Acrylic – a company based in Brooklyn, New York – has garnered approximately $55 million through a new funding round. The event was led by leading blockchain firms such as Accolade Partners.
Acrylic Is Leading the Charge in Blockchain Investments
Ash Egan is the solo GP of Acrylic. As a former partner at Accomplice and investor with ConsenSys Ventures, Egan has been heavily involved in the crypto space over the past six years and has backed several crypto-based companies such as Block Fi and Chainalysis. Both firms are valued at more than $3 billion each. He is now hoping that his company can be a number one capital provider for all future digital currency startups.
In a recent interview, he discussed what it was that drove him to name his company Acrylic. He states:
As a painter my medium is acrylic. It is a really cool medium since it meshes with all other mediums well… Acrylic is generally painted in layers, and crypto is layers of protocols. Crypto investing is not a science yet. It is still very much an art.
While the crypto space is undoubtedly growing, he comments that the digital currency world is still terribly overshadowed by the arena encompassing traditional fiat currencies and standard financial tools, and he is hoping to potentially focus on long-term investing without having to stare at crypto prices all day. He mentions:
The hope is that at scale, you are in a position where you are in early enough and cycles do not really matter. You want to partner with founders who are not swayed by macro inertia [and who are] building something with a ton of value in both bull and bear markets.
He says that his company is looking to invest in both standard financial firms and new forms of crypto. He also sees the company’s headquarters in Brooklyn as unique, given that the region has not always been kind to this developing market space. He comments:
Brooklyn is so well positioned to be a focal point for this next chapter in crypto given that every company has people in New York or who spend some part of the year here. Wall Street is here, media is here… Being local is huge.
Among the bigger crypto-based startups the firm has managed to invest in is North American bitcoin mining firm US BTC Corp. The company has also given funds to Automata, a governance token protocol; Arbitrary Execution, a financial auditing enterprise; and Syndicate Protocol, a company devoted to decentralized investing.
Some Areas Aren’t Worth Egan’s Time
Egan says that while he is excited about most of the new crypto prospects emerging, there is one area where he refuses to give any money. He states:
One area that I am less excited about at this point is generalized Layer One smart contract platforms, aka your Ethereum killers.