SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ – Decentralized
finance and blockchain investor ParaFi Capital ("ParaFi") today
announced it has received a strategic investment from an affiliate
of Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd. (TSX: GLXY) ("Galaxy Digital"), a
leading financial services and investment management company in the
cryptocurrency and blockchain technology sector founded by
Mike Novogratz. With this
transaction, Galaxy Digital has become a minority shareholder in
the firm, joining other ParaFi investors including Bain Capital
Ventures and Henry Kravis, Co-CEO
and Co-Founder of KKR. As of August 31,
2020, ParaFi had assets under management of over
$100 million.
![](https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1283069/ParaFi.jpg)
ParaFi and Galaxy Digital expect to identify opportunities to
jointly co-invest where they can leverage ParaFi's expertise in the
decentralized finance ("DeFi") space together with Galaxy Digital's
global insights and institutional relationships across its
full-service platform encompassing Trading, Asset Management,
Investment Banking, and Principal Investments. DeFi is an ecosystem
of open financial products built on the blockchain and delivered as
decentralized apps ("Dapps"). Much like the internet's impact on
commerce and media in the preceding decades, DeFi solutions now
hold the potential to reengineer financial services from the ground
up by automating key activities within borrowing, lending, trading,
payments, custody, insurance and asset management with the promise
of broadening access, increasing transparency, and avoiding costly
ongoing input from traditional intermediaries.
"Galaxy Digital looks for first-class partners with which to
develop the crypto ecosystem with us, and ParaFi's like-minded
investment team and sustained involvement in DeFi protocols and
applications are a strong match for us," said Mike Novogratz, Founder, Chairman and CEO of
Galaxy Digital. "ParaFi shares our views on the transformative
potential of DeFi, our urgency to help this space accelerate toward
deeper product-market fit, as well as our collaborative,
expertise-driven approach to venture capital."
"Partnering with Galaxy Digital is an important milestone for
ParaFi and the DeFi ecosystem as a whole," said Ben Forman, Founder and Managing Partner of
ParaFi. "Programmable finance is a 'zero to one' innovation enabled
by blockchain, and DeFi represents the nascent architecture for a
new, open financial network. Galaxy has a strong track record of
facilitating institutional interest in cryptocurrency and digital
assets, as well as in working closely with leading companies in
both fintech and traditional finance. As DeFi approaches an
inflection point, we look forward to partnering closely with the
Galaxy team."
ParaFi was founded by Ben Forman,
previously an executive at private equity firms KKR and TPG. ParaFi
began investing in DeFi in 2018, deploying capital behind leading
protocols such as Compound (lending and interest accrual), Aave
(asset borrowing), Uniswap (automated liquidity provision), and
Synthetix (synthetic asset trading). In addition to investing in
DeFi protocols, ParaFi actively supports its portfolio as a power
user, liquidity provider, and governance
participant. Examples of ParaFi's sustained involvement in the
DeFi community include Andreessen Horowitz delegating its crypto
fund's Compound governance rights to the firm, as well as ParaFi's
active participation in monetary policy on the MakerDAO
network.
"As a case study for empowering consumers in financial services,
Bitcoin successfully demonstrated the market's demand for a
digitally native, decentralized store of value. Now, as new
decentralized finance applications begin to rapidly proliferate,
the time is right to establish a nimble investment framework into
DeFi architecture more broadly," said Christopher Ferraro, President of Galaxy
Digital. "To successfully invest in this nascent and accelerating
space requires active management and deep, multi-disciplinary
knowledge across financial markets, economics, early-stage
investing, community building and technology—all qualities that we
believe the ParaFi team possess in abundance. Together with
Galaxy's sector expertise and unique insight into DeFi token
liquidity and markets through our Trading desk, we believe our
partnership will be well-positioned to identify which applications
and teams have the potential for exponential growth in DeFi."
About ParaFi Capital
ParaFi Capital is a fundamental,
research-driven investment firm focused on investing in the
blockchain and decentralized finance ecosystem. The ParaFi team has
deep finance and technology backgrounds with over two decades of
cumulative institutional investing experience at leading asset
management firms, including KKR, TPG, and JPMorgan. ParaFi's
investment approach focuses on digital assets that address tangible
use cases, demonstrate signs of product-market fit, and exhibit
compelling crypto-economic models. Additional information about
ParaFi is available on www.parafi.capital.
Contact
Benjamin
Forman, Managing Partner
ParaFi Capital LLC
info@parafi.capital
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SOURCE ParaFi Capital LLC