6 executives who control billions of dollars in venture capital for major crypto companies like Coinase, Binance and FTX explain what their teams are looking for as they look into altcoin projects and try to allocate capital from multi-chain networks to GameFi to NFTs.
Altcoin choices and reasons by famous executives
Ken Li, Binance Labs
Binance Director of Investments and Mergers and Acquisitions Ken Li says the sheer growth of business in crypto is an opportunity for the company’s venture arm, Binance Labs, to seed venture investments in digital assets.
Saying that the number of active wallets in the ecosystem was not more than 10 million when Binance first started a few years ago, Ken Li states that today this number is probably between 250 and 300 million.
In 2022, Binance Labs invested in 15 crypto startups ranging in size from a $1.1 million fundraising round to $16 million, according to Crunchbase. Binance Labs acted as the lead investor in all but three of these. Li says he prefers to play a leading role in the deals Binance is pursuing, either early or later.
As a trend to watch in crypto, Li points to the growth in altcoin projects that are making “the underlying Blockchain technology more scalable, more useful, and easier to develop for consumer-facing industries.”
Shan Aggarwal, Coinbase Ventures
Coinbase Ventures launched in 2018, nearly six years after the company was founded. “What we realized in 2018 was that the crypto ecosystem is still extremely early and extremely new,” Shan Aggarwal says.
Coinbase’s approach to venture investment is to bet on a wide range of early-stage players from altcoin projects. As a trend to watch, Aggarwal says he is particularly interested in the growth of “multi-chain ecosystems” as crypto developers are increasingly working on different blockchains, including Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), and Avalanche (AVAX).
One of Coinbase Venture’s most recent investments in March underlines Aggarwal’s thesis. Coinbase participated in LayerZero Lab’s $135 million fundraising round led by FTX, Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz. LayerZero is a startup project working to develop applications on multiple blockchains.
Jeremy Fox-Geen, Circle Ventures
Kriptokoin.com Last November, Circle launched a company focused on early-stage altcoin projects. announced the launch of its venture fund, Circle Ventures. According to Jeremy Fox-Geen, the company’s CFO, Circle Ventures’ performance cannot be judged solely by measuring financial returns or the extent to which portfolio companies strategically match Circle’s own businesses.
Instead, Circle Ventures’ investment thesis is based on building a more macro-focused, broader network of Blockchain-enabled use cases and ‘rebuilding’ traditional financial services. However, Circle Ventures has not shy away from participating in major venture rounds, and since its launch, the company has invested in 10 crypto startups, according to Crunchbase.
In March, Circle Ventures participated in a $92 million funding round from blockchain protocol Mina led by FTX Ventures and hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. Circle also recently invested in Zebec Protocol’s $15 million Series A. Circle Ventures was also an investor in Binance. Jeremy Fox-Geen says it’s hard to pick just one niche in crypto where Circle Ventures sees opportunity:
There are trends behind which we invest, but we’re interested in GameFi and NFTs. Obviously, we are interested in stablecoins. We deal with all types of financial services, including DeFi, TradFi and all innovations occurring in payments, trading, borrowing and lending, banking and capital markets.
Amy Wu, FTX Ventures
Amy Wu, FTX’s head of venture, M&A and games, heads an eight-person team working at the fund. FTX Ventures is uniquely different from the others on this list: Since its launch, its investment arm has tended to use its $2 billion mandate by targeting large investments towards specific bets in a specific space within crypto.
Since its launch in January, FTX Ventures has invested in 14 startups per Crunchbase. In March, the company announced a $100 million debt investment in banking app Dave, and FTX US will serve as Dave’s exclusive crypto partner to offer digital asset payments to its clients.
FTX Ventures also participated in Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Lab’s $450 million seed round this March, as well as new members of Meta’s DIEM stablecoin project created this February. participated in a $200 million venture round for Aptos, a blockchain network. Amy Wu says that FTX Ventures is particularly interested in investing in both core altcoin projects and new infrastructure technology that connects disparate networks.
Jeff Ren and Alex Chizhik, OKX Blockdream Ventures
OKX Blockdream Ventures CEO Jeff Ren said Okcoin has nearly 10 years in the market, which is a long time by crypto standards. says its track record informs how the startup team approaches investments.
Okcoin’s head of listings Ren and Alex Chizhik note that instead of betting on the future of individual tokens, the startup team is instead focusing on infrastructure betting. This approach was seen when Okcoin developed a grant-based program to promote the adoption of Bitcoin.
This March, Okcoin debuted a new project called Bitcoin Odyssey. Designed by high-profile crypto names such as Okcoin and the open-source Bitcoin network Stacks and the Digital Currency Group, the startup will invest $165 million in altcoin projects built on Stacks next year.
Blockdream Ventures has also invested in three startups this year, most recently joining the $3.5 million startup round of crypto-focused social network Taki, along with FTX and Coinbase Ventures.
