Pantera Capital closing fundraise for its blockchain fund after raising $1.3 billion

The Blockchain Fund has raised $1.3 billion funds—more than double the target of $600 million—and has plans for another Select Fund

By Shashank Bhardwaj

Image: Steve Jennings/ Getty Images via AFP

Crypto investment firm Pantera Capital is readying to close its Blockchain Fund next month after raising $1.3 billion worth of capital since the fund’s launch last May. The raised capital is more than double the target figure of $600 million set in November when the fundraising began. Paradigm, another crypto fund that attained a $2.5 billion funding, was launched during the same record-setting period for crypto investments.

Pantera Capital has plans to invest the raised capital in early-stage tokens, Web3 firms, venture equity, and strong liquidity tokens. The latest figure came to light in the investor conference call during which Pantera’s next fund was being discussed. Pantera announced a new fund Pantera Select Fund with a target of $200 million last week. The raised capital from this fund will be invested in growth-stage, revenue-generating crypto firms. Whereas the Blockchain Fund is related to firms in their early funding stages.

Pantera also released its roadmap for 2023, including plans to launch Blockchain Fund II. It confirmed that the follow-up fund would have the same objectives as the first fund, that is investments in early-stage, private funds and venture capital. While discussing the firm's plans beyond the follow-up fund, Franklin Bi, director of portfolio development at Pantera, said, “We will come back with a larger and more diversified and probably longer-investment-period growth-stage fund, say in 2024.”

Dan Morehead, Pantera Capital’s CEO, said the fund would close sometime in May after some of the big institutions are done conducting their due diligence. As per sources, Pantera’s next fund, Select Fund, will also close in early May. The fund will invest in several crypto firms across multiple sectors such as Web3 gaming, the Metaverse, non-fungible Tokens, decentralised finance, and crypto exchanges. Pantera stated, “The Fund is expected to invest in about 10 companies over the next 18 months or so. We will primarily focus on more mature, revenue-generating companies than our typical Seed and Series A venture investments.”

The Select Fund will be the fifth in the league and will join Bitcoin Fund, Early-Stage Token Fund, Liquid Token Fund, and Blockchain Fund. Morehead said the funds will be more targeted and smaller, and hence, ‘more concentrated than a typical fund’. He emphasised his optimism, saying, “For the first time in our nine years, we have three very compelling growth-stage deals locked in all at the same time. That catalysed us to offer a special fund to help Limited Partners gain exposure to these growth-stage deals plus seven to nine more that we will invest in over the next year.”

The writer is a founder at yMedia. He ventured into crypto in 2013 and is an ETH maximalist

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