Golden Gate Ventures, a venture capital firm based out of Singapore, made an announcement on Friday regarding the launch of a $10 million fund to invest in cryptocurrency and blockchain tech startups.  The firm claims that the fund is Southeast Asia’s first dedicated investment for the cryptocurrency. 

The capital investment goes by the name of ‘LuneX Ventures’ and is primarily focussed on giving the infant crypto and blockchain startups a financial impetus.  Golden gate’s former head of growth Kenrick Drijkoningen will be leading the fund as one of its founding partners. 

The launch comes at a time when the cryptocurrencies are going strong even when the market shows a strict bearish bias.  In context of the ongoing market conditions, Drijkoningen said, “We view blockchain as a foundational technology, on a par with or possibly exceeding the Internet in disruptive potential.  Right now valuations have come down to more reasonable levels and the industry is moving from pioneers to early adopters, which is a great time to start investing.” 

In addition to that, the firm stated that the fund is intended to provide high growth to blockchain tech startups and crypto assets that can “bring the industry to the next level” globally. 

Besides the digital exchanges, the fund will also invest in startups’ concocting security and custody solutions for crypto firms and customers alike.  According to the executives of the Golden gate, firms introducing the blockchain tech to “institutional services” will also be favoured. 

t has been estimated that the fund will close up to $10 million by the end of this year.  Drijkoningen was quoted as saying, “We have a strong pipeline of five to 10 investments ready to go and made our first commitment to Singapore-based Sparrow Exchange [a peer-to-peer crypto options trading platform] already.” 

Golden gate has previously funded an Ethereum blockchain startup Omise, based in Thailand in the latter’s development of a decentralized payment platform driven by OMG, an ERC20 cryptocurrency token.