London-based venture capital firm Blossom Capital, founded in 2017 as a generalist investor, is now planning to plough considerably more money into the cryptocurrency market.
Blossom has this morning announced a new $432 million fund, its third to date. The cash will be directed to European startups seeking Series A capital across a range of sectors including consumer, cybersecurity, developer tools, enterprise software-as-a-service, fintech and marketplaces. But a full third of the capital will be invested in crypto-powered firms, according to the company’s announcement.
“We do hold tokens. We will have exposure to the core protocols,” says Ophelia Brown, managing partner of Blossom Capital. “We are going to do a lot more of what we have already done.”
Blossom does not appear to have much of a track record backing crypto businesses — save for its investment in MoonPay, which it backed in November last year when the crypto payments firm raised $555 million at a $3.4 billion valuation.
But Brown says Blossom’s $185 million-sized second fund has quietly been investing in tokens and even NFTs, without showcasing those bets in the way a standard equity investment would be. The company has invested a lot of time and resources in developing the infrastructure needed to invest in web3 organizations, she adds.