On May 2, Archetype, a crypto venture capital firm in its early stages, expects to close a $150 million fund. It will be the year-old firm’s second fund, following the addition of Katherine Wu as a venture partner earlier this year after she was poached from Coinbase Global Inc. According to Archetype founder and general partner Ash Egan, the new fund will invest in companies in a range of different aspects of the crypto industry. In an interview, Egan stated that cryptocurrency is on the verge of becoming more mainstream. He said: “It feels like we’re not that far away from an application that gets to 100 million active users.”
Egan’s optimism comes despite falling digital currency prices and predictions of a larger downturn. Bitcoin, the most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalization, slipped below $40,000 on Friday, losing around 14% of its value this month. The second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, has lost nearly 13% of its value. This kind of volatility, according to Wu, who has been working in crypto for five years, is nothing new. She said: “Long-term crypto investors need to have guts of steel.”
Archetype, based in New York, has invested in several crypto businesses, including Polynomial, a decentralized finance network, and POAP Inc., a nonfungible token platform. According to Egan, Archetype’s new fund will be used for both token and stock investments. According to him, the fund has already made three investments, including two decentralized finance platforms and a firm that aims to bridge the gap between traditional banking and cryptocurrency. Over the next 12 months, the company expects to at least treble its four-person staff.
Wu believes that working for a smaller organization is preferable in the crypto world because deals are plentiful. At Coinbase, she said: “I wasn’t learning as an investor. I wasn’t learning anything about the companies even because we had so many deals.”
