- Lattice’s last fund was $60 million.
- The venture capital firm specialises in investing in early stage crypto companies.
- Several investors are topping up their warchests amidst the rally.
Another crypto venture capital firm plans to raise another batch of capital.
Lattice, which has invested in crypto since 2021, is raising a third fund, according to documents filed Monday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The filings did not specify how large the fund will be.
Regan Bozman, co-founder of Lattice, told DL News that he’s not “able to share anything on that topic” and declined to comment.
In 2022, the VC, which specialises in investing in early-stage crypto startups, raised a $60 million fund, which was three times larger than its first stash of capital, Lattice told CoinDesk.
The firm has invested in 81 projects, according to data from PitchBook. Two of its more prominent investments are in Immunefi, a bug bounty platform for crypto, and Protocol Labs, a core developer behind Filecoin, a decentralised cloud storage network.
$8 billion
Lattice deployed its last fund amid the prolonged crypto bear market in 2022 and 2023. Its third investment foray comes amidst a roaring rally for crypto assets.
Startup investors are — cautiously — looking to capitalise on the buzz.
Crypto companies have raised over $8 billion so far this year, already above the total $7.3 billion raised in 2023, according to data from DefiLlama.
Still, VC excitement for digital assets doesn’t match the rush of capital in 2021 and early 2022.
In the first quarter of 2022, global VC investment in crypto reached a high of $11.2 billion, according to data from PitchBook.
Since then, VC crypto investments have crashed to a two-year low of $1.75 billion in the third quarter of 2024, according to PitchBook.
Crypto bear to bull
However, the fourth quarter may be different.
On Wednesday, Bitcoin surpassed $100,000 for the first time in the asset’s history. Solana also broke a new all-time high earlier in November, and while Ethereum is still to make a new record this cycle, it’s up over 70% this year.
The total value of the crypto market has rocketed to all-time highs and is approaching $4 trillion, according to CoinGecko.
And crypto even has found favour in the Oval Office. Or at least it will when Donald Trump starts his second term as president on January 20.
Trump has called himself the “crypto president,” picked pro-crypto candidates to head financial regulatory agencies, and mulled the addition of a “crypto czar” to his administration.
It remains to be seen whether Trump’s reelection will trigger another boom of venture capital to flow into crypto startups, but some industry onlookers are optimistic.
“Numerous large funds are actively being raised, which will contribute to larger fundraising totals in the next 12-18 months,” Robert Le, senior analyst at PitchBook, wrote in a September report analysing crypto VC fundraising in the third quarter of 2024.
Ben Weiss is DL News’ Dubai Correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at bweiss@dlnews.com.