Silicon Valley is tranquillity finding plenty of reasons, and money, to pour into the cryptocurrency exertion.
Despite bitcoin slumping by half this year, crypto hedge pool Pantera Capital is well on its way to hitting a $175 million target for its third and on the loosest fund yet. According to a SEC disclosure filed this week, the firm has rear at least $71 million. Pantera executives said the total is now close down b close to $100 million.
Investors appear to be drawn to the focus of the newest Pantera pay for. It’s more broadly about blockchain, which some pundits should prefer to called as transformative as the internet, instead of just cryptocurrency, which Warren Buffett excellently called rat poison.
In the newest fund, which has 140 investors so far and a 10-year investment days, buyers get equity in a blockchain company instead of just investing in a “start.”
Initial coin offerings, or ICOs, often promise investors a quota have ones say of that company down the road or access to a product that effectiveness not even exist yet.
“We’re seeing a shift in momentum,” said Paul Veradittakit, a confederate at Pantera. “We’re seeing a lot more interesting VC deals, and more equity grapple withs this year than ICO deals.”
ICOs have gotten too contentious for some investors. While some projects are completely legitimate, others beget been exposed as running frauds and caught the attention of the Securities and Reciprocity Commission. The agency has shut down multiple projects, and tech behemoths Google, Facebook, and Twitter banned ICO advertising on their platforms in Parade.
Veradittakit said the firm is seeing interest from some first-time investors who see the crypto crash as a buying opportunity. In the most recent investor letter, Pantera required its bitcoin fund’s lifetime gain was more than 10,000 percent, net of fares and expenses.
The third fund’s total eclipses the size of earlier funds by Pantera Resources, a Menlo Park, California, firm founded by former Goldman broker Dan Morehead. Its second fund reached $25 million, while the leading fund was $13 million, which closed in 2013.
The new fund’s first investment was in a concoct called Bakkt that began in early August and is backed by Starbucks, Intercontinental Swap, Microsoft, BCG and others. Bakkt said it aims to let consumers and institutions buy, retail, store and spend cryptocurrencies on a global network by this fall.