Hoolie Tejwani, global head of Coinbase Ventures, leads cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase’s early and strategic-stage investment activity across crypto and Web3. He spoke about how the unit operates.

  • Coinbase Ventures was established informally as an experiment, with a broad mandate to
    back founders building in crypto. It has since evolved into a structured early-stage venture
    platform with over 600 investments and a model broadly similar to traditional seed/series A
    funds.
  • The unit is explicitly financial return-led, not strategy-led. Investments are made on a
    “founder-first” basis, with strategic value (e.g. M&A insight, product roadmap influence,
    partnerships) emerging downstream rather than driving initial decisions.
  • Coinbase’s portfolio acts as an “index” on the crypto ecosystem, giving early visibility into
    companies likely to shape the industry over the next three to five years.
  • Structurally, the model differs from traditional VC through the ability to invest in both equity
    and liquid tokens, including protocols that have not raised a conventional venture round.
  • The investment focus is shifting towards more familiar enterprise models (e.g. payments,
    neobanks), enabled by regulatory clarity—particularly around stablecoins—
    creating a regulated class of crypto companies.
  • Key thematic areas include:
    o stablecoin-driven payments, with significant growth potential;
    o AI-driven, agent-to-agent economies requiring digital payment rails;
    o tokenisation of assets, where “anything that can be tokenised or traded will be”.
  • A notable misstep was over-investment in crypto-specific developer tooling, which proved
    too niche; standard tooling ecosystems (e.g. GitHub-style workflows) prevailed.
  • For corporates, the message is pragmatic: crypto is becoming embedded in financial
    infrastructure—particularly payments—and will increasingly appear in classic business models without needing to be labelled as such.
  • Team structure remains lean (core of eight dedicated staff), augmented by wider corporate functions.
    AI tools are used to enhance sourcing and analysis, but human judgement—especially
    around founders—remains central.
  • Overall, the sector is described as rapidly maturing, with improving regulatory clarity likely
    to accelerate corporate engagement and investment activity.

This summary was generated by AI and lightly edited by GCV staff.