Multicoin Capital Raises $100M for Crypto Startups, Tokens

Multicoin Capital just secured $100 million in backing for a new fund, the firm announced Tuesday. 

Known for going outside the box, Multicoin plans to use Venture Fund II to expand investments into a range of crypto areas. This is the second fund the Texas-based cryptocurrency venture firm has launched in the past four years. 

“The last few years of crypto has been predominantly about investing in technical and market infrastructure,” Multicoin said in a statement. “Over the next few years there is going to be an incredible wave of innovation in Open Finance and Web3, as well as new kinds of crypto-enabled infrastructure and applications. This wave will only be possible because the underlying infrastructure has matured to a sufficient level.” 

Venture Fund II, which Multicoin is calling the “next wave of crypto innovation,” hopes to capitalize on new projects in the crypto space, including decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Web3 applications and crypto infrastructure projects, Multicoin said.   

“NFTs have blossomed over the last year as the foundational tech enabling people to express their passion for digitally native media assets,” Multicoin said. “The design space around NFTs is very large, and we’re excited to back in entrepreneurs who are at the forefront of this design space.”

Multicoin shared that there is a preference for early-stage companies and those with tokens. Capital can range from $500,000 up into the hundreds of millions, if Multicoin’s hedge fund contributes. 

Venture Fund II was closed in November 2020 and is already active. It is backed by undisclosed institutional liquidity providers (LP), among others. Multicoin’s first fund, which invested in projects including Helium and The Graph, has been fully deployed. 

Helium, which represented almost 12% of Fund I, was an extremely lucrative investment for Multicoin. The “people’s network” is up around 6,800% in the past year.

The announcement came alongside Multicoin’s promotion of Matt Shapiro, Mable Jiang, and John Robert Reed to partners.