Author: Edgy - The DeFi Edge
Compiled by: TechFlow
This is the weirdest cycle yet - no one can predict what will happen next
At times like these, it helps to know what other people are doing, so I spent the weekend researching what the big VCs were doing.
I know some of you might be thinking, “They’re just casting a wide net and profiting on early investments.”
Actually, I don’t think they are the smartest people, especially after the last cycle, but we should still pay attention to them: because they do have information advantages, abundant funds, and are closer to the developers of the projects than we are.
I would like to know:
Do they have any interesting moves?
Are they as enthusiastic about altcoins as we are?
Or do they still hold some of the older coins?
So, my friend Edgy condensed hours of research into an easy five-minute read.
Let's take a look at what these speculators in suits are busy with.
Note:
Don’t simply copy what VCs do. They have better deal opportunities and they play the game differently than we do. The information here is just to give us a better understanding of other players in this space.
We cannot track all wallets. We have done our best through crowdsourced tagging and our own on-chain analysis, but it is impossible to capture all movements.
We've taken a few funds and sorted them by size. We'll cover each fund's total balance, major holdings, smaller holdings, and some interesting recent moves.
Top Crypto VCs and Their Holdings
a16z ($482.3 million)
Main assets:
UNI: $436 million
OP: $3100万
COMP: $14 million
Smaller assets: ETH ($14000), COLLE ($6000)
a16z is one of the largest UNI holders in the market. They have enough influence to veto proposals, as the 4% of UNI they hold can reach a quorum. They have been holding UNI for many years. Recently, one of the changes in a16z's wallet was their OP initial unlock, which they have been holding.
Galaxy Digital ($364.5 million)
Main assets:
BTC: $194 million
ETH: $115 million
USDC: $40 million
USDT: $500 million
AVAX: $4 million
USDC: $1.3 million
AAVE: $114万
Small assets worth mentioning ($100k - $150k): MKR, OXT, UNI, TOKE
They generate a lot of volume, mostly for stablecoins and BTC. Probably diversifying the tokens and doing some arbitrage strategies. They recently withdrew $3.3m worth of AVAX from Binance.
Jump Trading ($286.4 million)
Main assets:
USDC: $78 million
USDT: $7038万
stETH: $70.38 million
ETH: $54.9 million
T: $2.15 million
WETH: $1.24 million
SHIB: $1.2 million
SNX: $1.16 million
Small holdings: ($200k-$700k) include MKR, LDO, GRT, DAI, UNI, KNC, HMT, BNB, CVX, COMP, INJ, MNT.
Jump’s portfolio is primarily made up of ETH and stablecoins, which is common among venture capital firms. Notably, they also hold Threshold Network, SHIB, and SNX.
Although some claim that Jump has exited the crypto space, they are still actively working on various operations. They have also started depositing ETH into LMAX, a crypto exchange that specializes in serving institutions.
Wintermute ($159.8 million)
Main assets:
USDC: $16.6 million
WBTC: $11.15 million
PEPECOIN: $10.52 million
ETH: $10.39 million
USDT: $911万
TKO: $4.67 million
CBBTC: $4.63 million
MATIC: $4.41 million
BMC: $4.36 million
NEIRO: $3.48 million
Small assets: ($200k - $3m) including BASEDAI, TON, ZK, MOG, stETH, ARB, ENA, ARKM, APE, LDO, ONDO, etc.
Wintermute has been a strong performer in the meme coin space. Their largest holding is PEPECOIN (this is not PEPE, but another meme coin), and they also have significant investments in MOG, NEIRO, COQ, APU, SHIB, BENJI, and other meme coins.
They are known for their market activity in meme coins. Wintermute recently showed accumulation of CBBTC (Coinbase BTC) and BTC in their wallets, and they also transferred over $6 million worth of SHIB to Binance.
Pantera Capital ($161.15 million)
Main assets:
ONDO: $15.2 million
ETHX: $4.4 million
SD: $1.11 million
ECOX: $941,600
LDO: $388K
PERC: $375,000
NOTE: $274,000
Recently, Pantera transferred nearly $3 million of MATIC to Coinbase. They also transferred $1 million of LDO to Anchorage, a platform that provides crypto staking services for institutions.
It is worth noting that most of their ETH has been moved to centralized exchanges. In addition, we also observed a 56% drop in the value of their investment in ONDO. Pantera is one of the early private investors in ONDO.
Blockchain Capital ($6710)
Main assets:
AAVE: $3280 million
UNI: $18.35 million
ETH: $4.16 million
A: $212
SAFE: $1.89 million
1INCH: $1.88 million
COW: $1.62 million
FORT: $1.31 million
USDC: $1 million
Small assets: ($100k - $600k) including SUSHI, BAL, PSP, USDC, PERP.
Blockchain Capital’s largest holding is AAVE, which they have held for years. With its recent uptrend in price, it may be worth further attention. They also moved over $5 million of ETH to Anchorage, just like Pantera.
Spartan Group ($35.38 million)
Main assets:
PENDLE: $16.93 million
GAL: $2.65 million
MNT: $2.49 million
OP: $140万
IMX: $1.18 million
WILD: $1.09 million
GRT: 1.04 million
Age: $98.2 million
USDC: $841,000
PTU: $800,000
RBN: $778K
1INCH: $700,000
Small assets: ($100k - $500k) including MAV, CHESS, MPL, G, DYDX, ALI, BETA, PSTAKE, ETH.
Spartan Group is mainly betting on Pendle. Apart from that, they don’t do a lot of substantial trading, mainly arbitrage strategies through USDC. Interestingly, they moved all BEAM assets to the upcoming chain Sophon, where users can start depositing assets to receive airdrop rewards.
DeFiance Capital ($33.6 million)
Main assets:
PYUSD: $20 million
LDO: $6.08 million
BEAM: $3.94 million
USDC: $1.1 million
TBILL: $104
Small assets: ($50k - $300k) including VIRTUAL, AVAX, BAL, MCB, USDT, INSUR.
DeFiance has made significant investments in gaming tokens. Their most recent transaction involved multiple payments from Shrapnel, a Web3 shooter. They also collected a large amount of ETH from Morpho.
Some VC trends we’ve observed
Common holdings: a16z, Jump, Wintermute, and Blockchain Capital prefer top DeFi tokens (such as UNI and AAVE), ETH, and stablecoins. Probably due to the bear market, they are more focused on liquidity and DeFi protocols.
Long-term holdings: a16z and Blockchain Capital are firm holders who have held UNI and AAVE for years.
Stablecoin Arbitrage: They are all doing stablecoin arbitrage, which can be seen from their large amount of stablecoin transactions.
Bitcoin Layer 2 Investment: Bitcoin Layer 2 continues to attract significant investment. BTC L2 companies and projects raised $94.6 million, up 174% month-over-month.
Early-stage deals: Early-stage deals still dominate, accounting for nearly 80% of invested capital and pre-seed deals accounting for 13% of all deals.
Investment Trends: While 2021 was huge for NFTs and GameFi, the sector has cooled down by 2024. VCs are now leaning more towards trends like AI, infrastructure, and even memes. We recently ran across an interesting report from Galaxy on VC trends for 2024.
Here are some highlights:
Compared to the same period in 2021-2022, VC investment has dropped significantly. However, in the second quarter of 2024, VC investment reached $3.19 billion, a 28% increase from the previous quarter.
It is worth noting that the scale of investment is not completely in sync with the price of BTC.
In the past, this correlation was more pronounced, but now it appears that the liquidity of venture capital has declined.
Most investments went into NFTs, games, and DAOs, followed by infrastructure.
“In Q2 2024, companies and projects in the ‘Web3/NFT/DAO/Metaverse/Gaming’ category raised the largest share of crypto VC funding, accounting for 24% of total investment and a total of $758m. Within this category, Farcaster and Zentry were the two largest deals, raising $150m and $140m respectively.”
Hopefully, this in-depth analysis provides you with great insights into how VCs operate in the crypto space.
The key to analysis is to observe their behavior in order to catch potential trends in advance and understand how they operate. Don’t simply copy the operations of venture capital, but use them as a resource to improve your research capabilities.
The following tools made this research possible:
@DeBankDeFi
@ArkhamIntel
@etherscan
