Welcome to Chain Response, a podcast that unpacks and dives into the most recent crypto tendencies, drama, and information with a number of the greatest names within the trade to interrupt issues down block by block for the crypto curious.
For this week’s episode, Jacqueline interviewed Maria Shen, Normal Companion of the funding group at Electrical Capital, an early-stage enterprise capital agency centered on crypto, blockchain, fintech and markets.
Previous to Electrical Capital, Shen was CTO and co-founder of Bambify, which helped small and medium-sized companies create extra environment friendly provide chains with producers all over the world. Earlier than that, she labored at Microsoft.
In March 2022, the corporate introduced that it had closed $1 billion for a pair of crypto funds: a $400 million automobile to spend money on startups and a $600 million fund to take a position instantly in crypto tokens. Its web site at present contains a portfolio of round 75 investments with crypto startups, together with Magic Eden, ConsenSys, and Bitwise, to call a couple of.
Earlier this yr, Electrical Capital launched a report indicating that the variety of blockchain builders in the USA has declined yearly since 2017, dropping to 29% final yr from 40% in 2017. We dipped on this report. Actually means and the way it will have an effect on the expansion of builders nationally and internationally.
“Many founders have already left the USA or are contemplating leaving the USA,” Shen mentioned. “It additionally implies that after we contemplate investing, we’re more and more trying outdoors of the USA for thrilling alternatives and founders.”
We additionally mentioned which crypto sectors she’s looking forward to investments, why she’s betting large on NFTs, and the final VC market sentiment amid a fragile crypto market. She thinks the continued bear market “goes to final for some time and it is going to be more and more tough for firms to boost funds.”
As for enterprise capitalists, the macro surroundings has “modified a lot” and corporations are “elevating much less capital and deploying much less capital. Many firms are nearing the tip of the lifetime of their funds. »
Total, Shen mentioned the crypto fundraising surroundings is prone to worsen subsequent yr. However on a optimistic notice, she sees the present bear market in a greater mild than the earlier one in 2018, when “costs have been falling off a cliff”. This market cycle appears “fully totally different,” she mentioned. “Plenty of issues that we have been actually dreaming about and theoretically speaking about have been shipped now.”
Immediately, the crypto ecosystem has Ethereum-focused scaling options, extra secure choices, decentralized finance, on-chain governance and NFT, Shen famous. “This stuff did not exist in 2018, 2019, so it is attention-grabbing to see the market mature past passing tokens or cash to one another.”
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