Crypto VC Fund MOVE Investing Only in NEAR in Nod to Specialization

As cryptocurrency-focused portfolio managers look to slender their niches in a sweep towards specialization, a ConsenSys Ventures alum is prepping a enterprise capital fund fund launch centered on only one protocol.

Rune Bentien advised Blockworks he expects to carry a primary capital shut of between $10 million to $15 million for his United Kingdom-based MOVE in late March or early April. The plan is to boost about $40 million total, pending a few extra closes later this yr. 

MOVE backs solely startups within the NEAR Protocol ecosystem, a decentralized finance blockchain that goals to harness a community of computer systems to create a cloud computing platform.

The NEAR token was buying and selling at somewhat over $11 noon Thursday, a 165.6% enhance from a yr in the past. Traders have been drawn to the proof-of-stake blockchain’s use of sharding, which splits the blockchain’s knowledge into simply digestible items divided among the many community’s nodes that validate transactions.

Bentien and different institutional traders deploying capital to NEAR tasks say the blockchain continues to be in its early days and has a stable development trajectory forward.

“That is nonetheless so early,” Bentien mentioned.”You have got lower than 30,000 full-time builders on Web3.”

The launch is one in all a rising quantity of recent autos keying in on a single nook of crypto  as restricted companions more and more search for specialization as a method to generate alpha.

A few years in the past, trade contributors say, crypto’s market cap was low sufficient that specializing in one area of interest wasn’t a viable technique to deploy important capital. That’s altering.

The NEAR staff, Bentien mentioned, has a “big technical benefit” over different blockchains with its sharding expertise and has been drawing the curiosity of institutional traders searching for the following huge factor. Including to the enchantment: The cryptocurrency says it’s carbon impartial.

Bentien, who ran one of many first 50 nodes on NEAR, mentioned the blockchain is primed for widespread adoption.

“Assuming they will keep centered in 2022, I believe we’ve an thrilling few years forward of us,” Bentien mentioned.

The startup plans to deploy capital “as early as attainable,” Rune mentioned, concentrating on pre-seed, seed and Collection A funding rounds. He expects lots of the investments to again startups creating decentralized purposes on the NEAR blockchain. 

The staff is now warehousing 5 to 10 investments that may grow to be a part of its portfolio as soon as the fund launches. To begin, MOVE plans to place about two-thirds of its capital into fairness performs, with the remaining third earmarked for token investments. That proportion is predicted to flip over the following yr or two.

MOVE plans to have 5 staffers, together with some from crypto-native backgrounds, on board round its launch. They’re primarily based in Africa, Europe and the US. Bentien declined to reveal their identities as a result of some are nonetheless negotiating exits with present employers.

The startup additionally has one enterprise accomplice on board.

The staff will take the helm of a fund with a five-year lockup interval — a shorter length than variety of different enterprise capital funds — and plans to take restricted accomplice contributions within the type of cryptocurrencies, together with NEAR.

Fiat won’t be accepted for restricted accomplice contributions, a possible barrier to entry for conventional traders accustomed to conducting all their monetary dealings in {dollars} — although assist for generally used stablecoins, similar to USDC, may assist. 

Earlier than working for ConsenSys, Bentien spent almost 9 years in enterprise improvement roles at Google. He has additionally labored for a variety of startups.

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