Tracking "Suit Investors": Positioning strategies and trend analysis from top institutions and VCs

Original source: Deep Tide

Reprint: Koala, Mars Finance

This is the strangest cycle to date – no one can predict what will happen next

At times like these, it's helpful to know what other people are doing. So, I spent the weekend researching the latest moves of the VC bigwigs.

I know some of you might be thinking, "They're just casting a wide net and making a profit from their early investments." ”

Actually, I don't think they're the smartest people, especially after the last cycle. But we should still pay attention to them: because they do have an information advantage, are well-funded, and are closer to the developers of the project than we are.

I want to know:

Do they have any interesting moves?

Are they as passionate about altcoins as we are?

Or do they still hold some old coins?

So, my friend Edgy condensed hours of research into a simple five-minute read.

Let's take a look at what these speculators in suits are up to.

Notes:

Don't simply imitate what VCs do. They have better trading opportunities, and they play differently than we do. The information here is just to give us a better understanding of the other players in this field.

We can't track all wallets. We've done our best to go through crowdsourcing tags and our own on-chain analytics, but it's impossible to capture all the movements.

We have selected a number of funds and sorted them by size. We'll cover each fund's total balance, major assets, smaller assets, and some interesting recent moves.

Top crypto VC firms and their holdings

1.a16z ($4.823亿)

Key Assets:

• UNI: $436 million
• OP: $31 million
• COMP: $14 million

较小资产：ETH ($14000), COLLE ($6000)

a16z is one of the largest UNI holders on the market. They have enough influence to veto the proposal because the 4% of UNI held can reach a quorum. They have been holding UNI for many years. Recently, there was a change in a16z's wallet that was their OP initial unlock, which they have been holding.

2.Galaxy Digital ($3.645亿)

Key Assets:

• BTC: $194 million
• ETH: $115 million
• USDC: $40 million
• USDT: $500万
• AVAX: $4 million
• USDC: $1.3 million
• AAVE: $1.14 million

Noteworthy small assets ($100,000 - $150,000): MKR, OXT, UNI, TOKE

They generate a lot of trading volume, mostly for stablecoins and BTC. It may be decentralizing the Token and doing some arbitrage strategy. They recently withdrew $3.3m worth of AVAX from Binance.

3.Jump Trading ($2.864亿)

Key Assets:

• USDC: $78 million
• USDT: $7038万
• stETH: $7038万
• ETH: $54.9 million
• T: $2.15 million
• WETH: $1.24 million
• SHIB: $1.2 million
• SNX: $1.16 million

Small Holdings: ($200,000 -$700,000) including MKR, LDO, GRT, DAI, UNI, KNC, HMT, BNB, CVX, COMP, INJ, MNT.

Jump's portfolio consists primarily of ETH and stablecoins, which are common in VCs. Notably, they also hold Threshold Network, SHIB, and SNX.

While there are claims that Jump has withdrawn from the crypto space, they are still actively working on various operations. They also started depositing ETH into LMAX, a crypto exchange that specializes in serving institutions.

4.Wintermute ($1.598亿)

Key Assets:

• USDC: $16.6 million
• WBTC: $1115万
• PEPECOIN: $1052万
• ETH: $10.39 million
• USDT: $911万
• TKO: $4.67 million
• CBBTC: $463万
• MATIC: $441万
• BMC: $436万
• NEIRO: $3.48 million

小额资产:($20 万 - $300 万) 包括 BASEDAI, TON, ZK, MOG, stETH, ARB, ENA, ARKM, APE, LDO, ONDO 等。

Wintermute is an eye-catching performer in the meme coin space. Their largest holdings are PEPECOIN (this is not PEPE, but another meme coin), in addition, they also have a significant investment in meme coins such as MOG, NEIRO, COQ, APU, SHIB, BENJI, etc.

They are known for their market activity for meme coins. Wintermute recently showed an accumulation of CBBTC (Coinbase BTC) and BTC in their wallets, and they also transferred more than $6 million worth of SHIB to Binance.

5.Capital Panther ($1.6115亿)

Key Assets:

• ONDO: $15.2 million
• ETHX: $4.4 million
• SD: $1.11 million
• ECOX: $94.16万
• LDO: $388,000
• MINUTES: $37.5万
• NOTE: $274,000

Recently, Pantera transferred nearly $3 million in MATIC to Coinbase. They also moved $1 million in LDO to Anchorage, a platform that specializes in crypto staking services for institutions.

Notably, most of their ETH has been transferred to centralized exchanges. In addition, we observed a 56% decrease in the value of their investment in ONDO. Pantera was one of the early private investors in ONDO.

6.Blockchain Capital ($6710万）

Key Assets:

• AAVE: $32.8 million
• UNI: $18.35 million
• ETH: $4.16 million
• UMA: $212
• SAFE: $1.89 million
• 1INCH: $188万
• COW: $1.62 million
• FORT: $131万
• USDC: $1,000,000

小额资产：($10万 - $60万) 包括 SUSHI, BAL, PSP, USDC, PERP。

Blockchain Capital's largest holdings are AAVE, which they have held for years. With the recent upward trend in its price, it may be worth further attention. They also transferred more than $5 million in ETH to Anchorage, just like Pantera.

7.Spartan Group ($3538万)

Key Assets:

• PENDLE: $1693万
• GAL: $2.65 million
• MNT: $2.49 million
• OP: $1.4 million
• IMX: $1.18 million
• WILD: $1.09 million
• GRT: 1.04 million
• AEVO: $98.2万
• USDC: $841,000
• PTU: $80万
• RBN: $778,000
• 1INCH: $70万

小额资产：($10万 - $50万) 包括 MAV, CHESS, MPL, G, DYDX, ALI, BETA, PSTAKE, ETH。

The Spartan Group is primarily betting on Pendle. Other than that, they don't do a lot of substantive trading, mostly through the USDC arbitrage strategy. Interestingly, they have transferred all of their BEAM assets to the soon-to-be-launched chain Sophon, where users can start depositing assets to earn airdrop rewards.

8.DeFiance Capital ($3360万)

Key Assets:

• PYUSD: $2000万
• LDO: $6.08 million
• BEAM: $3.94 million
• USDC: $1.1 million
• TBILL: $1.04 million

小额资产：($5万 - $30万) 包括 VIRTUAL, AVAX, BAL, MCB, USDT, INSUR。

DeFiance has invested heavily in gaming tokens. Their recent transaction involved multiple payments from Shrapnel, a Web3 shooter. They also collected a lot of ETH from Morpho.

Some of the VC trends we've observed

Co-holdings: a16z, Jump, Wintermute, and Blockchain Capital have a preference for top DeFi tokens (such as UNI and AAVE), ETH, and stablecoins. Probably due to the bear market, they are more focused on liquidity and DeFi protocols.

Long-term holdings: a16z and Blockchain Capital are firm holders, having held UNI and AAVE for many years.

Stable Arbitrage: They are all engaged in stablecoin arbitrage, which can be seen in their large number of stablecoin transactions.

Bitcoin Layer 2 Investment: Bitcoin Layer 2 continues to attract significant investment. BTC L2 companies and projects raised $94.6 million, up 174% from the previous quarter.

Early-stage deals: Early-stage deals still dominate. Nearly 80% of invested capital and pre-seed transactions account for 13% of all transactions.

Investment Trends: Despite the huge craze for NFTs and GameFi in 2021, the industry has cooled down by 2024. VCs are now leaning more towards trends such as AI, infrastructure, and even meme. We recently skimmed through an interesting report on VC trends for 2024 from Galaxy.

Here are some highlights:

Compared to the same period in 2021-2022, the amount of investment in VCs has decreased significantly. However, venture capital investment reached $3.19 billion in the second quarter of 2024, up 28% quarter-on-quarter.

It is important to note that the size of the investment is not completely in sync with the BTC price.

In the past, this correlation was more pronounced, but now it seems that the liquidity of venture capital has decreased.

Most of the investment went to NFTs, games, and DAOs, followed by infrastructure.

"In Q2 2024, companies and projects in the 'Web3/NFT/DAO/Metaverse/Gaming' category raised the lion's share of crypto VC capital, accounting for 24% of the total investment, totaling $758m. In this category, Farcaster and Zentry were the two largest deals, raising $150 million and $140 million, respectively. ”

Hopefully, this in-depth analysis will provide you with insights into how VCs operate in the crypto space.

The key to analytics is to observe their behavior in order to catch potential trends in advance and understand how they operate. Don't simply copy the VC's operations, but use them as a resource to enhance your research capabilities.