OP Crypto launches $100M fund to back early-stage crypto VCs

OP Crypto, a cryptocurrency venture capital firm founded by former Huobi executive David Gan, is launching a new fund to support emerging fund managers focused on early-stage crypto investments.

Named “OP Funds of Funds I,” the fund has secured $50 million in commitments from major companies like FTX’s investment subsidiary LedgerPrime and FJ Labs.

The OP FoF I will target a hard cap of $100 million, with founders planning to close out the fund by the end of Q3, OP Crypto’s chief operating officer Lucas He told Cointelegraph.

The fund will work on identifying and supporting crypto fund managers with unique vertical expertise in areas like infrastructure, decentralized finance, nonfungible tokens, metaverse, gaming and others.

While the fund has a “differentiated focus” on the Asia-Pacific region, it will continue to invest on a global scale and seek to get exposure to fund managers in regions like Latin America, Africa, India, Southeast Asia and others, He noted.

Investors in the FoF will get access to deal flow from all of the managers within the vehicle and have the opportunity to double down on specific projects via co-investment opportunities.

OP FoF I is the second fund to invest in emerging crypto fund managers by OP Crypto. In June 2021, the firm launched its $50 million OP Ventures Fund I, targeting pre-seed and seed projects across the Web 3.0 space. The fund was backed by major companies and institutional investors in the industry, including Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital, the venture capital firm Digital Currency Group, Bill Ackman and Alan Howard.

“OP stands for open, operational and opportunistic,” He said, adding that those are the “traits that the fund ascribes by.” The exec went on to say that despite the current market downturn there’s a lot of investors looking for crypto exposure, stating:

“To our surprise, there is actually quite a lot of picked up demand due to people not knowing where exactly is best to park capital amidst the current bear market.”

Also acting as OP Crypto’s head of research, He will serve as the general partner at the OP FoF I. He is a veteran in the crypto space since 2013 and previously held investment and FoF roles at Huobi Capital and State Street. OP Crypto founder Gan will take the role of president and advisor to the fund.

Related: How crypto is attracting some institutional investors — Huobi Global sales head

Gan and He led the FoF strategy at Huobi and deployed capital on Huobi’s behalf and were seed investors in Multicoin Capital, Dragonfly Capital, and 1kx. “All of these investments were done early 2018 when those funds all had sub $50 million in assets under management,” He stated, adding that these funds eventually hit a milestone above $1 billion AUM three years later.