Bloomberg Interview with Multicoin: Not Following the Trend of Investing Purely in AI, Confident in Its Edge in Crypto

BlockBeats news, October 19 - As numerous crypto venture capital firms expand their investment scope into artificial intelligence (AI), Multicoin Capital, which manages $2.7 billion in assets, has chosen to "swim against the tide" and hold its ground in digital assets. Its General Partner and Co-Head of Venture Investments, Spencer Applebaum, elaborated on the core logic behind this strategy in a recent interview with Bloomberg.

Facing an industry landscape where new fund fundraising is difficult due to AI competing for capital, Applebaum stated: "We believe we have an edge in crypto, and we want to stay loyal to that space."

Applebaum said that competitors like Paradigm have expanded their mandates to cover AI and robotics, but Multicoin will not follow suit. Since Multicoin has never made a pure AI investment, pivoting now would cause it to lose the edge it holds in crypto.

Applebaum emphasized that the firm's track record and deep network make it one of the first investors crypto entrepreneurs approach.

Regarding the currently hyped "crypto + AI" concept in the market, Applebaum expressed his skepticism bluntly: "To a large extent, people are looking for a problem that doesn't exist at the intersection of crypto and AI. Many investors are trying to force it."

Beyond holding its ground, Applebaum also responded to outside concerns about the slowdown in the fund's deployment pace in 2022. He attributed it to the market environment following the collapse of crypto trading platform FTX that year: "Throughout 2023, most of the seed rounds we saw were projects with post-money valuations of around $30 million and round sizes of about $3 million. When you're deploying a $422 million fund into that type of round, it naturally takes much longer to deploy capital."

Additionally, Applebaum revealed that Multicoin's commitment to digital assets is also reflected in its hedge fund that directly purchases cryptocurrencies. He confirmed that the fund's largest position is HYPE, the token associated with decentralized derivatives trading platform Hyperliquid, all of which were bought on the public market. Although he declined to disclose the specific position size, he emphasized that Multicoin typically holds publicly traded assets for years, not days or weeks.