Quick take:
- VanEck has hired two former Circle Ventures leaders Wyatt Lonergan and Juan Lopez to lead its new venture arm.
- This is not the asset manager’s first foray into crypto having expanded its liquid asset investing in 2022.
- The company also previously launched a community NFT collection featuring 1,000 VanEck NFTs.
VanEck, the New York-based asset manager with over $115 billion in assets under management has launched a new venture arm dedicated to crypto projects. Announcing its first crypto fund on Wednesday, VanEck said it is seeking to raise $30 million, which will be invested in startups at the intersection of fintech, crypto and artificial intelligence.
The company has hired two former Circle Ventures leaders Wyatt Lonergan and Juan Lopez to lead its new venture arm. They are also joining the asset manager as general partners.
This is not VanEck’s first foray into crypto having expanded its liquid asset investing in 2022. The same year, the company also launched a community NFT collection featuring 1,000 VanEck NFTs.
VanEck’s crypto plans began even earlier, after filing for a Bitcoin-linked ETF in 2017. It was also among the first to file for a Spot Bitcoin ETF in 2018 and led the line in filing for a Spot ether ETF in 2021.
VanEck is the lead investor in its first fund and will be prioritising early-stage startups focused on tokenisation and stablecoins.
Lopez is especially excited by the opportunity presented by stablecoins, highlighting the disruptive potential in cross-border payments. The new co-lead expects a “fintech explosion built on stablecoins”, which he described as “the open-source banking-as-a-service layer.”
And with the business-to-business cross-border payments market valued at about $39 trillion, he believes that on-chain payments systems on platforms like Solana could help address some of the weaknesses of traditional payment rails.
The new fund plans to make 25-30 investments with checks of $500,000 to $1 million, Lonergan told The Block, adding that it is open to both equity and token projects and has already made four unannounced investments.
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