Tracking "Suit Investors": Analysis of Top Institutions and VC's Positioning Strategies and Trends

Author: Edgy - The DeFi Edge

Compiled by: Shenchao TechFlow

This is the strangest cycle yet ------ No one can predict what will happen next

At times like this, it can be helpful to understand what others are doing. So, I spent the entire weekend researching the recent movements of those venture capital bigwigs.

I know some of you might think, "They are just casting a wide net and profiting from early investments."

In fact, I don't think they are the smartest people, especially after experiencing the last cycle. But we should still pay attention to them: because they do have an information advantage, ample funds, and are closer to the project developers than we are.

I wonder:

• Are they making any interesting moves?

• Are they as enthusiastic about altcoins as we are?

• Or do they still hold some legacy coins?

So, my friend Edgy condensed hours of research into a simple five-minute read.

Let's take a look at what these suited speculators are up to.

Notes:

• Do not simply mimic the actions of venture capitalists. They have better trading opportunities, and their strategies differ from ours. The information here is just to help us better understand other participants in the field.

• We cannot track all wallets. We have done our best through crowdsourced tagging and our own on-chain analysis, but it is impossible to capture all movements.

• We selected some funds and ranked them by size. We will introduce each fund's total balance, major assets, smaller assets, and some interesting recent actions.

Top Crypto Venture Capital Firms and Their Holdings

1.

#### a16z ($482.3 million)

Major Assets:

• UNI: $436 million

• OP: $31 million

• COMP: $14 million

Smaller Assets: ETH ($14,000), COLLE ($6,000)

a16z is one of the largest holders of UNI in the market. They have enough influence to veto proposals, as their 4% UNI can reach the quorum. They have held UNI for years. Recently, a change in a16z's wallet was the initial unlocking of their OP, which they have held.

2.

#### Galaxy Digital ($364.5 million)

Major Assets:

• BTC: $194 million

• ETH: $115 million

• USDC: $40 million

• USDT: $5 million

• AVAX: $4 million

• USDC: $1.3 million

• AAVE: $1.14 million

Notable Smaller Assets ($100,000 - $150,000): MKR, OXT, UNI, TOKE

They generated a large volume of trades, primarily for stablecoins and BTC. Possibly diversifying tokens and engaging in some arbitrage strategies. Recently, they withdrew $3.3 million worth of AVAX from Binance.

3.

#### Jump Trading ($286.4 million)

Major 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: ($200,000 - $700,000) including MKR, LDO, GRT, DAI, UNI, KNC, HMT, BNB, CVX, COMP, INJ, MNT.

Jump's portfolio is primarily composed of ETH and stablecoins, which is common in venture capital. Notably, they also hold Threshold Network, SHIB, and SNX.

While some claim Jump has exited the crypto space, they are still actively engaged in various operations. They have also started depositing ETH into LMAX, a crypto exchange catering to institutions.

4.

#### Wintermute ($159.8 million)

Major 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

Smaller Assets: ($200,000 - $3 million) including BASEDAI, TON, ZK, MOG, stETH, ARB, ENA, ARKM, APE, LDO, ONDO, etc.

Wintermute stands out in the meme coin space. Their largest holding is PEPECOIN (not PEPE, but another meme coin), and they also have significant investments in meme coins like MOG, NEIRO, COQ, APU, SHIB, BENJI, etc.

They are known for their market activity in meme coins. Recently, Wintermute's wallet showed accumulation of CBBTC (Coinbase BTC) and BTC, and they transferred over $6 million worth of SHIB to Binance.

5.

#### Pantera Capital ($161.15 million)

Major Assets:

• ONDO: $15.2 million

• ETHX: $4.4 million

• SD: $1.11 million

• ECOX: $941,600

• LDO: $388,000

• PERC: $375,000

• NOTE: $274,000

Recently, Pantera transferred nearly $3 million worth of MATIC to Coinbase. They also transferred $1 million worth of LDO to Anchorage, a platform specifically for institutional crypto staking services.

Notably, most of their ETH has been transferred to centralized exchanges. Additionally, we observed a 56% decrease in the value of their investment in ONDO. Pantera is one of the early private investors in ONDO.

6.

#### Blockchain Capital ($67.1 million)

Major 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

• COW: $1.62 million

• FORT: $1.31 million

• USDC: $1 million

Smaller Assets: ($100,000 - $600,000) including SUSHI, BAL, PSP, USDC, PERP.

Blockchain Capital's largest holding is AAVE, which they have held for many years. With its recent upward price trend, it may be worth further attention. They also transferred over $5 million worth of ETH to Anchorage, similar to Pantera.

7.

#### Spartan Group ($35.38 million)

Major 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

Smaller Assets: ($100,000 - $500,000) including MAV, CHESS, MPL, G, DYDX, ALI, BETA, PSTAKE, ETH.

Spartan Group primarily bets on Pendle. Aside from that, they haven't engaged in many substantial trades, mainly conducting arbitrage strategies through USDC. Interestingly, they transferred all BEAM assets to the upcoming chain Sophon, where users can start depositing assets for airdrop rewards.

8.

#### DeFiance Capital ($33.6 million)

Major Assets:

• PYUSD: $20 million

• LDO: $608,000

• BEAM: $394,000

• USDC: $110,000

• TBILL: $104,000

Smaller Assets: ($50,000 - $300,000) including VIRTUAL, AVAX, BAL, MCB, USDT, INSUR.

DeFiance has made significant investments in gaming tokens. Their recent trades involved multiple payments from Shrapnel (a Web3 shooting game). They also collected a large amount of ETH from Morpho.

Some VC Trends We Observed

• Common Holdings: a16z, Jump, Wintermute, and Blockchain Capital prefer top DeFi tokens (like UNI and AAVE), ETH, and stablecoins. Possibly due to the bear market, they are more focused on liquidity and DeFi protocols.

• Long-term Holding: a16z and Blockchain Capital are steadfast holders, having held UNI and AAVE for years.

• Stablecoin Arbitrage: They are all engaging in stablecoin arbitrage, as evidenced by their large volume of stablecoin trades.

• Bitcoin Layer 2 Investment: Bitcoin Layer 2 continues to attract significant investment. BTC L2 companies and projects raised $94.6 million, a 174% increase quarter-over-quarter.

• Early-stage Trading: Early-stage trading still dominates. Nearly 80% of investment capital and seed pre-trading account for 13% of all trades.

• Investment Trends: Despite the huge hype around NFTs and GameFi in 2021, the industry has cooled down by 2024. VCs are now more inclined towards trends like AI, infrastructure, and even memes. We recently browsed an interesting report from Galaxy on VC trends for 2024.

Here are some highlights:

Compared to the same period in 2021-2022, VC investment amounts have significantly decreased. However, VC investment in the second quarter of 2024 reached $3.19 billion, a 28% increase quarter-over-quarter.

Notably, the scale of investment does not completely synchronize with BTC prices.

In the past, this correlation was more apparent, but now it seems that the liquidity of venture capital has decreased.

Most investments flowed into NFTs, gaming, and DAOs, followed by infrastructure.

"In the second quarter of 2024, companies and projects in the 'Web3/NFT/DAO/metaverse/gaming' category raised the largest share of crypto venture capital, accounting for 24% of total investment, totaling $758 million. In this category, Farcaster and Zentry were the two largest deals, raising $150 million and $140 million, respectively."

I hope this in-depth analysis provides you with profound insights into how VCs operate in the crypto space.

The key to analysis lies in observing their behavior to capture potential trends in advance and understand how they operate. Do not simply replicate the actions of VCs, but use it as a resource to enhance your research capabilities.

The following tools made this research possible:

• @DeBankDeFi

• @ArkhamIntel

• @etherscan