Pantera Capital

Basics

• A market whale
• An Francisco-based investment firm.
• Pantera Capital was founded in 2003 and originally focused on global macro hedge-fund investments, but as of 2014, it shifted its focus exclusively to bitcoin and other digital currencies.
• "They famously launched the first US-based cryptocurrency fund in 2013 when Bitcoin price was still around $65."
• Pantera Capital’s Third Venture Fund, Known as Venture Fund III Raises $71M, Firm partner Paul Veradittakit explains that the company expects to bring in approximately $175 million in funding, which would be the highest monetary allocation in Pantera Capital’s history. Update: "Pantera Capital's third fund is getting closer to its $175M target, having secured $125M so far (an extra $25M since summer last year when it announced the $100M milestone). 2-2019" Update: "has raised $160M of its planned $175M for its third venture fund; $38M in funds have already been dispersed to some 35 projects at an average of $3.5M per deal; the third fund is more selectively focused on mature crypto projects in areas such as custody, commercial exchanges, and asset management " (4-4-2019)
• Its forth fund raised $600m (24-11-2021).

Investments

• Even though Pantera had exposure to multiple companies (1Inch, Anchor, Arbitrum, Balancer, Blockfolio, DODO, OffChain Labs and StartkWare) that had investment from FTX/Alameda, one of its partners claimed they were not affected (11-11-2022):

"On the Pantera side, we had insignificant exposure on the FTX platform and got exposure to FTX as a shareholder primarily through the acquisition of our portfolio company Blockfolio. The price of FTT has been volatile but trending way down while the value of FTX equity is largely dependent on both infusion of capital and also community trust but Sequoia has already recently marked it to zero. The most important topic for Pantera was making sure our portfolio companies would be fine, and after checking in, 95% had little to no issues. Of those that had issues, it was involving having treasury with FTX and we are helping them through options."

• Do Kwon; gave a 'special shoutout for backing literally everything I've done in my career (without even a pitch)'. Later on when UST depegged it was quick to claim that it "cashed out nearly 80% of its investment well before the collapse, in fact making a massive profit along the way. Joey Krug, co-chief investment officer at Pantera Capital, told The Block. "Roughly 80% over the last year, fairly gradually over time." The firm turned $1.7 million into around $170 million, Paul Veradittakit, partner at Pantera Capital, told The Block. When Pantera noticed UST's de-pegging last week, it sold more of its LUNA holdings from the remaining 20% investment. "We got out of 2/3 of that at an average price of $25.6," said Krug. "The remainder of that was staked via LUNAX and so unable to be sold." LunaX is a liquid staking token by Stader Labs."
• 0x. Invested in 0x and re-invested during a $15M Series A (6-2-2021). Again joined in the Series B for 0x Labs (26-4-2022).
• 1inch; led a $12M round (3-12-2020).
• Acala. From CoinDesk (27-8-2020):

"Acala closed a $7 million simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT) led by Pantera Capital. Other investors in the funding round include 1confirmation, Arrington XRP Capital, ParaFi Capital, Coinfund, Spartan Capital and others."

• Ampleforth. Invested in Ampleforth
• Anchor; Do Kwon mentioned them as part of a $20M raise, calling the participants the 'Anchor whales' (16-3-2021)
• Arbitrum; took part in the $120M raise (1-9-2021)
• Bakkt. Has participated in an investment round of $300M for Bakkt.
• Balancer. From Paradigm (10-11-2020):

"Balancer Labs announced that Pantera Capital and Alameda Research have made an investment in Balancer, through the direct purchase of BAL tokens from the Balancer Labs treasury."

• Basic Attention Token. Was among the funders for BAT
• Bitclout; it's founder has mentioned this fund as an investor (23-3-2021).
• BitDAO; part of their $230M private funding round (17-6-2021).
• Bitstamp. Invested 14M in Bitstamp but sold a portion of its stake to NXMH when they acquired the exchange.
• Blockfolio. Invested in Blockfolio
• Braavos; MetaMask competitor, led their $10M raise (31-10-2022).
• Braintrust; according to this thread (8-2021).
• Brine; a Pantera portfolio company (16-2-2023)
• Civic. Invested in Civic
• DODO. Led a $5M raise for DODO (15-10-2020).
• DTR. Invested in DTR
• Flexacoin. Invested in Flexacoin
• FunFair. Invested in FunFair (still as of 1-2020)
• Globe; derivatives platform. Was part of the $3 million in seed investments (20-11-2020).
• Harbor. Invested in Harbor
• Injective Protocol. Led a $2.6M seed round for Injective Protocol (29-7-2020). And again part of a $10M private token sale (20-4-2021).
• InstaDapp. Was part of a $2.4M seed round (1-10-2019) in InstaDapp.
• Karak $48M, aka Risk Harbor; co-led a $3.2M seed round (24-6-2021).
• Kyber. Is a supporter of Kyber (19-6-2020).
• Morpho; took part in its second raise of $50M (1-8-2024)
• Oasis Network; Pantera is mentioned on their website (15-11-2020). Also one of the contributors to the $160m Ecosystem Fund (17-11-2021)
• Offchain Labs
• Omni
• Origin Protocol, part of the $28.4M strategic sale round with 190 investors (2018)
• Reflexer; on of its backers (22-2-2021).
• Rift Protocol; mentioned as a backer on the Rift website (21-3-2022).
• Stablecoins. Has been known to invest big in stablecoins
• Staked. The Winklevoss twins and Pantera Capital have led the charge on a $4.5M fundraising round for Staked, a crypto firm that specializes in passive yields from staking Proof-of-Stake (PoS) coins; Staked performs the behind the scenes work for subscribing hedge funds and institutions. As of now, Stake services six coins: Tezos, Dash, Decred, Livepeer, Factom, and EOS
• Starkware. Invested in Starkware (founded by a ZCash leading scientist)
• Terra; is mentioned as an investor in one of their blogs (5-1-2021). Was part of the $150M ecosystem fund for Terra as well (16-7-2021). Later on when UST depegged (9-5-2022) it was quick to claim that it "cashed out nearly 80% of its investment well before the collapse, in fact making a massive profit along the way. Joey Krug, co-chief investment officer at Pantera Capital, told The Block. "Roughly 80% over the last year, fairly gradually over time." The firm turned $1.7 million into around $170 million, Paul Veradittakit, partner at Pantera Capital, told The Block. When Pantera noticed UST's de-pegging last week, it sold more of its LUNA holdings from the remaining 20% investment. "We got out of 2/3 of that at an average price of $25.6," said Krug. "The remainder of that was staked via LUNAX and so unable to be sold." LunaX is a liquid staking token by Stader Labs."
• Vega Protocol. Led (2-10-2019) a $5 million seed round for The Vega Protocol. Vega aims to make it feasible for people anywhere in the world to spin up markets for derivatives (futures, swaps, options, etc.) that can interact with each other and abide by relevant regulations.
• Z-Cash. Invested in Z-Cash
• Zircuit; part of their Mainnet Round (22-7-2024).

Team, etc.

• Morehead, Dan; CEO
• Charles Noyes, an ex-employee, now co-founder of Paradigm
• Paul Veradittakit, partner at Pantera and advisor at Ampleforth (which Pantera invested in)
• Partner with Fortress investment Group, ICON,
• Joey Krug; Co-Chief Investment Officer, a member of the DTR Foundation Council (which Pantera invested in) and advisor at Ampleforth (which Pantera invested in)
• Felix Feng; used to work with them.