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Valkyrie Creates $30M Venture Capital Arm for Early-Stage Israeli Startups
Summary: Crypto asset manager Valkyrie is looking to make a splash into venture capital (VC) with a planned $30 million fund that will invest heavily on early-stage startups in Israel, according to a press release. The new VC arm, called Valkyrie Ventures, plans to invest $250,000 to $1 million in backstage infrastructure companies that make crypto ...
Crypto asset manager Valkyrie is looking to make a splash into venture capital (VC) with a planned $30 million fund that will invest heavily on early-stage startups in Israel, according to a press release.
The new VC arm, called Valkyrie Ventures, plans to invest $250,000 to $1 million in backstage infrastructure companies that make crypto companies run smoothly. Essentially anything that is built behind-the-scenes will be something that Valkyrie will be interested in. These could include companies building infrastructure for security, authentication, compliance, custody, data management, transactions and payments and more.
In addition, Valkyrie Ventures aims to focus on “on-boarding the next billion users to web3 by replicating the web3 user experience on top of a crypto-native ecosystem.”
Valkyrie has hired Lluís Pedragosa, a veteran in Israel’s VC scene, to lead Valkyrie Ventures. He is the founder and former partner of cybersecurity-oriented Israel VC Team8.
“I am thrilled to start focusing exclusively on blockchain investing as Managing Partner of newly formed Valkyrie Ventures, an affiliate of Valkyrie Investments Inc. (Valkyrie), that will seek to make early-stage investments in blockchain technology,” Pedragosa said.
While Israel’s crypto scene started off slow, with many entrepreneurs choosing to stick to tech instead of venturing into crypto, that narrative is slowly changing. Over the past 12 to 18 months more entrepreneurs in Israel have entered the space, creating a more exciting environment for crypto.
According to the press release, Israel is one of the top venture capital ecosystems in the world. A total of $25.6 billion and $9.8 billion were invested in 2021 and H1 in 2022, respectively.
Valkyrie is a Tennessee-based company with a large network of contacts and customers located in the U.S. Valkyrie plans to use this to their advantage by providing their Israeli teams access to the U.S. market and their list of connections there.
Founded in 2020, Valkyrie Investments is best known for launching one of the only U.S. SEC-approved Bitcoin futures ETFs.
Author: Tyler Irvin
Tags: Bitcoin Futures ETF,Valkyrie,Valkyrie Investments,venture capital
Link: Valkyrie Creates $30M Venture Capital Arm for Early-Stage Israeli Startups [Copy]
