Author: Zen, PANews
In a recent Bloomberg TV interview, Charlie Morris, co-founder of CMCC Global, said that the United States is "shooting itself in the foot" and its crackdown on digital assets is creating opportunities for Hong Kong, giving other regions the opportunity to attract innovative companies. He added: "Hong Kong has a real opportunity to bring these companies and entrepreneurs to the city at this time."
Charlie also revealed in the interview that CMCC Global is launching a $100 million fund that will invest in startups in Hong Kong and other regions that focus on blockchain projects, including Series A and Series B financing stages. CMCC Global, a cryptocurrency investment company headquartered in Hong Kong, was established in 2016. Li Ka-shing's second son, Richard Li, and Gemini Trust founders Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss are also investors in its holding entity. As a seed investor, CMCC participated in early financing for projects including Ethereum, Solana, and Arweave.
The earliest batch of Asian crypto venture capital originated from Hong Kong
CMCC Global was born in a bar called The Globe in Hong Kong, where Martin Baumann and Charlie Morris, who have backgrounds in finance and technology respectively, exchanged their knowledge and came up with the idea of jointly launching a crypto fund. Initially, they called the company CM Crypto Capital (CM represents their initials), but because companies with "crypto" in their names cannot open accounts in Hong Kong banks, they changed the name to CMCC Global. It is said that the "Global" represents both the vision of globalization and a tribute to its "birthplace" The Globe bar.
Before coming to Hong Kong, Martin Baumann worked at Houlihan Lokey (formerly Leonardo & Co.), a European investment bank, mainly doing M&A business in Frankfurt and Amsterdam. In the early days of founding CMCC Global, Martin also served as the CFO of Nova Founders Capital, a fintech investment company, and served on several boards of directors of fintech companies such as Hyphen Group, an online platform for banking and insurance products, and Coru Mexico. Among them, Hyphen Group also received investment from Richard Li.
Martin Baumann
Ethereum was just founded, and Martin Baumann, who had been immersed in financial technology for a long time, was very interested in it. He immediately signed up for a coding course, and met Charlie Morris, a software engineer who taught the course. Charlie was already a senior user of cryptocurrency at that time, and was also the chief information officer of a blockchain venture capital company. They soon became friends and began to invest in cryptocurrency together. As early as 2013, when Charlie had just moved to Hong Kong from London, in order to make a living, he opened a credit card that supports Bitcoin at ANX International, a retail Bitcoin broker and exchange, and used it to buy things. Looking back on this, Charlie realized that it was a waste to spend so much Bitcoin on ordinary things, but it was this experience that made his later development, including becoming an investor in the Ethereum ICO in 2014 and an expert blockchain consultant for Lyon Securities.
Charlie Morris
Currently, CMCC Global has offices in Hong Kong and North America. Martin is mainly active in Hong Kong, while Charlie Morris is based in Toronto, Canada, the birthplace of Ethereum and where developers gather.
Launched multiple crypto funds and invited Willy Woo to join
Launched in 2016, Digital Asset Fund is one of the first funds in Asia that is 100% focused on blockchain. CMCC Global has used it to invest in several projects that are now at the top of the market, such as Solana and Cosmos. In the wild era of the crypto industry, it was difficult for pure crypto venture capital institutions to raise tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of funds as they have in recent years. CMCC raised $1 million for its first fund, and in the next two years, it launched two more funds, raising $3.5 million and $30 million respectively. In 2021, five years after its establishment, CMCC Global manages $500 million and has raised $120 million, launching Digital Asset Fund 4 for the first time with a fund size of over 100 million.
Martin Baumann hopes that CMCC will become a global asset management company across blockchain enterprise asset classes. He said, "CMCC Global's mission is not to manage just one fund. We are building the BlackRock of the cryptocurrency field." In September 2019, CMCC Global also launched the Liberty Bitcoin Fund, which provides custody services and institutional-level access to Bitcoin. The fund is only open to qualified investors.
Crest Fund is a fund co-founded and managed by CMCC Global and on-chain analyst Willy Woo, which identifies and invests in the digital asset sector. Willy Woo is an early investor in Bitcoin and has been named one of the most influential people in the cryptocurrency space by Fortune Magazine and a top 5 cryptocurrency analyst by CoinDesk. He is the founder of on-chain analysis, a new field unique to digital assets that can predict price movements by reading investor behavior on the digital asset blockchain. Willy is widely recognized in the industry for his insights into the crypto market. He has gained the attention of 1 million cryptocurrency investors on Twitter.
In April, Bank Syz, a private bank under the Swiss Syz Group, said it would work with CMCC Global to launch SyzCrest Digital, a fund of at least $50 million, to invest in cryptocurrency-focused hedge funds. Richard Byworth, managing partner of Syz Capital, said SyzCrest Digital will begin operations on July 1, with the ultimate goal of raising up to $300 million. The new fund will be based in the Cayman Islands, and Willy will serve as a member of the company's investment committee.
CMCC Global focused on token investment in the early days. Most of the projects invested by its first few Digital Asset Funds have been exited and have brought rich returns to investors. In 2021, CMCC began to apply for a license to provide securities consulting and operate asset management business in Hong Kong, and is preparing to launch a traditional venture capital-style fund, Titan Fund. It will invest directly in companies to acquire equity, and still accept investments through token allocations. Titan Fund focuses on seed rounds to A/B series, with key strategic areas of decentralized finance, infrastructure and various applications, including:
Programmable money, exchanges, wallets, payment solutions, fiat on/off ramps, lending, asset management, brokerage Interoperability, security and compliance, staking services, analytics, custody, identity, tokenization, services and tools. Metaverse, media and entertainment, gaming, gated tokenized communities, fan clubs, NFTs, music, sports, art, fashion Build a diverse portfolio around core themes
Charlie believes that there are two types of founders in the industry, one is the missionary who builds at all costs, and the other is the mercenary who is in it for the money. "The best projects are run by true believers. However, it would be great if there were one or two mercenaries on the team to ensure that they have the right business acumen."
In terms of investment, CMCC Global’s core values include building a diversified portfolio around core themes, grasping market trends, and conducting in-depth due diligence before and during investment. This methodology can also be seen in their investment portfolio.
Ethereum
The world's largest open-source public blockchain platform with smart contract capabilities. Ethereum was CMCC's first investment in 2016 (then priced at $7/ETH).
Cosmos
A new blockchain network architecture, known as the "Internet of Blockchain". CMCC was one of the top ten investors in Cosmos in 2017 (then the price was $0.10/ATOM).
Solana
High-performance underlying public chain. In 2018, CMCC was the seed investor of Solana (the price was $0.20/SOL)
Gnosis
An Ethereum infrastructure company that owns the digital asset management platform Safe (formerly GnosisSafe) and the decentralized trading platform CowSwap.
Animoca Brands
A well-known Web3 company in the fields of digital entertainment, blockchain and gaming.
Osmosis
The Cosmos-based cross-chain automated market maker has expanded its services to Polkadot- and Ethereum-based tokens through integrations with Axelar and Moonbeam.
SportX
Peer-to-peer sports betting trading platform. In April 2022, SX Network completed a $9.5 million financing, led by Hack VC, followed by CMCC Global, Nascent, FJ Labs, Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal and other well-known angel investors.
Perion
NFT lending platform, operating in the fields of gaming, metaverse, NFT and digital fashion.
Limewire
Art and entertainment digital collections market. In April 2022, LimeWire raised more than $10 million in the LMWR private token sale, led by Kraken Ventures, Arrington Capital and GSR. Crypto.com Capital, CMCC Global and others participated in the investment.
Hello Dollar
The Hi platform has integrated with both crypto and traditional financial institutions, acting as both a non-custodial wallet and an access point to the fiat banking system.
Anoma
Blockchain technology company whose founders built Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) on Cosmos.
Earth
An algorithmic stablecoin platform, the native platform token of which is LUNA. CMCC participated in Terra's seed round investment in 2018. In 2022, CMCC conducted due diligence on UST and withdrew from the investment in March before the project collapsed due to concerns about the underlying technology and regulation.
Quicksilver
Cosmos Ecosystem Liquidity Staking Protocol
Hedera Hashgraph
The underlying distributed network layer
Arweave
Blockchain storage protocol Arweave
Sintra
NFT Investment Application
Maple Finance
DeFi and CeFi Institutional Lending Protocols
GenesysGo
Infrastructure companies focused on Solana
Fasting
Decentralized gaming platform. In February 2023, Ajuna Network raised $5 million in a private placement, led by CMCC Global.