VCs favor areas such as artificial intelligence, infrastructure, and Memecoin.
Written by: Edgy
Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News
We are in the weirdest crypto cycle in history, and no one knows what will happen next. At this time, it might be enlightening to see what others are doing. So, I spent the whole weekend to find out what VCs are doing recently.
I know some of you are thinking, “They just need to plant their seeds and pray and reap the benefits of getting in early.”
I don’t think they are the smartest guys in this market, but we should still pay attention: they do have an information advantage, are well capitalized, and are closer to the builders than we are.
I am curious:
Do they do anything interesting?
Are they as into shitcoins as we are?
Or do they still hold onto some tokens from the past?
I’ve compiled hours of research into an easy 5 minute read for you, come see what those degenerates in suits are up to.
Please note:
Don’t copy what VCs do. They get better deals than we do, and they play a different game.
We only analyzed some of the wallets of several VCs.
We have selected several funds and sorted them by size. We will introduce each fund's total holdings, major holdings, light holdings, and recent interesting developments.
Top Cryptocurrency VCs and Their Holdings
1. a16z ($482.3 million)
Main assets:
UNI: $436 million
OP: 3100 million yen
COMP: $14 million
Small assets: ETH ($14,000), COLLE ($6,000)
a16z is one of the largest UNI holders in the market. They have enough power to veto proposals, and they have held UNI for many years.
The latest change to the a16z wallet is its initial OP vesting, which they will continue to hold.
2. Galaxy Digital ($364.5 million)
Main assets:
BTC: $194 million
ETH: $115 million
USDC: $40 million
USDT: 5 million USD
AVAX: $4 million
USDC: $1.3 million
AAVE: $1.14 million
Small assets worth mentioning ($100k-500k): MKR, OXT, UNI, TOKE
Galaxy does a lot of trading, mostly in stablecoins and BTC, and they also do some arbitrage strategy trading.
They recently withdrew $3.3 million worth of AVAX from Binance.
Jump Trading ($286.4 million)
Main assets:
USDC: $78 million
USDT: $70.38 million
stETH: $70.38 million
ETH: $54.9 million
T: $2.15 million
WETH: $1.24 million
SHIB: $1.2 million
SNX: $1.16 million
Small assets include ($200,000 - $700,000): MKR, LDO, GRT, DAI, UNI, KNC, HMT, BNB, CVX, COMP, INJ, MNT.
Jump’s VC portfolio is pretty typical, with a heavy focus on ETH and stablecoins. Notably, they hold Threshold Network, SHIB, and SNX.
Although many people say that Jump has left the crypto space, they are still doing some things now.
Jump recently started depositing ETH into LMAX, an institutional cryptocurrency exchange
4. Wintermute ($159.8 million)
Main assets:
USDC: $16.6 million
WBTC: $11.15 million
PEPECOIN: $10.52 million
ETH: $10.39 million
USDT: $9.11 million
TKO: $4.67 million
CBBTC: $4.63 million
MATIC: $4.41 million
BMC: $4.36 million
NEIRO: $3.48 million
Small assets ($200,000 - $3 million) include BASEDAI, TON, ZK, MOG, stETH, ARB, ENA, ARKM, APE, LDO, ONDO, etc.
Wintermute is a heavyweight player in Memecoin. In addition to their largest holdings of PEPECOIN (note: this is not PEPE, but another memecoin), they also hold a considerable amount of MOG, NEIRO, COQ, APU, SHIB, BENJI, etc.
Wintermute wallets have been accumulating CBBTC (Coinbase BTC) and BTC recently. They also sent more than $6 million worth of SHIB to Binance.
Pantera Capital ($161.15 million)
Main assets:
ONDO: $152 million
ETHX: $4.4 million
SD: 111 Mamimoto
ECOX: $941,600
LDO: $388,000
PERC: $375,000
NOTE: $274,000
Recently, Pantera transferred nearly $3 million worth of MATIC to Coinbase.
They also transferred $1 million worth of LDO to Anchorage, a cryptocurrency staking platform for institutions.
Interestingly, most of their ETH was moved to centralized exchanges. In addition to this, the value of their investment in ONDO has dropped by 56%. Note that Pantera was one of the early investors in ONDO.
6. Blockchain Capital ($67.1 million)
Main assets:
AAVe: $32.8 million
UNI: $18.35 million
ETH: $4.16 million
UMA: $2.12 million
SAFE: $1.89 million
1INCH: $1.88 million
COW: $1.62 million
FORT $1.31 million
USDC: $1 million
Small assets ($100,000 to $600,000): SUSHI, BAL, PSP, USDC, PERP
Blockchain Capital’s largest holding is AAVE, which they have held for several years. As AAVE’s price has been trending upward recently, it may be worth taking a closer look.
They also transferred over $5 million worth of ETH to Anchorage, same as Pantera 👀
7. Spartan Group ($35.38 million)
Main assets:
PENDLE: $16.93 million
GAL: $2.65 million
MNT: $2.49 million
OP: 140 Mamiyuan
IMX: $1.18 million
WILD: $1.09 million
GRT: $1.04 million
AEVO: $982,000
USDC: $841,000
PTU: $800,000
RBN: $778,000
1INCH: $700,000
Small assets ($100,000 - $500,000) include: MAV, CHESS, MPL, G, DYDX, ALI, BETA, PSTAKE, ETH.
Spartan Group's position on Pendle is doing well. Other than that, we don't see much substantive trading. They mainly use USDC for arbitrage strategies.
Interestingly, they have moved all BEAM assets to Sophon, an upcoming chain where you can already deposit assets to get the airdrop.
8. DeFiance Capital ($33.6 million)
Main assets:
PYUSD: $20 million
LDO: $6.08 million
BEAM: $3.94 million
USDC: $1.1 million
TBILL: $1.04 million
Small assets ($50,000 - $300,000) include VIRTUAL, AVAX, BAL, MCB, USDT, INSUR.
DeFiance specializes in betting on gaming tokens. Their recent transactions include several investments in Shrapnel, a Web3 shooter game.
They also recently withdrew a large amount of ETH from Morpho.
Some trends we are seeing in VC
Common holdings: a16z, Jump, Wintermute, and Blockchain capital prefer top DeFi tokens (UNI, AAVE), ETH, and stablecoins. Perhaps due to the bear market, they are more concerned about liquidity and DeFi protocols.
Long-term holding: a16z and Blockchain Capital have diamond hands, having held assets like UNI and AAVE for years.
They will engage in stablecoin arbitrage, as can be seen from their large stablecoin trading volume.
Bitcoin L2 continues to receive significant investment. Bitcoin L2 companies and projects raised $94.6 million, up 174% month-over-month.
Early-stage investing still dominates, with pre-seed deals accounting for 13% of all deals.
Trend investing. Despite the popularity of NFTs and GameFi in 2021, the industry has cooled down in 2024. Venture capital is now more inclined towards trends such as artificial intelligence, infrastructure and even memes.
We recently read Galaxy’s report on VC trends for 2024 and summarized some of the highlights:
VC funding is down significantly compared to the same period in 2021-2022. Nevertheless, VCs invested $3.19 billion in Q2 2024 (up 28% QoQ)
Interestingly, investment size does not exactly follow Bitcoin price, whereas in the past, the correlation between the two was extremely high.
Most investments are concentrated in NFTs, games, and DAOs, followed by infrastructure.
Companies and projects in the “Web3/NFT/DAO/Metaverse/Gaming” category raised the largest share of crypto venture capital (24%), totaling $758 million in Q2 2024. The two largest deals in this category were Farcaster and Zentry, which raised $150 million and $140 million, respectively.
