FinTech News
White Star Capital Closes $50 Million Digital Asset Fund
Despite a rough week in the world of crypto, venture capitalists continue to see potential in the space. Case in point: White Star Capital has announced that it’s raised $50 million to create a Digital Asset Fund (DAF), which will invest in various blockchain-enabled businesses and crypto networks. Previously, the fund’s target was $30 million, but that figure grew as more backers jumped in. Among those backers were Bpifrance and Ubisoft. Running the fund are New York-based General Partner Sep Alavi, Principal investor Thomas Klocana, Toronto-based Sanjay Zimmermann.
White Star’s Digital Asset Fund will invest between $500,000 and $3 million in approximately 15 to 20 startups located in North America or Europe. In fact, six investments have already been made. Companies featured in this first batch include Rally, dfuse, Multis, Safello, Paraswap, and Ledn. In the case of Ledn, White Star led the Canadian digital asset savings and credit platform’s $2.7 million round back in February.
Speaking to the experience of working with White Star and their DAF, Ledn co-founder and CEO Adam Reeds said in a statement, “The team at White Star has strong expertise and understanding in bridging the gap between traditional venture, capital markets, and the digital asset space. The fund focuses on one of the fastest moving tech sectors while leveraging the firm’s global network to help its portfolio companies grow. From the first day, they’ve been a great partner who we can count on for the help and support we need to scale our business.”
Of course, White Star’s DAF comes as the digitization of finance grows increasingly mainstream. As Alavi explains, “Over the past 20 years, we have digitized every form of information, from newspapers and books to music and movies. With blockchain technology and digital assets, we are now digitizing value and money as well as building an entirely new financial infrastructure.” He went on to note how his firm was capitalizing on this, saying “We are hyper-focused on this space, and we expect to see further innovative use cases such as crypto credit, DeFi, NFTs, metaverses and more manifesting at an accelerated pace. We strongly believe blockchain and digital assets represent a colossal opportunity to grow the digital economy and are actively investing in crypto protocols, infrastructure, privacy, financial, gaming and social use cases.”
Although it’s proven to be a volatile week for cryptocurrencies, the oversubscribed nature of White Star’s Digital Asset Fund shows that there is still strong interest and belief in crypto and blockchain technology. Furthermore, given the started parameters of the fund, it looks as though the firm will help spur early round investment at a time when so-called “megarounds” tend to dominate the space. With $50 million in venture capital to disperse, expect to see White Star Capital leading plenty of FinTech and crypto rounds in the near future.
