Today TheInformation reported that Pantera Capital, led by Dan Morehead, has successfully raised a $600 million blockchain fund. In June, Pantera set a goal of raising that amount for this fourth Blockchain Fund. The previous one raised $175 million in 2018. According to sources, three quarters of the latest fund comes from institutional sources, including endowments.
Pantera says it has $6.4 billion in assets under management as of the end of October. These investments span three areas, venture equity, early stage tokens and liquid tokens. Startups issue early stage tokens at a discount before the public launch of their cryptocurrencies.
Last week another valley crypto fund, Paradigm, announced a $2.5 billion venture fund. Paradigm was co-founded by Fred Ehrsam, who also co-founded cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. Their latest fund is even bigger than the $2.2 billion one raised by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) in June after another $515 million a16z fund closed in March 2020. Another big investor Digital Currency Group sold $700 million shares in a secondary sale at the beginning of the month.
It’s now becoming normal to see crypto unicorns raise hundreds of millions of dollars several times a week. Yesterday the cryptocurrency onramp MoonPay raised $550 million. Last week, the Winklevoss twins Gemini Trust announced a $400 million funding, and ConsenSys secured $200 million. With the new mega-funds and more rumors in the pipeline, there’s no sign of the funding train slowing.
