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Hashed Launches $120M Crypto Investment Fund for the Protocol Economy

Hashed Launches $120M Crypto Investment Fund for the Protocol Economy

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Hashed, the blockchain investment group led by Simon Kim, has revealed that it has raised $120 million for its first crypto fund. The size of the raise and the speed with which it was executed – three months – suggests that demand for blockchain investment opportunities outstrips supply. Deals are overcrowded, and innovative projects are having to leave money on the table due to oversubscribed seed rounds.

Kim is confident that Hashed can secure access to some of the best deals in the crypto industry, having spent the past few years building alliances with blockchain projects in the US and Asia. While growing his personal network of deal brokers and crypto talent, Kim has helped Hashed fly the flag for Asian blockchains such as Klaytn by Kakao, and LINE.

Powering the Protocol Economy

“The protocol economy” is a term coined by Simon Kim that describes a financial world powered by blockchain networks. This could entail anything from file storage to IoT, supply chain management, or digital identities. Whatever the industry and use case, there’s a decentralized protocol to host it better than existing client-server architecture, Kim believes. Now, he’s on a mission to match the developers of best-in-class smart contract networks with the enterprises and governments seeking to make use of them.

Blockchain investment to date has been largely bifurcated, with Asia and the US comprising the two dominant markets. Hashed will be maintaining this trend and hedging its bets by investing in crypto startups in both regions. It is expected that the fund will focus on layer-1 protocols, though it may also allocate capital to middleware and applications that are building up the stack.

Blockchain Investment From All Quarters

While many of the investors in blockchain startups have hailed from traditional finance, including family funds, hedge funds, and endowment funds, capital has also poured in from further afield.

Having previously established an innovation fund intending to support emerging technologies built in developing countries, the international humanitarian aid organization UNICEF has turned its attention to digital assets. Seeing the potential of this emerging market, it launched a cryptocurrency fund supported by the Ethereum Foundation. Earlier this year, the fund invested in 125 ETH and announced another $100,000 worth of investment in crypto and blockchain startups, with more to come.

While this money is money is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions that entered the industry this year from VCs, it attests to the legitimization of blockchain. What started out as an esoteric technology powering an obscure cryptocurrency has evolved into a vital component in the evolution of web3, AI, and global payments. And all in the space of just 12 years.

Hashed Launches $120M Crypto Investment Fund for the Protocol Economy

Hashed, the blockchain investment group led by Simon Kim, has revealed that it has raised $120 million for its first crypto fund. The size of the raise and the speed with which it was executed – three months – suggests that demand for blockchain investment opportunities outstrips supply. Deals are overcrowded, and innovative projects are having to leave money on the table due to oversubscribed seed rounds.

Kim is confident that Hashed can secure access to some of the best deals in the crypto industry, having spent the past few years building alliances with blockchain projects in the US and Asia. While growing his personal network of deal brokers and crypto talent, Kim has helped Hashed fly the flag for Asian blockchains such as Klaytn by Kakao, and LINE.

Powering the Protocol Economy

“The protocol economy” is a term coined by Simon Kim that describes a financial world powered by blockchain networks. This could entail anything from file storage to IoT, supply chain management, or digital identities. Whatever the industry and use case, there’s a decentralized protocol to host it better than existing client-server architecture, Kim believes. Now, he’s on a mission to match the developers of best-in-class smart contract networks with the enterprises and governments seeking to make use of them.

Blockchain investment to date has been largely bifurcated, with Asia and the US comprising the two dominant markets. Hashed will be maintaining this trend and hedging its bets by investing in crypto startups in both regions. It is expected that the fund will focus on layer-1 protocols, though it may also allocate capital to middleware and applications that are building up the stack.

Blockchain Investment From All Quarters

While many of the investors in blockchain startups have hailed from traditional finance, including family funds, hedge funds, and endowment funds, capital has also poured in from further afield.

Having previously established an innovation fund intending to support emerging technologies built in developing countries, the international humanitarian aid organization UNICEF has turned its attention to digital assets. Seeing the potential of this emerging market, it launched a cryptocurrency fund supported by the Ethereum Foundation. Earlier this year, the fund invested in 125 ETH and announced another $100,000 worth of investment in crypto and blockchain startups, with more to come.

While this money is money is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions that entered the industry this year from VCs, it attests to the legitimization of blockchain. What started out as an esoteric technology powering an obscure cryptocurrency has evolved into a vital component in the evolution of web3, AI, and global payments. And all in the space of just 12 years.

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