Multicoin plunges into the moving market with the $ 430 million Blockchain Venture Fund

Multicoin Capital makes its biggest entry into small blockchain and crypto investments, with a $ 430 million venture fund that makes it look past the current bear market.

“We could have raised a much larger fund, but we chose not to,” said co-founder Tushar Jain. “If you are raising a much larger fund, it is difficult to take into account the smaller agreements.”

Modest investments in the start-up phase have been the driver of Multicoin’s growth since it was founded in 2017; The Austin, Texas-based manager was an early investor in Solana, which rose above 20,000% to the top of over $ 250 per token before falling to its current value of just over $ 30, still more than a gain of 13,000% from the original coin offer. price.

Jain and his partner Kyle Samani put their money where their mouth is; they are the two largest investors in the new vehicle, called Venture Fund III. The fund, which revealed investments from at least 321 sources, aims to put $ 500,000-25 million in early-stage opportunities, but potentially up to $ 100 million also for more mature projects, according to a press release. Multicoin can also use additional funds from its evergreen liquid fund of several billion dollars for these major investments.

The company offered a $ 100 million Venture Fund II last year, which invested heavily in blockchain and crypto. Winning bets on Solana, the crypto exchange FTX and Hivemapper gave Multicoin the confidence to acquire a new fund more than four times the size just a year later.

Venture Fund III is intended to focus on a few specific investment areas, one of which is evidence of physical labor. These projects use blockchain tools to stimulate mass collaboration on real projects. A successful example is Helium, a proof-of-coverage startup that lets users earn tokenized $ HNT rewards by allowing other users to access their $ 495 Helium-branded Internet hotspots. Multicoin invested heavily in Helium in 2019 and reported generating 10x returns after leading a $ 15 million fundraising round in Series C. Venture Fund III will target similar investment opportunities using blockchain to consumer-facing businesses.

“With Helium at 900,000 hotspots, there is significant market evidence,” Jain said, “that you can use tokens to pay people to build useful infrastructure. It’s definitely something we do more of, and we’ll double it as a dissertation. . » Jain added that the new fund will also target DataDAO (decentralized autonomous organization) projects, which offer users tokenized rewards to help gather publicly available datasets from otherwise individualized information.Creating revenue generation is another important funding goal.

But Jain says he is confident that the unfavorable market conditions at the moment will not affect the fund’s performance. Multicoin has been through bear markets before, in 2017-18 and last year, and the experiences then dictate the strategy.

“The money is still flowing,” says Jain. – Funds are still being collected. Everyone is always cruel when it comes to public market prices, but I think the enthusiasm for investing in this sector has only grown. Many of our big gains were investments we have made in the recent bear market that everyone thought were wrong. That experience has been very instructive. “

Jain said that in his view, this downturn is different from the past because of how blockchain technology has evolved to provide opportunities for innovation.

“In the last bear market, the tools were not yet there to build something useful from an income generation perspective for creators,” says Jain. “You did not have the fastest team on blockchains or team two. You did not have any messages on the chain yet. Now we are significantly more mature. That means people can build consumer-focused apps and experiences. ”