Former Binance executive aims to raise $100 million for VC startup focused on crypto adoption

Bill Qian, the former head of venture capital investments and acquisitions at Binance Holdings Ltd., says he aims to raise over $100 million through a new crypto venture capital fund.

Qian told Bloomberg that he sees a need for significant user growth as one of the crypto industry’s most critical challenges, a key factor in the founding of Cypher Capital.

As chairman of Dubai-based Cypher Capital since leaving Binance in June, Qian told Bloomberg that he plans to support startups focused on web3 and the decentralized internet powered by blockchain technology.

Qian believes that the crypto industry faces a significant obstacle in terms of limited user growth, which he attributes to the dominant use of cryptocurrency for trading or gambling. To address this issue, Cypher Capital is focusing its investments on projects that can attract more of the roughly 5 billion internet and social media users to the web3 ecosystem, an investment task it believes could add to the macro adoption of cryptocurrencies worldwide.

Qian did not disclose to Bloomberg whether the fund has secured any commitments from other outside investors, but noted that this year’s boom in digital assets, with Bitcoin surging about 50%, has made fundraising less challenging.

“The macro backdrop for us is much better now than my expectations six months ago,” he said in the interview. Nevertheless, “money is not cheap anymore.”

With a team of 10 employees, Cypher Capital has hired Elaine Liu, a former executive at Tencent, to strengthen its expansion efforts in the UAE. In November, the firm established an office in Dubai Marina dedicated to crypto and blockchain startups as part of its strategy to identify potential investment opportunities.

Dubai, as well as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) more generally, is emerging as a hub for the cryptocurrency industry as jurisdictions such as the US tighten regulations in the wake of last year’s scandals, including the collapse of FTX and legal action against founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

Leading figures in the crypto space, including Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal, have moved to Dubai, which recently issued a final set of rules to regulate the cryptocurrency sector.