On December 17, 2021, Kraken Venture announced that it had raised $65 million that will be invested in crypto and fintech startups.
What Is Kraken Ventures?
Kraken Ventures is an independent investment fund that is led by former employees of Kraken, the popular crypto trading platform. According to the announcement, the investment fund had raised the funds from various institutional investors around the world.
The Focus Of The Fund
The focus of the fund will be crypto and fintech firms in the early stages of development. By doing so, it aims to boost innovation within the crypto sector. Some of the areas where Kraken Ventures will focus on include financial infrastructure, decentralized finance (DeFi), Web3.0, consumer crypto protocols, and enabling technologies like Machine Learning, and AI. The company’s focus will be based on long-term goals. Firms they pick will receive an initial investment of $500K to $2 million.
Current Investments
Details shared by Kraken Ventures revealed that the company has already made investments in numerous leading crypto firms such as Messari, pStake, Blockdaemon, Hashflow, and Anchorage. Discussing the announcement, Brandon Gath, Managing Partner at Kraken Ventures stated that their focus would be on putting the money to work. They aim to help some of the most innovative projects and their talented founders accelerate the development of their protocols and companies. He noted that the possibility of leveraging their experience at Kraken to create a global, scalable platform, played a major role in generating interest amongst investors globally.
New Appointments To Help With Their European Expansion
Kraken Ventures also revealed that they had appointed Laurens De Poorter as Head of Europe to help with their European expansion. De Poorter is experienced in early-stage investment in enterprise software and fintech firms. His focus will be on identifying and executing investments and working with companies in Europe and beyond. The company also recently appointed Mavis Xu as a Senior Associate based in New York. She is in charge of sourcing new investment opportunities, conducting due diligence, and closing investments.
Commenting on his appointment, De Poorter stated that:
“The European crypto scene is booming. Deal count doubled in the last two years and continues to accelerate.”
He added that with the impending regulation wave and the influx of institutional money, a promising area would be the intersection of fintech and crypto.
According to De Poorter, Kraken Ventures stood out because of the number of resources and time it could allocate to each of its portfolio companies. As a result, it could add real value to businesses in which it invested.
Summary
The Kraken Ventures fund will no doubt make a major impact on the crypto and fintech startups scene. While most countries still do not have regulations for the crypto sector, a lot of progress has been made. Many legislatures of leading economies around the world are focused on creating such regulations. There are expectations that streamlined regulation for the sector could be enacted within the next two to five years.
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