We have made three investments in the finance category, totalling approximately 19% of the Fund’s invested capital. These are projects that will get retail and institutional investors interacting with . It includes portfolio management, and brokerage and services. We’ve even invested in a crypto quant fund to get a broad basket of and for the venture fund. Our first investment in this category was in , the largest portfolio-tracking application in the space. They have over 4.5 million users and 624,000 daily active users. The app has integrations with 300+ exchanges and supports over 6,000 — so they pretty much support every exchange and every . If you own , you can use Blockfolio to keep track of how much your crypto is worth, how much you’ve lost or gained over any given time frame, how much you own of each asset, and you can even do simulation of trades within multiple portfolios. While most of the other portfolio tracking tools don’t have a useful functionality, Blockfolio has been really focused on design and usability, and they’ve come up with a pretty sleek UI. It’s almost like , but for crypto. If you are wondering, “What are the revenue streams for Blockfolio?” Right now, they are trying to get a bunch of new users and so it’s mostly pre-revenue. But potential revenue streams are things like monetizing users through referrals. For example, if you look at companies like , , or , they all either funnel users to products that they work with or, in the case of Personal Capital, they actually funnel users to a product that they run. The companies then take a portion of the conversion fees. Blockfolio has a number of different routes they could monetize — such as funneling users to fiat on-ramps or exchanges, or to applications.
About 1.5% of the fund is invested in enterprise projects. These are projects focused on the core technology; solving problems relating to scalability, smart contracts, and security. is making it easier for developers to build smart contracts and deploy them in a secure manner. Smart contract vulnerability leads to theft of funds. An estimated 4 million ETH has been lost due to smart contract bugs. Today’s solution is to pay bounties to people who report bugs. This works decently well, but it is slow, expensive, and humans tend to miss things.
Synthetic Minds is creating software to essentially automate that and to have a computer come up with all the possibilities. Programs are generated that try to break the code, testing all of the potential ways one can interact with the contract. An example would be: you want to develop a smart contract that can have no more than $100 in it. You can run Synthetic Minds on it to see if there is any possible way to have more than $100 and it will report the conditions and when it can occur. So, it’s a really core piece of infrastructure.
bitcoin BLOCK REWARD HALVING TREND
The money supply function of the protocol is to issue 12.5 in a block every ten minutes. Every 210,000 blocks (approximately 4 years) the block reward decreases by half. ’s supply and coin distribution ruleset is based purely on mathematics — predictable and transparent by design.
“Total circulation will be 21,000,000 coins. It’ll be distributed to network nodes when they make blocks, with the amount cut in half every 4 years. first 4 years: 10,500,000 coins next 4 years: 5,250,000 coins next 4 years: 2,625,000 coins next 4 years: 1,312,500 coins etc…”
– Satoshi Nakamoto
There’s intense interest in the “halvings” as those every-four-year cuts in supply are called. Although there’s only a few data points, it seems that ’s price has shown patterns with block reward halvings. We have seen a couple of these cycles where the tide begins to shift roughly a year in advance of these dates. Inflection points occurred 376 and 320 days prior to the 2012 and 2016 “halvings”, respectively. Taking their average of 348 days could indicate a bottom on June 10, 2019. The vertical lines below indicate block reward halving dates and the circles represent past and possible future inflection points.
The next reward halving is expected to occur on May 24th of 2020, dropping the block reward from 12.5 per block to 6.25 .
VENTURE FUND III INVESTMENT :: TAGOMI (By Paul Veradittakit)
Pantera was an investor in Tagomi’s $12 million round, on March 4. Below is an excerpt from Paul’s blog post about the recent investment, entitled
Last week, Pantera announced an into Tagomi, and I believe that the company is solving a problem for institutions, family offices, and retail to get exposure to crypto at best prices with convenience. I wanted to shed a bit more detail below on Tagomi product and why it’s compelling.
- Tagomi is an electronic trading platform that delivers, hands down, the best spreads for anyone trading in size. There is no minimum, but trades 25k + get the most benefit.
- Tagomi’s fiduciary-like model is a big deal to sophisticated investors. Why? Because Tagomi is obligated to provide best priced trades and confidentiality, unlike an OTC or principal trading desk that is actually allowed use a client’s information to trade against them, and often is a key part of their business model.
- Tagomi aggregates global liquidity and combines smart routing, trade management, and custody in one integrated account so clients can avoid the hassles of setting up and transferring between multiple accounts and also having to separately manage all their counterparty relationships.
- Most crypto investors don’t understand how much their trades really cost them, and their unfamiliarity is often exploited. Yes, most platforms clearly state their transaction fee, but what is conveniently left out are the markups and other hidden costs. Since most brokers are not required to disclose these markups, there is little to prevent abuses if you are not informed. Tagomi is set up in such a way that it is required to give clients transparency and show them exactly how their trades were executed, and how they got to the price they got.
- Tagomi comes at a time when the macro crypto market structure is shifting from a dealer-oriented market to one dominated by highly advanced market makers tech-enabled electronic trading firms like Tagomi, which are driving down spreads and creating more efficient and stable markets worldwide.
- Tagomi is run by an incredible team that brings the best of both trading and crypto experience from Two Sigma, Virtu, and Citadel, Union Square Ventures, and including the former Global head of electronic trading at Goldman Sachs.
If you’re looking to invest more than a few thousand dollars into , Tagomi will dramatically lower your costs by routing your trade across global liquidity pools while employing algorithmically-powered strategies trained off of market data reduce market impact and continually find you the best price. While that may sound intimidating, these cutting edge tools are wrapped in an incredibly well-designed platform that any user would find intuitive and easy to use, so you can be a beginner and still reap the benefits. For more advanced traders, and active trader platform that gives the user much more control is available as well.
Tagomi was co-founded by Jennifer Campbell, Greg Tusar, and Marc Bhargava, all of whom have incredible experience in the , asset management, and electronic space. Previously, Campbell worked on the investment team at Union Square Ventures. Tusar previously was the Global Head of Electronic at Goldman Sachs, which he found his way to through an acquisition. Bhargava previously worked investing in the space while at Brainchild and at roles in private equity and consulting. Even beyond the founders, the team is pretty incredible with folks from Two Sigma, Citadel, KCG, Virtu, Google, etc.
Now more than ever, a solution like Tagomi is needed to restore investor confidence in the market. Despite the long-term drop in prices, offers a very promising space for investors — but it needs more maturity. Tagomi brings the market structure we’ve seen evolve in other asset classes by creating a one-stop, end-to-end platform for investors to manage their cryptoassets, make large-scale trades, and make smart, algorithmically-verified decisions. With tools like Tagomi deploying on the market, we can hopefully expect a lot more confidence and investment — and more returns — than ever before.
For more on Tagomi and what it might mean for Institutional Investors, read Fortune’s article “.”
UPCOMING TRAVEL
Pantera partners will be traveling over the next months to discuss the disruption. We have organized group lunches in many cities, should you want to meet other investors who share your interest in . If you are interested in attending one of our group lunches, please fill out the form on and we will be in touch regarding availability.
- Boston, March 26–27
- Chicago, April 8 | including a Group Lunch at 12pm
- New York City, April 9
- Grand Cayman, April 10–12
- San Diego, April 11–12
- Washington D.C., April 12
- Los Angeles, April 25–26
- Phoenix, April 29
- Denver, April 30
- Chicago, May 1–2
- Toronto, May 7–8
- New York City, May 9–17
If you are interested in a meeting, please contact Pantera’s Investor Relations team at +1–650–854–7000 or ir@panteracapital.com.
The future has arrived,
“Put the alternative back in Alternatives”
PORTFOLIO COMPANIES AND PROTOCOL TOKENS
FUND DOCUMENTS
If you would like to receive additional information on Pantera’s funds, including the Private Placement Memorandum, Limited Partnership Agreement, and Subscription Documents, please fill out the form on to begin the subscription process.
BLOCKCHAIN FUNDS
CONFERENCE CALLS :: ICO, DIGITAL ASSET, AND VENTURE FUNDS
PAST ICO, DIGITAL ASSET, AND VENTURE FUND CONFERENCE CALL RECORDINGS
Recordings of recent ICO, Digital Asset, and Venture Fund III conference calls are available on .
RECENT PRESS
OPEN POSITIONS
Pantera is actively hiring for the following roles:
- Venture Associates
- Data Scientists
- Engineers
If you have a passion for and want to work in Menlo Park, San Francisco, or New York, please follow this to apply.
FURTHER READING
Some good material to start with on the development of technology and as speculative instruments:
- — white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto
- by Chris McCann
- by Jake Brukhman
- by Nick Tomaino, and his
- by Joel Monegro
- by Vinay Gupta
- by Stefano Bernardi and Yannick Roux
- by Max Mersch
- by Max Mersch
- Forbes, Aug 28, 2017
- Joey Krug Interview Excerpts: , , RealVision, Aug 10, 2017
- Coindesk, Jun 28, 2017
- TechCrunch, Jun 28, 2017
- CNBC
- Coindesk
- Coindesk
- Coindesk
- Coindesk
- Coindesk
- Coindesk
- Coindesk
- TechCrunch
- Coindesk
- by Chris Dixon. Outstanding perspective on how we went the open Internet 1.0 to a closed Internet 2.0 — and the promises of a new Internet ecosystem powered by Blockchain.
- The longest read on this list from NY Times Magazine. A great ten-thousand foot view. A must-read.
- Written over two years ago, an image in this article is one of the most frequently referenced in the industry
- Famous retort to Mr. Dimon’s flippant remark about bitcoin being a fraud. Concise, even-tempered, a brilliant article.
- Former Pay Pal COO Sacks lists ten use-cases where he anticipates blockchain can disruptive in the not-too-distant future.
- Attempt to categorize the protocol tokens based on use –helpful for newbies.
- Two of the best books are Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper for a fun high-level history and an in-depth technically-minded look Mastering bitcoin and Mastering Ethereum by Andreas Antonopoulos.
- And some additional information on the ICO model specifically:
- Recommended Primer:
Additional information on :
PANTERA PUBLICATIONS
You can subscribe our publications, including the ones listed below, by visiting Pantera’s or by e-mailing ir@panteracapital.com.
Letter
A monthly letter with our thoughts on significant market and ecosystem-related developments. Also, includes our thoughts on venture capital and on our portfolio companies for accredited investors.
Investor Letter
Public Letter plus exclusive information for accredited investors.
White Papers
Periodic, original research and academic papers.
- by Pantera Co-CIO Joey Krug [2019.01.08]. Joey’s insights on crypto and blockchain innovations what is still needed for user and institutional adoption. Informative and detailed primer for anyone considering investing in the space.
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Published at Tue, 26 Mar 2019 23:18:40 +0000
