in a material transaction\u201d.<\/p>\n Linz\u2019s assessment report reveals a transaction structure that an experienced market operator told the Herald seemed \u201calmost comically complicated\u201d.<\/p>\n The deal proceeded in five sequential steps and \u201cinvolved parties across New Zealand, the United States, Britain and the Cayman Islands, and numerous legal advisers were involved,\u201d Linz documents state.<\/p>\n The ultimate owner of Futureverse was revealed to be Cayman Islands-registered NetX Partners, which in turn was said to be owned by McDonald, Gillespie and US-based director John Joyce.<\/p>\n McDonald and Gillespie were listed as those exercising day-to-day control over the enterprise.<\/p>\n The merger seems to have been entirely paid for by the issue of Futureverse shares, with apparently no cash changing hands. And despite the transaction being conducted two years prior, Linz said in its late 2024 considerations that applicants were \u201ccurrently being audited, and statements are not yet finalised\u201d. <\/p>\n A spokesperson for Linz said it took no responsibility for verifying transaction values. \u201cThis information is collected from applicants for statistical purposes,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n \u2018I was gobsmacked\u2019<\/p>\n The end came quickly, at the end of September 2025. First, citing a potential investor abandoning due diligence and realising no fresh capital was coming to bail out the enterprise, Futurverse directors appointed voluntary administrators Grant Thornton on the morning of September 30.<\/p>\n Minutes later, 50T Holdings \u2013 citing $5.9m owed under a general security agreement \u2013 appointed Calibre Partners as receivers in a bid to buy out business assets before seemingly inevitable liquidation torched contracts and partnerships and further diminished what little value remained.<\/p>\n A High Court order was secured in October to push the voluntary administration watershed meeting back a month to ensure the sale process concluded before insolvency was formally declared.<\/p>\n The voluntary administrators\u2019 first report had Futureverse, according to its own management accounts, $22.1m underwater in September and facing a $3.3m working capital deficit. Accumulated losses totalled $137.5m.<\/p>\n Directors told Calibre Partners the business failed because of delays in partner launches, legacy debt inherited from the merger, and a collapse of the venture capital pool for crypto and metaverse projects.<\/p>\n Directors also claimed it was overly ambitious in plans to \u201cchange the content creation and distribution in the metaverse across multiple domains\u201d.<\/p>\n 50T Holdings funded the receivership to the tune of $1.9m, and scooped out what remained of the Futureverse business for US$4.35m, in a cashless settlement set off against debt owed.<\/p>\n Residual assets \u2013 office furniture, a \u201cNvidia Super Computer System\u201d and other miscellaneous items \u2013 went to mortgagee sale and netted a further $390,000, not even enough to cover receivership fees.<\/p>\n McGrath Nichol, appointed as liquidators and serving as almost spectators while 50T recovered what it could, crystallised the losses to come in its second report: given nothing is likely to remain after receivership, a deficit of $40.3m was flagged for remaining creditors.<\/p>\n One senior legal figure, who found himself on the fringes of Futureverse, was shocked by its sudden rise and fall. <\/p>\n \u201cI was gobsmacked it could go from something that large, to nothing, so quickly,\u201d he told the Herald.<\/p>\n The lawyer said he\u2019d acquired a Fluf bunny during the period and kept possession as a reminder of those wild times. Looking at the digital rabbit \u201ckeeps you humble\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n Enter Inland Revenue<\/p>\n Born Ready Ventures, launched in 2022 alongside the convoluted merger, was directed and largely owned by McDonald, Gillespie and Senderoff. The fund claimed to have US$50m available to support companies operating in the Futureverse ecosystem.<\/p>\n It has also recently entered liquidation, and seems to have been brought down by the collapse of Futureverse and a dispute with New Zealand tax authorities.<\/p>\n According to the Companies Office, the only local investment it had made was the taking of a 3% stake in Dan Carter-linked NFT venture Glorious.<\/p>\n In July, shareholders appointed Grant Thornton as liquidators, who said while there were no quantified creditors and accounts listed $15m in investment assets, the bulk of potential recoveries were a \u201csignificant investment\u201d into a related party.<\/p>\n \u201cIt appears that a majority, if not all, of the company\u2019s investment into Futureverse will not be recovered,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n The final straw for Born Ready, it seemed, was a tax dispute that the company was no longer able to afford to fight.<\/p>\n \u201cThe company also has a contingent income tax liability in relation to funding received for investments. The company received advice that this would not be subject to income tax; however, this has been challenged by the Inland Revenue. The company has exhausted its funds defending its position,\u201d liquidators said in their first report.<\/p>\n Liquidators have also found themselves holding $1324 worth of \u201cdigital assets\u201d, although this comes with a caveat: \u201cThe company holds a minor holding of cryptocurrency and NFTs. We will realise these assets, but given the volatile nature of these assets, we are unable to comment on their recoverability.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Almost all of the industry has gone under\u2019<\/p>\n In 2022, as Futureverse was being cobbled together and prepared for launch, the founders\u2019 visions extended beyond commercial and technological triumph to include A-list philanthropy.<\/p>\n A mid-2022 announcement claimed Hollywood actor Keanu Reeves and his partner, artist Alexandra Grant, had agreed to become advisers to the Futureverse Foundation to fund five to 10 projects a year to \u201cempower the next generation of artists through the use of blockchain technology and web3\u201d.<\/p>\n But charity filings tell a story of unfilled ambitions. The Futureverse Foundation was registered as a New Zealand charity in October 2022, and dissolved three years later. During its brief existence, it reported no income and no expenditure.<\/p>\n Foundation trustee Brook Howard-Smith, whose NFT business led to him owning 3% of Futureverse\u2019s holding company after the merger, was keen to stress to the Herald he was neither an office holder nor employee at Futureverse and only assisted its charitable efforts as a volunteer.<\/p>\n Paperwork proved challenging, he said, prompting a more informal approach.<\/p>\n \u201cSetting up a compliant charitable entity in the US proved far more complex and slow than we anticipated… Early on and while that structure was being worked through, we chose to give directly rather than wait,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Howard-Smith pointed to $1m donated to Auckland City Mission in January 2022 from the proceeds of NFT rabbits produced through a Snoop Dogg partnership as the largest evidence of this freewheeling charity. (The Auckland charity for the homeless confirmed to the Herald the receipt of this cash.)<\/p>\n He said Senderoff and other Futurverse figures took over management of the charity once it got formed and off the ground in the United States.<\/p>\n Following the trail to California renders deja vu. A Futureverse Foundation was registered there in November 2023, with documents listing Senderoff as treasurer and Howard-Smith as a director.<\/p>\n In December 2025, this foundation also filed for dissolution. The only income recorded during its existence was US$35,000 in seed funding, and its only expense outside of a few hundred dollars spent on an accounting software subscription was US$2783 to cover establishment legal fees.<\/p>\n (Questions from the Herald to Grant\u2019s publicist about whether her and Reeves\u2019 involvement in the project amounted to anything more than a press release went unanswered.)<\/p>\n Howard-Smith said he had no insider insights as to why Futureverse collapsed, but said the entire metaverse project had hit the wall.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the outside it felt like they were really ambitious, trying to solve some big challenges. But the industry collapsed … Web3 collapsed, I imagine almost all of the industry has gone under,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n University of Auckland professor Alex Sims said she hadn\u2019t followed Futureverse closely, but said its sector \u2013 crypto and the metaverse together \u2013 had come undone over the past few years and there were always risks in trying to invest in emerging technologies.<\/p>\n \u201cI guess the trouble is, when you\u2019re chasing the next big thing, that it\u2019s a gamble,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u2018Deep down the rabbit hole\u2019<\/p>\n Since receivers and liquidators took over Futureverse\u2019s offices on Auckland\u2019s South St, the company\u2019s principals have largely kept their heads down.<\/p>\n McDonald, who had earned an Edmund Hillary Fellowship and won EY\u2019s technology entrepreneur of the year in 2019 with Futureverse precursor Centrality, is said to have moved from Auckland to Arrowtown.<\/p>\n He was well aware of the gnarly territory he was getting into with the metaverse, telling Morgo in 2023: \u201cWhen you\u2019re going through those emerging technology phases, there\u2019s a lot of information out there, and a lot of it\u2019s wrong, and a lot of it\u2019s misinformation, and so building in that context is not the easiest thing to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t try this at home, kids.\u201d<\/p>\n The lower-profile Gillespie quickly moved into a role as group manager for Canadian software firm Vencora.<\/p>\n Forbes \u201c30 under 30\u201d honouree Senderoff, by contrast, has rolled out at least one high-profile project since the collapse.<\/p>\n In December she announced the release of The Age of Disclosure, a film she executive produced and describes as a \u201cdocumentary revealing an 80-year global cover-up of non-human intelligent life and a secret war among major nations to reverse-engineer advanced technology of non-human origin\u201d.<\/p>\n (The New York Times was largely dismissive of the film, with its reviewer saying \u201canyone who sits through its nearly two hours of unprovable claims is a chump\u201d.)<\/p>\n Senderoff, who in 2022 told the Observer she ran investment opportunities past New Orleans energy healer Fatima Mbodj, outlined her interest in the paranormal: \u201cFrom an early age, I\u2019ve been captivated by and deep down the rabbit hole of consciousness, quantum physics, relational intelligence, human potential, and the inner architecture that shapes our experience of reality.\u201d<\/p>\n Last year she scrubbed mention of Futureverse and Born Ready Ventures from the biography on her personal website.<\/p>\n Matt Nippert is an Auckland-based investigations reporter covering white-collar and transnational crimes and the intersection of politics and business. He has won more than a dozen awards for his journalism \u2013 including twice being named Reporter of the Year \u2013 and joined the Herald in 2014 after having spent the decade prior reporting for business newspapers and national magazines.<\/p>\nFrom its formation in 2022, Futureverse operated out of this building off Auckland’s Karangahape Rd. Last year receivers took over the offices and auctioned off the office furniture. Photo \/ Google Street View<\/p>\n
Keanu Reeves was said to have entered a philanthropic partnership with Futureverse, but the company’s charitable foundations in New Zealand and California closed last year with zero activity reported.<\/p>\n