Binance pledges $500 million for digital asset projects

Binance Labs, the venture capital firm of Binance, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, will provide $500 million in funding to invest in digital asset projects.

The funding announcement comes after Andreessen Horowitz raised $4.5 billion for his crypto fund last week.

With the final decision, total Silicon Valley investments focused on digital assets reached $7.6 billion. Despite the recent crash in the cryptocurrency market, some venture investors continue to invest in the tumultuous industry. “The brightest minds will continue to come into this industry and develop the most meaningful projects,” said Ken Li, chairman of Binance Labs

.

The new fund is said to attract interest from family businesses as well as institutional investors such as DST Global Partners and Breyer Capital.

Li noted in an interview that the fund is a mix of token and equity investments in blockchain, Web3, risky early-stage startups and more established growth-oriented projects.

Batan Terra had invested $3 million in the stablecoin project

Binance Labs has previously backed crypto-based game developers like The Sandbox and STEPN, as well as blockchain startups Aptos Inc. He had invested in. The company also had a $3 million investment in the Terra fixedcoin project, which collapsed in May, causing huge losses for its investors.

After the collapse of Terra, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao distanced himself from the project, stating that his company had invested in hundreds of projects over the past 4 years and only a few of them had failed.

Li also commented on the crashed stablecoin: “Terra should be both a warning and a lesson for the industry.” ) With the newly created fund, according to Li, the tokenomics part, which is used for the token economy, will be approached carefully and it will also be checked whether the crypto projects to be invested are sustainable business models.

Noting that the current market decline has hurt late-stage start-ups in terms of valuation, Lİ emphasized that early-stage start-ups are not affected for the time being. Li added that he is not worried about the slowdown in innovation in the industry.

Li said, “If we look at the previous cycle, a significant number of known projects were uncovered in 2020 and 2021 during the period of decline dubbed “crypto winter.”