The upstarts of crypto aren’t just aiming to disrupt the startup status quo, some are rivaling traditional venture capital investors, too. That’s particularly evident today after Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange based on daily trade volumes, announced a $1 billion fund to back blockchain and crypto startups.
The ‘Community Influence’ fund, which will be denominated in Binance’s BNB coin, will be aimed at nascent startups and also funds themselves, Ella Zhang — who heads the Binance Labs division — revealed in an online web broadcast held today in Chinese.
The firm will also launch a Binance Ecosystem Fund which it said will include 20 partners. A Binance spokesperson told TechCrunch that further details of both initiatives will be released soon.
Data from Coinmarketcap.com ranks Binance as the world’s most active crypto exchange, with over $5 billion of crypto traded in the past 24 hours at the time of writing. The company calls Hong Kong home but it is in process of relocating to Malta, where it has been welcomed by regulators after it was forced out of Japan when regulators cracked down on its business.
This isn’t Binance’s first run at investment, it has already made deals via its Labs division, which was unveiled earlier this year and is described by Zhang as a “social impact fund.” It led a $30 million investment in MobileCoin — a startup that’s advised by Moxie Marlinspike, the founder of encrypted messaging app Signal and Open Whisper Systems — and it is establishing an incubator that will nurture ideas and young projects with financial backing and mentorship.