Pantera Capital Seeks to Launch $1.25 Billion Blockchain Fund to Tap Into Growing Appetite for Digital Assets

Pantera Capital, the US-based asset management firm is looking to launch a blockchain fund of $1.25 billion (roughly Rs. 10,200 crore). The development came into light after Dan Morehead, the head of Pantera spoke about it in a recent interview with Bloomberg. The aim of this fund is to tap into the escalated appetite for digital assets, especially among institutional investors. With this fund, the platform intends to bring back investments into the sector after recent price dips left the industry financially starving.

“We want to provide liquidity for people that are kind of giving up because we're still very bullish for the next 10 or 20 years. Unfortunately, crypto pricing has become correlated with risk assets, which I honestly don't think has to be true. My hope is that soon crypto will decouple from the macro markets,” Bloomberg quoted Morehead as saying.

Pantera's funding, that may tentatively close around May next year, will focus on investing in equity and digital tokens.

The company had introduced its first cryptocurrency fund in August 2020, when it raised $165 million (roughly Rs. 1,350 crore).

With countries around the world tightening regulatory frameworks around crypto, the fund is aimed at promoting promising Web3 and blockchain projects to balance out the consequences of the recent market slowdown.

Losses arising from cryptocurrency hacks jumped nearly 60 percent in the first seven months of the year to $1.9 billion (roughly Rs. 15,100 crore), also propelled by a surge in funds stolen from decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols, according to Chainalysis.

The crypto industry has bagged $14.2 billion (roughly Rs. 1,13,500 crore) with 725 deals in the first half of this year, KPMG said in its recent report.

The findings have highlighted that crypto-centric investment figures for the first half of 2022 alone have doubled all years prior to 2021. Trade Republic, Fireblocks, FTX crypto exchange, and ConsenSys have emerged as the top four venture capital firms to have invested in crypto.

“(This) highlights the growing maturity of the space and the breadth of technologies and solutions attracting investment,” the report had said.