Despite the headwinds facing the venture capital industry and its portfolio holdings, Sequoia Capital remains optimistic about its investments in cryptocurrency. Alfred Lin, seed/early partner at Sequoia, said this week that the firm would remain committed to crypto investment, Reuters reports.
Lin says that the venture capital giant remains optimistic about the cryptocurrency sector in the long term.
Sequoia Capital was hit hard by the collapse of the FTX exchange after pouring $225 million into the now-defunct crypto exchange only to mark the entire investment down.Lin admitted the VC giant's failure to uncover the relationship between FTX and Alameda and alleged fraudulent actions conducted by disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Though Sequoia owned less than 1% of FTX, Lin noted that the former could have asked for a seat on the latter's board. However, this proved impossible due to the staking size.
Major concession
The decreasing number of venture capital deals has prompted Sequoia to lower management fees in its two recently launched crypto and ecosystem funds, said Lin.
The bear market has significantly suppressed venture investments across the board, driving Sequoia Capital's current push for an unorthodox pricing model for its crypto and ecosystem funds. The venture capital giant communicated new changes regarding fees to investors in December, which now allows limited partners (LPs) who committed capital to pay management fees based solely on deployed capital. Such an approach has replaced the traditional capital management model.
Gamza Khanzadaev
Denys Serhiichuk
