Bitkraft VC launches $75M investment fund for blockchain gaming

Esports, gaming and interactive media investment platform Bitkraft VC has established a $75-million token fund for investing in blockchain gaming and digital entertainment.

The fund uses a “stage-agnostic” strategy, meaning that it will put money in companies and startups at any business development stage. Apart from equity investment, the token fund will also invest in cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens (NFT).

In order to provide regulated investment opportunities, Bitkraft received an investment advisor registration from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in June 2021.

The new token fund is led by Piers Kicks, a founding partner in the investment arm of crypto research firm Delphi Digital. Kicks joined Bitkraft earlier this year to lead the company’s investment efforts in crypto and NFTs.

Bitkraft stated that the fund has already closed six investments, including projects such as Yield Guild Games (YGG), Immutable, Alethea AI and Horizon Games. Both YGG and Alethea are direct token investments, Kicks told Cointelegraph. “We were only able to announce the funding after final closing but have been actively deploying from it,” he added.

While the fund has mainly invested in startups building on the Ethereum blockchain, Kicks stated, “We adopt a chain-agnostic approach and assess each project on a case-by-case basis. We are beginning to see some exciting activity on Solana and will be closely monitoring early gaming projects in that ecosystem.” 

Related: Axie Infinity developer secures $152M in Series B funding from investors

According to Bitkraft Ventures founding general partner Jens Hilgers, the fund is looking to have invested in about 25 more companies by the end of 2022. The venture capital firm has more than $540 million in assets under management as of Oct. 1, 2021, with a portfolio spanning more than 60 companies across North America, Europe and Asia.

The gaming industry has proved ripe for crypto adoption, with many new use cases for decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFTs. Blockchain game Axie Infinity has emerged as one of the most popular Ethereum-based NFT games this year, with its native token AXS reaching a new all-time high above $155 on Monday. In September, blockchain gamification platform DeFi Land raised $4.1 million to launch a new DeFi game on Solana.