In a juxtaposition of old money and new currency, Venrock – the Rockefeller family’s capital venture company – has officially announced its partnership with CoinFund, a cryptocurrency investment group.
Venrock was founded by John D. Rockefeller and his siblings in 1969, with some of its highly successful ventures including Intel and Apple. True to form, the group is embracing technology to further its growth as it joins forces with CoinFund.
This is not the first time the Brooklyn-based cryptocurrency investment group and Venrock have worked together. Their first encounter was with YouNow, a startup app maker for live video streaming. Last year, YouNow pivoted and hosted an ICO. Recently, CoinFund launched CoinList, a platform for blockchain investments – similar to AngelList but with a token-based angle.
Fortune reports that the joint venture aims to enable entrepreneurs to establish businesses based on blockchain technology. David Pakman, a Venrock partner is quoted as saying:
We wanted to partner with this team that has been making investments and actually helping to architect a number of different crypto economies and crypto token-based projects.
He further states that they are unlike most existing crypto traders.
There are a lot of crypto traders in the market. There are a lot of cryptocurrency hedge funds. This is different,β said Pakman, describing the collaboration. βIn fact, to us, it looks a little bit more like venture capital.”
The Rockefellers are not the first of the old money to join the crypto fray. Tycoon George Soros is reported to be preparing for trading, while the Rothschilds supposedly have been purchasing crypto since last year.
With these institutions acknowledging crypto, what are the implications? One might be found in this tweet.
Rockefeller, Soros, and Rothschild money entering the cryptocurrency space….it sounds like regulations might be getting a bit more lax
β Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) April 7, 2018