Coinbase co-founder raises $2.5bn for crypto VC firm

Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam has raised $2.5 billion this month for a new cryptocurrency-focused venture capital (VC) firm called Paradigm One.

Ehrsam was joined by former Sequoia Capital partner Matt Huang, according to sources reported by The Financial Times.

Ehrsam, whose net worth was estimated at $4.1 billion by Forbes earlier this year, launched Paradigm One in 2018 with an initial fundraise of $400 million.

The news comes after VC firm Andreessen Horowitz raised $2.2 billion in June of this year for another cryptocurrency focused fund, which the Financial Times reported as largest monthly VC funding round at the time.

Paradigm said the new fund would focus on investments in decentralised applications, mostly powered by cryptocurrency Ethereum.

Ethereum use cases have continued to attract major investments in recent months. In September, digital football card-trading company Sorare raised $680 million in a funding round led by Japanese multinational Softbank.

Sorare’s NFT-based platform is powered by the Ethereum blockchain.

The rise of Ethereum-based decentralised finance platforms has not been without issues.

The total cost of DeFi-related hacks totalled $474 million during 2021 – three times that of the whole of 2020 - according to research from cryptocurrency compliance company CipherTrace from August of this year.

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