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Crypto investment fund 1Confirmation, founded by former Coinbase employee Nick Tomaino, has secured $45 million in a second round.
As per its announcement, the company now has more than $75 million in assets under management in new projects.
“The model is working well and we had strong support from our existing [limited partner] base to launch a larger second fund,” Tomaino told CoinDesk.
Launched in 2017, the firm’s first fund bagged $26 million for high profile investors including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Andreessen Horowitz, and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.
“Today, the current total market value of crypto assets is ~$223B and investment/speculation is the only mainstream use case. We think in the next five years, that total market value will surpass $1T as the investment/speculation use case continues to grow and other mainstream use cases emerge,” he wrote.
Tomaino said that 1Confirmation will maintain a connection with crypto-native users and avoid “institutional aura” that is common among investment firms.
The San Francisco-based firm has deployed its funds to more than 17 publicly disclosed investments by far, including Coinbase, Harbor, and Veil.
“For Fund I, our focus was providing early stage capital for founders building infrastructure and middleware for the decentralized web. For Fund II, we’re continuing that focus with larger checks as a result of the larger fund (Fund II checks are generally between $1M and $2M, where Fund I checks were between $250K and $1M),” he said.
Speaking with Fortune, Tomaino declined to name the investors of the new fund, although he hinted it includes a lot of his initial investors.
He predicts that bitcoin will continue to be in the market leader while ethereum will trail close behind, particularly as the platform for decentralized finance.
Tomaino further said that the crypto industry is still waiting for a mainstream application beyond speculation. However, he believes the adoption of crypto for savings and lending is gaining traction.
Meanwhile, its rival venture firm Pantera has raised $160 million for its third venture fund and confirmed its closing by March’s end. At that time, the company revealed that its Venture Fund III has also made several investments to companies including Bakkt, StarkWare, Staked, Blockfolio, and Tagomi.
