Unnamed endowments have joined a digital asset-focused fund closed by Electric Capital to bet big on distributed financing models.
Venture firm Electric Capital has raised $110m for a cryptocurrency and digital lending-focused fund from LPs including unnamed university endowments and nonprofit institutions.
The fund closed in May 2020 and is said to have already exhausted about one-third of its corpus in digital assets including currencies Bitcoin and Ether in addition to crypto-related projects such as trading exchange DerivaDEX.
Electric Capital is also paying particular attention to decentralised financing (Defi) protocols and apps that allow customers to lend or borrow money without the need for intermediaries such as banks.
Avichal Garg, co-founder of Electric Capital, told Bloomberg that the new vehicle was expected to operate for around 10 years.
Garg added: “Bitcoin and Ethereum are a minority of the fund. Our thoughts are more toward distributed finance protocols, [and] apps built on top of this stuff.”
Founded in 2018, Electric Capital backs digital asset startups from seed until growth-stage.
In its investor update for the first quarter of 2020, the firm said it was optimistic about the growth potential of non-sovereign money infrastructure such as Defis given the unprecedented state stimulus injected into the global economy following Covid-19.
Electric Capital’s first fund attracted $35m from undisclosed LPs at an unspecified date, according to Bloomberg, although a regulatory filing states the firm had aimed to raise $175m in November 2019 for a vehicle dubbed Electric Capital Venture Fund I.
