Crypto.com Bolsters Venture Arm to $500M

Singapore-headquartered exchange Crypto.com has increased the amount of its venture arm fund to the tune of $500 million, TechCrunch reported Monday.

Founded in March 2021, Crypto.com Capital, the exchange’s venture arm, began with around $200 million in the tank to back early-stage startups looking to build Web 3 applications and platforms.

The fund will continue to focus on those startups but remains agile to change, according to Asia-based General Partner, Jon Russell, who stepped into the role on Monday.

Crypto.com Capital typically leads seed rounds ranging between $100K to $3 million and Series A rounds from around $3 million to $10 million, according to its Crunchbase profile.

The $300 million addition is expected to put it on an equal footing with other exchange venture arms, including Binance’s and Coinbase’s. Indeed, venture capital from major exchanges is both symbiotic and beneficial to those looking to forge new projects and attract further capital into the fold.

A trend is now beginning to form which has seen year-over-year growth of venture capital funds pouring money into the space. Last year saw $33 billion worth of VC funding — the highest amount in comparison to all previous years combined, Yahoo Finance recently reported.

Most recently, FTX announced the launch of a $2 billion venture capital fund on Jan 14.

“If you’re in the industry, it’s in your interest to help companies grow in the ecosystem and the ecosystem itself to grow,” said Russell.

Crypto.com suffers security incident

Alongside the funding announcement, Crypto.com faced a security breach which caused “unauthorized activity” in some user accounts, prompting the company to reset all customers’ two-factor authentication.

Audit firm Peckshield reports that wallets linked to the company lost about $15 million worth of ether.

However, CEO Kris Marszalek stressed on Twitter that “no customer funds were lost,” and promised to release a full postmortem following an internal investigation into the incident.