Interview with Pantera partners: bullish on ethereum, bullish on the bull market

Author: consensus & consensus;

Original title:《How Blockchain VC’s Are Preparing for Crypto Spring》

Translator: 0 x33

Even in the early stages of the blockchain era, a number of pioneering organizations, driven by technologists, entrepreneurs, and capital distributors, have taken a strong lead in building a decentralized future through their efforts to provide the backbone for a sustainable and prosperous digital economy.

This is especially true for blockchain-centric venture capital -- Pantera capital. Since its launch in 2013, the Pantera capital investment fund, led by CEO Dan Morehead, has been a blockbuster: it has a broad and truly powerful portfolio, including many of the most promising blockchain technologies, through a portfolio strategy that combines ICO funds with traditional venture capital approaches.

A glance at Pantera Capital's portfolio reveals not only that the company has a clear vision and a steady hand, but that its investments are in the long-term business of enriching the entire blockchain ecosystem. Pantera Capital's venture Capital investments include outstanding projects such as Brave, Bakkt, Circle, Zcash, Harbor and Earn.com, while ICO's investments include notable projects such as 0x, Bloom, Filecoin, Livepeer, Polkadot and OmiseGO.

Here's an interview with Paul Veradittakit, a partner at capital, to find out how Pantera sees the money cycle.

& have spent What are the values and concepts of Pantera Captial capital strategy? & have spent

We believe in the power and value of decentralized technology, and we want to help build and invest in people who can change the way things are done in the future -- which means we look at companies, organizations, products and new technologies. We're really trying to help change the world. It is the best way for us to make a difference as allocators of capital and invest it where there are great people and innovative technologies.

& have spent How do values and ideas fit into the company's portfolio? & have spent

We have three different strategies, each with its own money. This approach sets us apart from most other funds.

We have a pre-sale fund called an ICO fund that only invests in the pre-sale phase of tokens. We also have a venture capital fund about which we recently made some announcements -- it invests in more traditional vc equity deals. Finally, we have what are called NumbersDigital Asset Fund, which invests in tokens or cryptocurrencies that are already listed on exchanges.

In addition, there has been some liquidity on the ICO side recently, with projects like Thunder, Ankr and Celer already coming to market. In the near future, I think we'll start bringing more extensibility projects to market: Blocksuite, Oasis, Filecoin, and Polkadot. I expect that to happen in the next quarter or two.

& have spent How do you see the development of blockchain investment in the past two years? & have spent

In 2017, a number of apps were launched, many of them around decentralized markets, decentralized exchanges, and stable currencies. And then people realized that for these things to work, we need help with scaling. Right after that, we saw the smart contract wars, a lot of smart contracts pouring out, and everyone trying to build a better ethereum.

If you are the only early game in the ecosystem -- no one is pushing you -- then you may become complacent and slow to innovate. But once you have deep-pocketed competitors and try to be a platform to make all these really cool products and technologies possible, it can really make you hungry and keep you on your toes.

& have spent How do you see the situation in the next few years? & have spent

We saw a lot of Layer 1 protocols in 2018, and then we started to see more Layer 2 protocols in 2019. We noticed a trend: when people saw problems with scalability, they started working with different layers separately. There are so many hurdles for teams building on top of Layer 1 and Layer 2 that teams are starting to build their own Layer 2 solutions, even building their own blockchain underneath in addition to the application above. As the ecosystem expands, I think we may see a trend toward the refinement and specialization of these layers to best support the different applications built on top of the layers.

& have spent Tell us more about Pantera's recently announced venture fund III.

Venture fund III is much larger than previous venture funds. The first venture fund is $12 million. The second was about $25 million. With this we can see A lot of good opportunities in seed rounds and A rounds. As the ecosystem grows in size, so do our people, expertise and added value. We plan to do a lot of seed and series a rounds, which will require more capital, especially if some of these companies are capital intensive and need to handle capital transfers and licenses. We want to continue to operate like a traditional venture capital firm, not like a seed company. We want to continue to invest throughout the life of the company. This is what you should expect us to do.

& have spent How does a vc develop an investment strategy, compared to a more traditional model, for projects started with tokens? & have spent

VCS support ICO and non-ico projects. The question is: do you need tokens? Are you open source? Are you building applications or are you servicing an ecosystem? As an investor, you have to understand what kind of financing structure makes the most sense for the company and see if they really adjust themselves by raising money and using it. If not, then you should not invest.

& have spent Do you see a repeat of 2017's token mania? & have spent

In terms of what happened with the ICO bubble, I think the most exciting thing for investors is the ability for anyone to crowdfund a project, get liquidity, and reap the potential upside. I think, at least in the United States, that opportunity is almost gone. I believe that the next step may be a year after the project's initial offering and sale of tokens to a small number of eligible investors. And IEO, I think, will not return to the model of crowdfunding by unauthorized investors that leads to instant liquidity events.

& have spent Are you optimistic about the state of ethereum? Do you believe the bull market is back?

I think there's a lot of hope. Ethereum will continue to have the strongest community and project appeal. There's a lot of hope in Vitalik's roadmap, and every time I go to the ethereum community, the people I meet there and the cool, innovative ideas are amazing. This is still the early days of encryption, and we're still the outlier, despite the competition, we're all rooting for each other, and we're all hopeful. The industry is decentralized and all financing is syndicated.

There is liquidity and progress on projects that have raised capital and are coming to market, and I am hopeful about that. As for encryption spring? I'd rather it was encrypted summer!

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