Crypto Exchange FTX Establishes $2B Fund to Invest in Crypto Startups
The FTX Ventures fund will be one of the industry's largest, the Wall Street Journal said.
Jan 14, 2022 at 12:50 p.m. UTCUpdated May 11, 2023 at 5:47 p.m. UTC
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Crypto derivatives exchange FTX has set up a $2 billion fund to invest in crypto-industry startups, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing Amy Wu, who heads the fund. Wu later confirmed the move in a tweet.
- FTX Ventures is one of the industry's largest funds, the report said. The full funding came from FTX and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. Investments could be as low as $100,000 and as high as hundreds of millions of dollars.
- Wu, who joined FTX this month from Lightspeed Venture Partners, said the fund could deploy all of the funds by next year, but that depends on the opportunities that FTX sees in the market. In October, FTX raised $420.7 million and was valued at $25 billion.
- Wu told the Journal she is particularly interested in crypto gaming companies, as well as insurance and security products.
- FTX Ventures joins funds set up by other crypto exchanges such as Binance Labs and Coinbase Ventures, both of which have been in existence for several years.
- Crypto-related funds have boomed in the past year as cryptocurrency prices rallied. In November, Paradigm launched a $2.5 billion fund, the largest in the crypto industry.
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UPDATE (Jan. 14, 13:05 UTC): Adds fifth bullet point.
UPDATE (Jan. 14, 13:50 UTC): Adds details in first, second bullet points, largest crypto fund in fifth bullet.
UPDATE (Jan. 14, 13:59 UTC): Adds Wu tweet.
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Sheldon Reback is a CoinDesk news editor based in London. He owns a small amount of ether.
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Brandy covered crypto-related venture capital deals for CoinDesk.