Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and Matt Huang have finalized another $2.5 billion fundraising for Paradigm One, making it the largest crypto venture capital fund ever with $10 billion AUM.
Investors have reportedly committed to funding the VC, allowing the three-year-old investment firm to raise twice its targeted amount.
There are still fears of a potential market bubble in the unchartered world of decentralized finance which has created a name for Paradigm One.
Paradigm One returned at least 200% through the first half of 2021, starting with $400 million that VC raised in its first funding round in 2018.
The VC fund comes days after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said that the non-fungible token market could surpass the cryptocurrency exchange’s trading business.
Coinbase would create a platform where users can display NFTs and provide updates to their followers. The exchange has reportedly received over 2.5 million emails from users waiting to sign up since announcing it last month. The company is expecting to launch an NFT marketplace within the first half-year of 2022.
Needham & Co. analyst John Todaro says that Coinbase could charge a 2.5% NFT transaction fee or at the range of that charged by OpenSea. Oppenheimer & Co.’s Owen Lau says that the expected NFT launch could lead to a 7% increase in Coinbase’s 2023 earnings.
The NFT space grew exponentially last year, with OpenSea registering about $2 billion transaction volumes in a month. The peer-to-peer NFT marketplace recorded 236,000 active users in the past month.
Source: FT
