A brief history of Paradigm’s growth: Start-up funds came from universities, and airdrops are the most popular projects invested in
Original title: A quick look at the growth history of crypto fund Paradigm in one minute, and the most popular projects invested in are airdrops
Original author: Splin Teron, crypto KOL
Original compilation: PANews
While details about the Paradigm fund are currently sparse, it is known that the fund invests in projects ranging from $1 million to over $100 million, and only in the crypto space. So how did Paradigm, with over 60 employees, win the trust of investors and gain traction in the crypto community?
Paradigm was co-founded by Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and former Sequoia Capital partner Matt Huang. Paradigms arrival at the right time was no accident. Paradigm emerged from the height of Bitcoin mania in 2017, when Fred Ehrsam decided to step down as president of Coinbase.
Paradigm funds were launched in the summer of 2018 during a challenging bear market phase. The two founders of Paradigm decided to leave their previous jobs to pursue something they thought was more interesting.
Paradigms initial funding came from some of the most conservative investors: universities. Includes endowments at Yale, Harvard and Stanford universities.
In October 2018, Paradigm received $400 million in financing from investors (note: all funds came from the Yale University Endowment Fund). By December 2018, Paradigm mainly invested in Bitcoin and Ethereum, and perfectly bought the bottom when the price of Bitcoin was below $4,000 (Note: As can be seen from the above figure, after buying Bitcoin at the bottom, it will basically rise in the future). After the news reached investors, institutional investors (universities) subscribed for an additional $350 million.
In addition to securing start-up funding, Paradigm is also working in the university sector and has made significant progress:
Popularizing Cryptocurrency
Increasing discussion on necessary cryptocurrency regulation
Support Gary Gensler (currently Chairman of the US SEC and formerly taught at MIT) to educate on blockchain and cryptocurrency technology
Does this mean Paradigm has ties to the head of marketing (Note: Gary Gensler)? No way of knowing.
One of Paradigms latest investment projects is Friend.tech. The emergence of Friend.tech marks another launch of the SocialFi narrative. Interestingly, Friend.tech is launching on the new Base network.
It is worth mentioning that before the Arbitrum airdrop, Paradigm was listed as an investor in three of the most important airdrops in the crypto industry: Uniswap, Ribbon Finance, and dYdX. Perhaps this is why Paradigm was so popular among the crypto community during the era of airdrops. One crypto KOL summarized which projects popular funds invested in and how many of them were airdropped, and Paradigm came out on top.
The following are investments made by Paradigmfull list：
Although Paradigm has changed its website description, it will focus only on cryptocurrency and also include cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence. But Fred and Matt later said they firmly believed they would stay in the crypto space for the long term. While some may find it controversial, we firmly believe that cryptocurrency will become an important trend. In fact, we believe it is the most important technology trend in the next 20 years.
