Tracking "Suit Investors": Holding Strategies and Trend Analysis of Top Institutions and VCs
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Tracking "Suit Investors": Holding Strategies and Trend Analysis of Top Institutions and VCs
Investment scale does not fully correlate with BTC price; most investments flow into NFTs, gaming, and DAOs, followed by infrastructure.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Edgy - The DeFi Edge
Translation: TechFlow
This Is the Strangest Cycle Yet — No One Can Predict What Happens Next
In times like these, it helps to understand what others are doing. So I spent the entire weekend researching what major VCs have been up to recently.
I know some of you might be thinking: "They just spray and pray, making profits through early investments."
Actually, I don't believe they're necessarily the smartest players—especially after the last cycle. But we should still pay attention to them: because they do have informational advantages, abundant capital, and closer access to project founders than we do.
I wanted to find out:
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Are they making any interesting moves?
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Are they as enthusiastic about altcoins as we are?
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Or are they still holding onto established blue-chip assets?
So, my friend Edgy condensed hours of research into this simple five-minute read.
Let’s see what these suit-wearing speculators are up to.
Important Notes:
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Do not simply copy VC moves. They get better deal terms and play by different rules. This information is meant only to help us better understand other participants in the space.
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We can’t track all wallets. We’ve done our best using crowdsourced labels and our own on-chain analysis, but it’s impossible to capture every move.
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We selected several funds and ranked them by size. For each fund, we’ll cover total balance, major holdings, minor positions, and notable recent activity.
Top Crypto Venture Capital Firms and Their Holdings
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a16z ($482.3M)
Main Holdings:
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UNI: $436M
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OP: $31M
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COMP: $14M
Smaller Positions: ETH ($14K), COLLE ($6K)
a16z is one of the largest holders of UNI in the market. They hold enough to block proposals, as their 4% stake meets quorum thresholds. They’ve held UNI for years. Recently, a change in a16z’s wallet was the initial unlock of OP, which they continue to hold.
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Galaxy Digital ($364.5M)
Main Holdings:
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BTC: $194M
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ETH: $115M
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USDC: $40M
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USDT: $5M
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AVAX: $4M
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USDC: $1.3M
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AAVE: $1.14M
Notable Smaller Positions ($100K–$150K): MKR, OXT, UNI, TOKE
They generate massive trading volume, primarily involving stablecoins and BTC—likely distributing tokens and running arbitrage strategies. Recently, they withdrew $3.3M worth of AVAX from Binance.
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Jump Trading ($286.4M)
Main Holdings:
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USDC: $78M
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USDT: $70.38M
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stETH: $70.38M
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ETH: $54.9M
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T: $2.15M
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WETH: $1.24M
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SHIB: $1.2M
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SNX: $1.16M
Smaller Positions ($200K–$700K): MKR, LDO, GRT, DAI, UNI, KNC, HMT, BNB, CVX, COMP, INJ, MNT.
Jump’s portfolio is dominated by ETH and stablecoins—a common pattern among VCs. Notably, they also hold Threshold Network, SHIB, and SNX.
Despite claims that Jump has exited crypto, they remain actively engaged. They’ve also started depositing ETH into LMAX, an exchange catering specifically to institutional traders.
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Wintermute ($159.8M)
Main Holdings:
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USDC: $16.6M
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WBTC: $11.15M
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PEPECOIN: $10.52M
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ETH: $10.39M
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USDT: $9.11M
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TKO: $4.67M
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CBBTC: $4.63M
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MATIC: $4.41M
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BMC: $4.36M
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NEIRO: $3.48M
Smaller Positions ($200K–$3M): BASEDAI, TON, ZK, MOG, stETH, ARB, ENA, ARKM, APE, LDO, ONDO, etc.
Wintermute stands out in the meme coin space. Their largest holding is PEPECOIN (not PEPE, but another meme coin), and they also have significant exposure to MOG, NEIRO, COQ, APU, SHIB, BENJI, and other meme coins.
They’re known for high activity around meme coin markets. Recently, Wintermute has shown accumulation of CBBTC (Coinbase BTC) and BTC in their wallets, and transferred over $6M worth of SHIB to Binance.
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Pantera Capital ($161.15M)
Main Holdings:
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ONDO: $15.2M
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ETHX: $4.4M
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SD: $1.11M
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ECOX: $941.6K
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LDO: $388K
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PERC: $375K
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NOTE: $274K
Recently, Pantera transferred nearly $3M worth of MATIC to Coinbase. They also moved $1M of LDO to Anchorage, a platform offering institutional-grade staking services.
Notably, most of their ETH has been moved to centralized exchanges. Additionally, we observed a 56% drop in the value of their ONDO holdings. Pantera was one of the early private investors in ONDO.
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Blockchain Capital ($67.1M)
Main Holdings:
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AAVE: $32.8M
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UNI: $18.35M
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ETH: $4.16M
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UMA: $2.12M
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SAFE: $1.89M
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1INCH: $1.88M
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COW: $1.62M
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FORT: $1.31M
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USDC: $1M
Smaller Positions ($100K–$600K): SUSHI, BAL, PSP, USDC, PERP.
Blockchain Capital’s largest holding is AAVE, which they’ve held for many years. With its recent price uptrend, it may warrant further attention. Like Pantera, they also transferred over $5M worth of ETH to Anchorage.
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Spartan Group ($35.38M)
Main Holdings:
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PENDLE: $16.93M
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GAL: $2.65M
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MNT: $2.49M
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OP: $1.4M
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IMX: $1.18M
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WILD: $1.09M
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GRT: $1.04M
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AEVO: $982K
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USDC: $841K
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PTU: $800K
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RBN: $778K
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1INCH: $700K
Smaller Positions ($100K–$500K): MAV, CHESS, MPL, G, DYDX, ALI, BETA, PSTAKE, ETH.
Spartan Group is heavily betting on Pendle. Beyond that, they haven’t made many active trades—mostly running arbitrage strategies with USDC. Interestingly, they moved all their BEAM holdings to Sophon, the upcoming chain where users can begin depositing assets to qualify for airdrop rewards.
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DeFiance Capital ($33.6M)
Main Holdings:
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PYUSD: $20M
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LDO: $6.08M
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BEAM: $3.94M
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USDC: $1.1M
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TBILL: $1.04M
Smaller Positions ($50K–$300K): VIRTUAL, AVAX, BAL, MCB, USDT, INSUR.
DeFiance has invested heavily in gaming tokens. Their recent transactions include multiple payouts from Shrapnel, a Web3 shooter game. They’ve also collected substantial ETH from Morpho.
Key VC Trends We’ve Observed
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Common Holdings: a16z, Jump, Wintermute, and Blockchain Capital favor top-tier DeFi tokens (like UNI and AAVE), ETH, and stablecoins. Likely due to the bear market, they’re focused on liquidity and DeFi protocols.
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Long-Term Holding: a16z and Blockchain Capital are strong hands, having held UNI and AAVE for years.
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Stablecoin Arbitrage: All are actively involved in stablecoin arbitrage, evident from their high volumes of stablecoin transactions.
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Bitcoin Layer 2 Investments: Bitcoin L2s continue attracting significant funding. BTC L2 companies raised $94.6M, a 174% increase quarter-over-quarter.
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Early-Stage Deals: Early-stage investments remain dominant. Nearly 80% of invested capital and 13% of pre-seed deals occurred at this stage.
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Investment Themes: While NFTs and GameFi were red-hot in 2021, the sector has cooled by 2024. VCs now lean more toward AI, infrastructure, and even memes. We recently reviewed an interesting report from Galaxy on 2024 VC trends.
Here are some highlights:
Compared to the same period in 2021–2022, VC investment volumes have dropped significantly. However, Q2 2024 saw $3.19B in VC funding, a 28% increase quarter-on-quarter.
Notably, investment size doesn’t fully correlate with BTC price anymore.
In the past, the correlation was stronger, but now VC liquidity appears more decoupled.
Most funding went to NFTs, gaming, and DAOs, followed by infrastructure.
"In Q2 2024, companies and projects under the 'Web3/NFT/DAO/Metaverse/Gaming' category raised the largest share of crypto VC capital, accounting for 24% of total investment—$758M. Within this category, Farcaster and Zentry were the two largest rounds, raising $150M and $140M respectively."
Hope this deep dive gives you valuable insights into how VCs operate in crypto.
The key is to observe their behavior to spot emerging trends early and understand their strategies. Don’t blindly copy VCs—use this as a resource to level up your own research.
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