Binance is planning to invest $500 million in Web3 start-ups. The company has raised the amount through its venture arm called Binance Labs. The company, which is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, is facing roadblocks as Bitcoin has plunged by over 50 percent in a bear market. This is a huge fall since its heydays in November, when a Bitcoin was worth almost $69,000.
On Wednesday, Binance Labs said that it has raised $500 million in its debut funding round. It has named venture capital firms DST Global and Breyer Capital as its seed investors. It also said that it has received funds from family offices and corporations who remain unnamed.
The debut startup said that it would use these funds to invest in firms that are building Web3. Web3 can be described as a decentralized platform that incorporates blockchain, online. Blockchain is a shared digital ledger that is used by most of the major cryptocurrencies.
The venture arm of Binance wants to invest in what it considers as the next big thing in tech–Web3. It is planning to invest in different categories such as pre-seed and early-stage and growth equity as well as tokens and shares.
Ken Li, who is the executive director of investments and M&A at the firm, told CNBC that they were looking for projects that had the “potential to drive the growth of the Web3 ecosystem.” These projects might include infrastructure and non fungible tokens (NFTs). The projects could also be decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
Chinese-Canadian entrepreneur Changpeng Zhao, who founded Binance, in 2017, had told CNBC in an interview, earlier this year that nobody knew how Web3 would “shape up” nor did they know how it would look like.
In the interview to the outlet Zhao had added, “Before Facebook started, nobody could predict that. We’ll just have to see what turns out.”
Incidentally Meta, the parent of Facebook is one of the earliest investors in the metaverse which is an immersive technology that also uses blockchain as an integral part of it, just like Web3 does. Both the metaverse and Web3 use blockchain.
