Report: Paradigm, a cryptocurrency venture capital firm, aims to raise a maximum of $850 million for its fund.

Crypto venture capital firm Paradigm is currently in talks to raise a new fund of up to $850 million. This comes as the crypto markets have experienced a resurgence in recent months. If successful, this raise would be the largest in the crypto industry since May 2022 when Andreessen Horowitz raised a record-breaking $4.5 billion. In November 2021, Paradigm raised a $2.5 billion fund, which was the largest cryptocurrency fund at the time. Previously, in September, Paradigm aimed to raise a $1 billion fund. Notable investments by Paradigm include Coinbase, Fireblocks, Blast, Optimism, Uniswap, Gitcoin, and friend.tech. Paradigm recently led a funding round for Merkle Manufactory, the company behind decentralized social network Farcaster, pushing its valuation over $1 billion and making it a unicorn. Paradigm also invested $278 million in the now-collapsed FTX, but quickly wrote down its investment to zero after the exchange filed for bankruptcy. Paradigm’s founder, Matt Huang, expressed regret for the investment and stated that FTX only represented a small portion of the firm’s total assets.
In terms of crypto venture capital funding, there was a significant drop in October 2023, with only $445 million raised, the lowest monthly figure since December 2020. However, the last three months have seen consecutive monthly increases, with March recording $1.16 billion in funding. In 2024, the infrastructure and decentralized finance (DeFi) sectors received the most funding, with $1.14 billion and $459 million, respectively. Nonfungible token (NFT)-related funding saw a decline of 92% in 2023 compared to 2022, dropping from $3.4 billion to $281.3 million. This decline in VC funding aligns with the falling floor prices of major NFT collections. NFT projects like CryptoPunks and the Bored Ape Yacht Club saw their floor prices decrease by around 63% and 90% from their previous highs.