Paradigm

Paradigm is a San Francisco-based investment firm founded in June 2018 by Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and former Sequoia Capital partner Matt Huang. The firm specializes in making research-driven investments in the cryptocurrency, Web3, and blockchain sectors, supporting projects from their earliest stages with investments ranging from $1 million to over $100 million.

Ehrsam, who previously served as President of Coinbase, and Huang, with a background in elite investing at Sequoia, established Paradigm to be a crypto-native partner for entrepreneurs. They launched the firm during a cryptocurrency market downturn, securing an initial $750 million from institutional investors like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford for an open-ended fund. In November 2021, Paradigm raised a $2.5 billion venture capital fund, which at the time was the largest in the history of crypto-related venture funding.

Paradigm operates as more than just a financial backer; it actively assists its portfolio companies with technical and operational support, including engineering, smart contract auditing, and development strategy. The firm's business model involves taking equity stakes in startups and investing directly in cryptocurrencies. It has backed several prominent projects in the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, such as Uniswap, Compound, MakerDAO, and Synthetix. Despite its successes, the firm wrote down its $278 million investment in the cryptocurrency exchange FTX to zero following its bankruptcy in November 2022.

Keywords: crypto investment, venture capital, Web3 investment, blockchain technology, decentralized finance, DeFi, crypto-native, digital assets, protocol investing, cryptocurrency investment, Fred Ehrsam, Matt Huang, early-stage investing, crypto startups, blockchain startups, digital currency, tokenomics, smart contracts, crypto research, financial technology