EMERGING TECH
EMERGING TECH
EMERGING TECH
Cryptocurrency fund Polychain Capital raises $10M from Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square
The new cryptocurrency-focused hedge fund Polychain Capital has raised $10 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures.
Run by former Coinbase employee Olaf Carlson-Wee, the fund has been set up to invest in digital assets such as bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and other “altcoins,” as well as tradable tokens used for raising funds for startup projects.
“There will be many types of assets codified into the blockchain, and they are all not just going to be on the bitcoin blockchain — it’s going to be a number of different assets here,” Carlson-Wee told Forbes. “And the best way to invest in that is a diversified portfolio.”
Details on how diverse the company’s investments will be are not clear from the website, which at best can be described as under construction, with a single message in part reading:
The emergence of bitcoin and subsequent blockchain technologies has generated a new digital asset class in which scarcity is based on mathematical properties. Through cryptographic verification and game-theoretic equilibrium, blockchain-based digital assets can be created, issued, and transmitted using software. Polychain Capital is a hedge fund committed to exceptional returns for investors through an actively managed portfolio of these blockchain assets.
Using tokens is becoming a more common way for small startups, particular in cryptocurrency, to raise money for their projects in what are known as “initial crowd offerings,” or ICOs.
In an ICO, investors purchases tokens that relate to ownership of the company. Those tokens are tradable themselves, against fiat currency or other cryptocurrencies, so the tokens becoming a tradable commodity similar to shares. This is one area Polychain is particularly interested in investing.
“I think these tokens are very important, they directly monetize the open-source founders and founding teams at a protocol level. We’ve already seen many founders of blockchain networks get rich based on their creation,” Carlson-Wee explained to Coindesk. “I’m trying to take a position very early on in projects that I believe could truly become the infrastructure of the future Internet, or app tokens that could disrupt major centralized web services.”
Photo of Marc Andreessen: scobleizer/Flickr/CC by 2.0
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