Sebastian Sinclair

Macauley Peterson

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 <ul>
 <li> Crypto.com has increased the amount of its venture arm fund to the tune of $500 million, up from $200 million</li>
 <li>The fund will continue to focus on crypto startups but remains agile to changes within the industry</li>
 </ul>
 
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Singapore-headquartered exchange Crypto.com has increased the amount of its venture arm fund to the tune of $500 million, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/17/crypto-com-500-million-fund-web3/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TechCrunch reported</a> Monday.



Founded in March 2021, Crypto.com Capital, the exchange&#8217;s venture arm, began with around $200 million in the tank to back early-stage startups looking to build Web 3 applications and platforms.



The fund will continue to focus on those startups but remains agile to change, according to Asia-based General Partner, Jon Russell, who stepped into the role on Monday.



Crypto.com Capital typically leads seed rounds ranging between $100K to $3 million and Series A rounds from around $3 million to $10 million, according to its <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/crypto-com-capital" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Crunchbase profile</a>.



The $300 million addition is expected to put it on an equal footing with other exchange venture arms, including Binance&#8217;s and Coinbase&#8217;s. Indeed, venture capital from major exchanges is both symbiotic and beneficial to those looking to forge new projects and attract further capital into the fold.



A trend is now beginning to form which has seen year-over-year growth of venture capital funds pouring money into the space. Last year saw <a href="https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/crypto-startups-get-record-amount-of-vc-money-may-lead-to-more-ip-os-in-2022-185523469.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$33 billion</a> worth of VC funding — the highest amount in comparison to all previous years combined, Yahoo Finance recently reported.



Most recently, FTX <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/ftx-launches-2b-venture-fund/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced the launch</a> of a $2 billion venture capital fund on Jan 14.



“If you’re in the industry, it’s in your interest to help companies grow in the ecosystem and the ecosystem itself to grow,”&nbsp;said Russell.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Crypto.com suffers security incident</h3>



Alongside the funding announcement, Crypto.com faced a security breach which caused &#8220;<a href="https://twitter.com/cryptocom/status/1483050866894868484" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">unauthorized activity</a>&#8221; in some user accounts, prompting the company to reset all customers&#8217; two-factor authentication.



Audit firm Peckshield <a href="https://twitter.com/peckshield/status/1483246262371557378" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reports</a> that wallets linked to the company lost about $15 million worth of ether.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">The <a href="https://twitter.com/cryptocom?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@cryptocom</a> loss is about $15M with at least 4.6K ETHs and half of them are currently being washed via <a href="https://twitter.com/TornadoCash?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TornadoCash</a> <a href="https://t.co/PUl6IrB3cp">https://t.co/PUl6IrB3cp</a> <a href="https://t.co/6SVKvk8PLf">https://t.co/6SVKvk8PLf</a> <a href="https://t.co/XN9nmT857j">pic.twitter.com/XN9nmT857j</a>&mdash; PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) <a href="https://twitter.com/peckshield/status/1483246262371557378?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 18, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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However, CEO Kris Marszalek <a href="https://twitter.com/Kris_HK/status/1483277458262859776?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">stressed on Twitter</a> that &#8220;no customer funds were lost,&#8221; and promised to release a full postmortem following an internal investigation into the incident.



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