NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) - A pair of executives from two of the more prominent crypto venture capital firms in Asia are launching a new fund they say is targeted specifically at helping promising Web3 projects navigate their way through the current bear market cycle.
Mr Jason Choi and Mr Darryl Wang, both 27, told Bloomberg that the new fund, dubbed Tangent, will not accept outside capital or charge any management fees.
Tangent will work with three to five early-stage crypto projects each quarter using an undisclosed small pool of proprietary capital. A public deck for the fund shows that it provides resources ranging from audit and legal structure to media and technical support.
"Over the last cycle, we have kind of confirmed that Web3 and crypto are here to stay," Mr Wang said in an interview. "In what form it takes or how long it will take to get there is up for debate - but, you know, in an extended depressed market, it provides a lot of diamonds in the rough for us to support and, hopefully, to push the space forward for the better."
Web3 is a hypothetical, future version of the Internet based on blockchain technology. It aims to remove control from large corporations and operate in a decentralised way that is owned, built and operated by the users themselves.
Mr Choi, most recently at Spartan Capital, is known for popular crypto podcast Blockcrunch. Mr Wang spent two years at DeFiance Capital, a decentralised finance-focused venture fund based in Singapore.
Tangent is also tapping influential people in decentralised finance to serve as "mentors" at the fund, with the goal of providing support and advice to the selected projects. The first six mentors include anonymous crypto influencer 0xMaki, formerly the main contributor to SushipSwap; Ms Mable Jiang, former partner at Multicoin Capital; and Mr Gabby Dizon, founder of Web3 gaming guild Yield Guild Games.
"We have confidence that as people who have come into the space and are actually effectively starting this in the depths of a bear market, we are here for the long term, we are here to support founders," Mr Choi said in an interview.
