Top Crypto VC Holdings Revealed: What Are They Buying Now?

This has been the strangest cycle so far - no one knows what will happen next.
In times like these, it helps to see what others are working on, so I spent the weekend digging deep to see what the big VC guys are up to lately.

I know some of you might be thinking, “They’re just casting a wide net and praying they get in early and benefit.”
Look, I don’t think they’re the smartest people in the room, especially after the last cycle. But we should still pay attention to them: they have the information advantage, are well funded, and are closer to the builders than we are.

I would like to know:

• Are they doing any interesting moves?

• Are they interested in some “shitcoins” like we are?

• Or do they still hold some “dinosaur coins” (old cryptocurrencies)?

So, my friend Edgy compiled hours of research into a short five-minute read.
Let’s take a look at what the “crypto maniacs” in suits are up to.

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• Don’t copy what VCs do. They have better deals than we do, and they play a different game than we do. This is just to give us an understanding of what other players in the space are doing.

• We cannot capture all wallets. We do our best to track via crowdsourced tagging and on-chain analysis, but cannot capture them all.

• We've selected a few funds and sorted them by size. We'll cover each fund's total balance, primary holdings, secondary holdings, and any interesting recent moves.

Top Crypto VCs and Their Holdings

1. a16z ($482.3 million)

• Main assets:
  UNI: $436 million
  OP: $31 million
  COMP: $14 million

• Small assets: ETH ($14,000), COLLE ($6,000)

a16z is one of the largest UNI holders in the market. They have enough voting power to pass proposals, as 4% of UNI supply is enough to reach a quorum. They have been holding UNI for several years.
The latest change to the a16z wallet is that their OP tokens have been unlocked, and they continue to hold them.

2. Galaxy Digital ($364.5 million)

• Main assets:
  BTC: $194 million
  ETH: $115 million
  USDC: $40 million
  USDT: 5 million USD
  AVAX: $4 million
  USDC: $1.3 million
  AAVE: $1.14 million

• Small assets ($100,000 to $500,000): MKR, OXT, UNI, TOKE

They generate a lot of volume, mostly in stablecoins and BTC. Most likely they are engaging in token distribution and arbitrage strategies.
They recently withdrew $3.3 million in AVAX from Binance.

3. Jump Trading ($286.4 million)

• Main assets:
  USDC: $78 million
  USDT: $70.38 million
  stETH: $70.38 million
  ETH: $54.9 million
  T: $2.15 million
  WETH: $1.24 million
  SHIB: $1.2 million
  SNX: $1.16 million

• Smaller holdings ($200k-$700k): MKR, LDO, GRT, DAI, UNI, KNC, HMT, BNB, CVX, COMP, INJ, MNT

Jump has a pretty typical VC portfolio, mostly ETH and stablecoins. Notably they hold Threshold Network, SHIB, and SNX.
Despite claims that Jump has exited the crypto space, they are still active.
Jump also started depositing ETH into LMAX, an institutional-grade crypto exchange.

4. Wintermute ($159.8 million)

• Main assets:
  USDC: $16.6 million
  WBTC: $11.15 million
  PEPECOIN: $10.52 million
  ETH: $10.39 million
  USDT: $9.11 million
  TKO: $4.67 million
  CBBTC: $4.63 million
  MATIC: $4.41 million
  BMC: $4.36 million
  NEIRO: $3.48 million

• Small assets ($200,000 to $3 million): BASEDAI, TON, ZK, MOG, stETH, ARB, ENA, ARKM, APE, LDO, ONDO, etc.

Wintermute is a "heavyweight player" in the meme coin field. In addition to their largest holding PEPECOIN (note: this is not PEPE, it is another meme coin), they also hold a large number of meme coins such as MOG, NEIRO, COQ, APU, SHIB, BENJI, etc.
They are the market makers for memecoin.
Wintermute recently started accumulating CBBTC (Coinbase BTC) and BTC in its wallet.
They also sent more than $6 million in SHIB to Binance.

5. Pantera Capital ($161.15 million)

• Main assets:
  ONDO: $152 million
  ETHX: $4.4 million
  SD: $1.11 million
  ECOX: $941,600
  LDO: $388,000
  PERC: $375,000
  NOTE: $274,000

Pantera recently transferred nearly $3 million of MATIC to Coinbase.
They also transferred $1 million of LDO to Anchorage, a platform that provides crypto staking for institutions.

Interestingly, most of their ETH was moved to centralized exchanges. In addition, we also noticed that the value of their investment in ONDO dropped by 56%. It is worth noting that Pantera was one of the early private investors in ONDO.

6. Blockchain Capital ($67.1 million)

• Main assets:
  AAVE: $32.8 million
  UNI: $18.35 million
  ETH: $4.16 million
  UMA: $2.12 million
  SAFE: $1.89 million
  1INCH: 1.88 million USD
  COW: $1.62 million
  FORT: $1.31 million
  USDC: $1 million

• Small assets ($100,000 to $600,000): SUSHI, BAL, PSP, USDC, PERP

The largest holding is AAVE, which is worth watching. They have been holding AAVE for years. Due to its recent price increase, it may be worth a closer look.
They also moved over $5 million in ETH to Anchorage, just like Pantera.

7. Spartan Group ($35.38 million)

• Main assets:
  PENDLE: $16.93 million
  GAL: $2.65 million
  MNT: $2.49 million
  OP: $1.4 million
  IMX: $1.18 million
  WILD: $1.09 million
  GRT: $1.04 million
  AEVO: $982,000
  USDC: $841,000
  PTU: $800,000
  RBN: $778,000
  1INCH: $700,000

• Small assets ($100,000 to $500,000): MAV, CHESS, MPL, G, DYDX, ALI, BETA, PSTAKE, ETH

Spartan Group has a large position in Pendle. Apart from that, their trading is not very common. They mainly use USDC for arbitrage strategies.
Interestingly, they are depositing all BEAM into Sophon, an upcoming chain that is already open for depositing assets to participate in the airdrop.

8. DeFiance Capital ($33.6 million)

• Main assets:
  PYUSD: $20 million
  LDO: $6.08 million
  BEAM: $3.94 million
  USDC: $1.1 million
  TBILL: $1.04 million

• Small assets ($50,000 to $300,000): VIRTUAL, AVAX, BAL, MCB, USDT, INSUR

DeFiance is betting on gaming tokens. Their most recent transaction involved multiple payments in Shrapnel, a Web3 shooter game.
They also recently collected a large amount of ETH from Morpho.

Common trends we see among VC firms

• Common holdings: a16z, Jump, Wintermute, and Blockchain Capital prefer top DeFi tokens (such as UNI, AAVE), ETH, and stablecoins. Perhaps due to the bear market, they are more concerned about liquidity and DeFi protocols.

• Long-term holding: a16z and Blockchain Capital have a "diamond hand" (long-term holding without selling) attitude towards certain assets - for example, they have held UNI and AAVE for several years.

• Stablecoin arbitrage: They all engage in stablecoin arbitrage operations, which can be seen by their large stablecoin trading volumes.

• Bitcoin Layer 2 projects continue to attract significant investment. BTC L2 companies and projects raised a total of $94.6 million in the quarter, up 174% from the previous quarter.

• Early-stage deals still dominate the market. Nearly 80% of investment capital went to early-stage deals, while seed-stage deals accounted for 13% of all deals.

• Investment Trends: Although NFT and GameFi caused a huge craze in 2021, this field has cooled down in 2024.

• VCs are now leaning more towards trends like AI, infrastructure and even memes.

We recently read Galaxy’s report on VC trends to 2024. Here are some highlights:

• VC investment dropped significantly compared to 2021-2022. However, VCs still invested $3.19 billion in the second quarter of 2024 (up 28% from the previous quarter).

• It is worth noting that investment scale does not completely follow the price of Bitcoin.

• The correlation was more accurate in the past, but venture capital appears more exhausted now.

• Most investments are concentrated in the NFT/gaming/DAO sectors, followed by infrastructure.

• “In Q2 2024, companies and projects in the ‘Web3/NFT/DAO/Metaverse/Gaming’ category attracted the largest share of crypto VC funding, raising a total of $758M in VC funding. The two largest deals in this category were Farcaster and Zentry, which raised $150M and $140M, respectively.”

Hopefully this in-depth analysis provides you with some insight into how VCs operate in the crypto space.
The key is to observe their behavior, identify potential trends ahead of time and understand how they operate. Don’t copy VCs’ trading strategies directly, but use them as a tool to improve your research.