Pantera Blockchain Blog, January 2021
Franklin Bi, Director of Platform & Kristie Huang, Intern
Welcome to the January 2021 edition of the Pantera Blockchain Blog!
Catch up with the Pantera community regularly as we share news announcements, job openings, industry trends, and interesting reads from the Pantera portfolio and the broader industry:
- Portfolio News
- Job Highlights
- Free Time
PORTFOLIO NEWS
NEW INVESTMENTS
- Bitso raises $62 million in Series B round, led by QED Investors and Kaszek Ventures led the round with participation from existing shareholders Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures. Bitso is the leading crypto platform in Latin America, with headquarters in Mexico and recent expansions into Argentina and Brazil.
- Wintermute raises $20 million in a Series B round from Pantera Capital and led by Lightspeed Capital Partners, alongside Sino Global Capital, Blockchain.com Ventures, and other investors. Wintermute is a crypto-native market maker focused on creating efficient, liquid, transparent markets for tomorrow’s financial system. Read more about why we invested here.
- Terraform Labs raises $25 million in new round by Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, Coinbase Ventures and others. Terraform Labs has built a platform for minting different stablecoins for e-commerce that mimic the value of various fiat currencies. It’s also behind the Chai payments app, an e-commerce wallet that’s widely used in Asia and powered by stablecoins.
- Vauld raises $2 million in a round led by Pantera Capital, accompanied by others including Coinbase Ventures, LuneX Ventures, and individual investors including Robert Leshner of Compound Finance. Vauld is an India-based crypto financial services platform, currently offering lending, borrowing, and trading services.
PRODUCT LAUNCHES
- 1inch, the leading decentralized exchange aggregator, launches its governance and utility token
- Brave integrates with IPFS
- Circle launches new USDC API’s for ACH payments
- Kyber Network announces Kyber 3.0 to transition towards a hub-based liquidity model
IN THE NEWS
- Coinbase files to go public
- Bakkt to go public via SPAC merger
- Circle and Visa partner to bring USDC integration worldwide
- Coinme enables 5,000 Coinstar kiosks for Bitcoin buying
- Wyre raises $5 million in a Series B2 round, led by Stellar Foundation
JOB HIGHLIGHTS
Interested in joining the blockchain / crypto industry? Our Jobs Board features 500+ openings across product, engineering, finance, marketing, and other functions within Pantera companies.
Visit the Pantera Jobs Board and apply directly or submit an application for our Talent Network to join our candidate database if you’re open to hiring conversations with our companies or interested in requesting introductions.
Here’s a sample of open roles in our portfolio right now:
Senior Growth Marketer @ Origin (Remote)
Account Manager @ Circle (Remote)
P2P Network Engineer @ Polkadot (Berlin)
Brokerage Engineering @ Anchorage (Remote)
Solidity Engineer @ Cosmos (Remote)
Software Engineer @ 0x (San Francisco)
If you or someone you know might be a fit, please reach out!
FREE TIME
A list of what we’ve been reading and consuming recently:
- 2021 Crypto Predictions — Paul Veradittakit, Pantera Capital
- Crypto Theses for 2021 — Messari Report
- Electric Capital Developer Report (2020) — Electric Capital
- Self-Hosted Wallets and the Future of Free Societies: A Guide for Policymakers — The Blockchain Association
- Web3 Thematic: The emerging valuenet and “Wallstreet API” — Maple Leaf Capital
- The 2021 Crypto Crystal Ball — Soona Amhaz, Token Daily
- 2021 Digital Asset Outlook Report — The Block Research
- 2020 in Review — Coinbase Institutional
About Us
Pantera Capital is the first institutional investment firm focused exclusively on bitcoin, other digital currencies, and companies in the blockchain tech ecosystem. Pantera launched the first cryptocurrency fund in the United States when bitcoin was at $65/BTC in 2013 and subsequently the first exclusively-blockchain venture fund and pre-auction token fund. Pantera recently concluded raising our third venture fund and currently manage seven funds in three product groups — passive, hedge, and venture.
If you’re interested in partnering with us for investment, please reach out to ir@panteracapital.com for more information.
