Why can this institution still grow by 150% when the scale of leading crypto VCs has shrunk significantly?

Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

As the overall decline of the crypto market continues, the asset management scale of almost all crypto VCs is shrinking, and the industry is entering a brutal clearing cycle. However, against this backdrop, a crypto venture capital fund established for less than five years has become a true exception, emerging with an independent growth curve amidst the contraction.

According to a batch of undisclosed financial disclosure documents from crypto VCs obtained by a Fortune reporter from the U.S. SEC last week, data shows that the assets under management (AUM) of leading institutions such as Paradigm, Pantera, a16z crypto, and Multicoin are all shrinking by 2025, with Multicoin experiencing a reduction of over half.

The only fund bucking the trend is Haun Ventures, a venture capital fund established only four years ago, whose AUM has grown from an initial $1 billion to $2.5 billion by 2025.

In the bleak crypto market, this is by no means just luck. Last year, market news indicated that Haun Ventures was close to completing a new round of fundraising for $1 billion, reflecting that Haun Ventures and its founder Katie Haun's unique investment strategy has been validated by the market and LPs, positioning it among the top VCs.

Distinctive Founder Style and Background

Haun Ventures' differences were evident from the start.

Founder Katie Haun is not a typical crypto investor. She served as a U.S. federal prosecutor for many years, engaged in financial crime investigations for over a decade, and created the U.S. government's first cryptocurrency task force. In 2018, she became the first female partner at a16z and co-led the fund's cryptocurrency fund, also joining the Coinbase board, thus combining policy vision, institutional resources, and practical experience.

This background gives her an understanding of the crypto industry that is not solely based on "technical potential" or "market size," but rather from the perspectives of compliance boundaries, systemic risks, and institutional embedding capabilities. The impact of this background is not overt but is profound enough.

It is noteworthy that Haun Ventures is one of only two funds in the crypto industry named after its founder, reflecting the fund's distinctive founder-led style. The other VC named after its founder is a16z.

In its early days, Haun Ventures was not without flaws and also stumbled during market booms. Looking back at the investment records, Haun Ventures once focused on NFTs as a key investment area, investing in at least four NFT projects such as Opensea, Autograph, ZORA, and Highlight in the first half of 2022.

However, as the bubble around concepts like NFTs quickly burst, Haun Ventures demonstrated a strong ability to correct and iterate, rapidly retracting its focus from the second half of 2022, significantly reducing its frequency of investments, and responding to market downturns with extreme caution.

According to [RootData](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/Investors/detail/Haun Ventures?k=MjQ2) data, in the second half of 2022 and throughout 2023, Haun Ventures publicly disclosed participation in only six financing rounds over these 18 months, averaging one investment every three months.

As of June 2023, Haun Ventures partner Rosenblum stated in an interview that the company's investments are almost evenly split between digital tokens and traditional equity, having allocated about 30% of its funds to around twenty projects, including publicly traded and highly liquid tokens. These tokens include well-known cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as small-cap tokens related to projects.

At that time, Bitcoin's price hovered in the range of $15,000 to $30,000 for an extended period, later peaking at $126,000 in 2025, which brought Haun Ventures considerable investment returns, largely offsetting losses in areas like NFTs and becoming a crucial cornerstone for its growth.

Key Transformation

Starting in 2024, Haun Ventures' investment strategy began to show a clear shift, with a focus on payment, developer platform, and other B-end solution companies.

At that time, these directions were not particularly attractive; they lacked explosive growth stories and were difficult to generate market sentiment in a short period. However, they precisely hit the critical point of the industry's transition from speculation to practicality.

In that year, Haun Ventures invested in nearly ten B-end companies, including the stablecoin payment platform Bridge, crypto-native infrastructure platform Conduit, crypto protocol economic security solution Chaos Labs, Solana development platform Helius, and crypto payment platform BVNK.

In terms of investment style, Haun Ventures particularly favors leading investments. According to RootData statistics, in its publicly participated 39 financing rounds, it led 22 times, with a leading rate exceeding 56%, ranking first among top VCs. This reflects Haun Ventures' extraordinary confidence in its investment portfolio and its willingness to support high-potential early-stage projects with substantial funding.

Looking back now, payment has become the sector with the highest valuation premium and the clearest exit path in the crypto field. Haun Ventures' early positioning, combined with its consistent leading style, has yielded considerable investment exit returns.

Since October 2024, more than five of Haun Ventures' portfolio companies have been acquired, with several payment companies achieving high multiples of returns. For example, Haun Ventures led the stablecoin development platform Bridge at a valuation of $200 million, which was ultimately acquired at a valuation exceeding $1.1 billion. Haun Ventures also led the crypto payment platform BVNK at a valuation of $750 million, which was eventually acquired at a valuation exceeding $1.8 billion.

In an environment where exit channels for crypto assets are increasingly narrowing and secondary market liquidity is highly concentrated among top players, Haun Ventures has demonstrated the feasibility of another path: investing in companies that can solve real payment pain points and possess compatibility with traditional finance through equity, achieving high multiple exits through acquisitions, which is more capital-efficient than holding a bunch of illiquid tokens.

From chasing the hot NFT trend to balancing allocations between tokens and equity, and then focusing on B-end payments and infrastructure, Haun Ventures' evolutionary path is a microcosm of the shift from speculation to value orientation in crypto VCs. Katie Haun's compliance background, the fund's rapid correction ability, cautious investment pace, and high leading investment ratio strategy, combined with a precise grasp of real applications and exit paths, have collectively built a moat that transcends cycles.

As the industry bubble recedes, institutions relying on stories and leveraged expansion shrink, while Haun Ventures, grounded in compliance and stability, emerges as the most certain winner in the crypto winter, also pointing the entire VC industry toward the next stage of survival and growth logic.

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