Pantera funding round hits $164.7 million for crypto fund

In a recent filing with the SEC, Pantera disclosed one of its crypto funds had doubled in value compared to 2018

In a recent Form D filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Pantera Capital disclosed that its crypto fund, called Pantera Fund III, has raised up to $164.7 million from around 200 investors.

The fund, created in 2018, aimed to raise up to $175 million and underwent tremendous growth, seeing 71.6% growth since August 2019. It has grown by over 130% since the fund was created.

According to the recent filing, the investments fell short by $10.3 million below its initial target.

In an interview with Thinking Crypto, Dan Morehead, Pantera Capital CEO, disclosed that the company owns as much as $600 million of assets in the crypto space, with Bitcoin remaining as its largest position. Bitcoin is followed by Ethereum, Polkadot, Filecoin and others.

Morehead also discussed how the crypto custody industry had changed dramatically in recent years.

He commented,

“We have these reputable firms who have you know, five six, seven, eight years of experience of you know, no security incidents. And to me, that’s the huge change that it allows an institutional investor who has a fiduciary responsibility to actually you know, run this up to the investment committee.”

DeFi is booming and deserves attention

In a blogpost by Pantera at the end of July, the company indicated that the growth of its Digital Asset Fund was partly due to the rising popularity of DeFi.

The post stated:

“Pantera Digital Asset Fund has exposure to assets integral to the growing DeFi ecosystem, which is outpacing Bitcoin’s store-of-value play so far this year.”

The post also attributed much of its growth to the 120% increase in blockchain-based payments since November 2019. However, Pantera warned that DeFi still lacked three important catalysts for global adoption – scalability, fiat on-ramps, and infrastructure.

In regards to scalability, the company pointed out the blockchain such as Ethereum and Bitcoin could only process 10 transactions per second, which is too slow for global adoption and could drive up costs.

Despite the limitations that DeFi faces at the moment, there is tremendous interest in the space from investors. It is likely that as 2020 continues, both retail and institutional investors will seek out opportunities in an industry that is still relatively inexpensive when compared to equities.