Bain Capital Ventures (BCV), the venture capital arm of Bain Capital, has launched a $560 million fund focused on the cryptocurrency space.
What Happened: Bain Capital’s Crypto Fund I will exclusively focus on investing in early-stage cryptocurrency protocols operating in decentralized finance (DeFi) and Web3 categories, according to a report from Bloomberg on Tuesday.
Bain Capital Ventures has already allocated around $100 million towards several portfolio companies in its ecosystem — primarily in pre-launch projects.
Stefan Cohen, a partner at Bain Capital Ventures, told CoinDesk that the cryptocurrency-focused unit is “oriented around early-stage investing all the way through liquid tokens.”
“The number one priority is investing in the infrastructure. That would be layer 1 scaling solutions, privacy products, middleware, storage solutions, and the sort of components used to build the ultimate internet services we think we’ll be interacting with in the future,” he said.
BCV has a long-term investment horizon for its prospective cryptocurrency investments. The firm is looking to invest in crypto startups with a 10-year time horizon.
In addition to equity deals, BCV is looking at purchasing the native tokens of cryptocurrency projects as a way to participate in on-chain governance.
Last month, another venture capital giant Sequoia Capital announced a $600 million cryptocurrency-focused fund. Sequoia’s Crypto Fund will invest directly in liquid crypto tokens with a large daily trading volume such as Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH), and Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE).
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