Jacquelin Melinek | Blockwork
June 22, 2021
Blockchain Capital, a cryptocurrency venture capital firm, closed a $300 million fundraising round with investors including PayPal and Visa, the company announced on June 22.
The company’s fifth fundraising, also known as “Fund V,” was oversubscribed at its $300 million hard cap with investors from around the world, the company said. Some of the investors from Fund V, including PayPal and Visa, will participate in Blockchain Capital’s strategic partnership program.
Since its inception eight years ago, Blockchain Capital has invested in more than 110 companies, protocols and crypto assets across the ecosystem. The portfolio includes such industry leaders as Coinbase, Kraken, Anchorage and OpenSea, as well as DeFi leaders Aave, Nexus Mutual and UMA. The company invests in both equity and crypto assets and is a multi-stage investor.
With the new funding, the company will continue to partner with industry professionals to help them grow their businesses and protocols, while focusing on investments in blockchain infrastructure, DeFi, NFTs and emerging applications of blockchain technology, it said.
“PayPal is committed to fostering an ecosystem of companies making digital currencies more accessible, useful and secure,” said Jose Fernandez da Ponte, vice president and general manager of blockchain, crypto and digital currencies at PayPal. “Investing in Blockchain Capital’s new fund allows us to engage with the entrepreneurs driving the future of the decentralized economy and the new wave of financial services.”
PayPal previously announced that it was launching international crypto offerings and that the company was “significantly investing” in its new crypto, blockchain and digital currencies business unit, CEO Dan Schulman said during the company’s fourth quarter earnings in February, Blockworks reported.
Separately, earlier this month two former PayPal leaders launched the first international payment network, Six Clovers, that uses regulated stablecoins to power global transfers between banks, merchants and payment providers.
Similarly, Visa has also spent a fair amount of time investing in the digital asset space in recent months and years, and has said it would be working with Anchorage, a digital assets bank, as a settlement partner as well as Crypto.com as a payment gateway, Blockworks previously reported.
“We’re focused on enhancing all forms of money movement, whether on the Visa network, or beyond,” Vasant Prabhu, chief financial officer at Visa, Inc., said in a statement. “Through our relationship with Blockchain Capital, we are deepening our efforts to shape and support the role that digital currencies play in the future
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