Early stage venture firm Volt Capital has been placing bets on crypto data, infrastructure and decentralized finance (DeFi) startups through a $10 million fund backed by CMT Digital, Balaji Srinivasan, Union Square Ventures’ Albert Wenger, Founders Fund’s Brian Singerman and others.
The year-old VC firm made equity plays in Ethereum analytics provider Nansen, crypto shop BuyCoins.Africa, DeFi trading platform Parsec and others, General Partner Soona Amhaz told CoinDesk.
Amhaz’s Volt built out its brand last year as a co-founder of the crypto accelerator program the DeFi Alliance. But the VC had not previously disclosed any investments. Its new fund is its first.
Volt will seek out seed and pre-seed projects building in data, DeFi and traditional tech crossovers, Amhaz said. Of particular interest will be teams making crypto easier to use behind the scenes.
“You need the electrical and the piping before you build the house,” Amhaz said, describing “the tooling necessary so more institutions and more people can come to crypto.”