Coinbase co-founder launches US$2.5b crypto venture fund

[NEW YORK] Crypto capital-raising activity appears to be reaching a fever pitch amid this year's torrid rally in digital-asset prices. San Francisco-based investment firm Paradigm on Monday (Nov 15) said it was starting a US$2.5 billion venture-capital fund aimed at the "next generation of crypto companies and protocols".

Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and former Sequoia Capital partner Matt Huang's Paradigm One would be the largest new venture-capital fund aimed at the industry, according to the Financial Times, which reported on it earlier.

The size of Paradigm's fund highlights a continuing boom in the crypto industry. "This new fund and its size are reflective of crypto being the most exciting frontier in technology. Over the past decade, crypto has come a long way," Ehrsam and Huang wrote in a blog post on Monday.

Indeed, the 3-year-old firm's fund raising outstripped VC firm Andreessen Horowitz's US$2.2 billion fund earlier in 2021 amid record-breaking venture capital raising activity this year.

Paradigm invests in crypto shops big and small, with as much as US$100 million-plus or as little as US$1 million, the company's website says. The shop intends to continue to invest in startups with "just a glimmer of an idea" as well as later-stage companies, Ehrsam and Huang said.

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