New York-based Union Square Venture expects to inject a notable fraction of its freshly minted fund into the crypto space
The venture capital firm announced in a blog it was looking to allocate almost a third of its new $250 million core fund to the acquisition of crypto assets. USV has come a long way since it achieved the $1 billion assets under management milestone back in 2016. The firm has appeared in Red Herring’s lists of leading venture capital firms on several occasions.
This is not the first time USV will be treading the turbulent waters of cryptocurrency. It has previously been involved with the Dapper Labs, Polychain Capital, and the crypto exchange Coinbase. The firm also has ties with other Silicon Valley companies like Twitter and Yahoo’s Tumblr.
In its early days, USV had an inclination towards internet and mobile start-ups. One of its co-founders, Brad Burnham, is a former executor at AT&T Ventures – a venture capital arm of the Telecom conglomerate AT&T.
According to a blog post penned by the Managing Partner Andy Weissman yesterday, 30% of the firm’s new $250 million fund will be rerouted into crypto-related investments. Weissman joined USV in 2011, coming from the seed-stage venture capital Betaworks.
Weissman wrote, “As in our last several funds, we expect a significant portion of the investments -around 30%- will be crypto-related investments. This will include holding tokens directly as well as equity in early-stage blockchain-related projects. Crypto networks embody both the evolution of trust in computing and financial systems, as well as vastly expanded access, so we view crypto networks as completely aligned with Thesis 3.0.”
Weissman explained the rationale behind the allocation, saying it was a chance to get in on a promising investment that is still budding. He added that the crypto approach conformed with its general “thesis-driven” approach to investing.
“We believe the opportunity to decentralize systems is still in early stages, seeing adoption tailwinds and with a lot of interesting new activity. As always, we remain committed to our way of practicing venture capital and finding those companies that believe we can be great partners.”
Union Square Ventures also intends to invest in the education and health sectors in addition to cryptocurrency.