BB Fund to Start Investing in Blockchain Projects as of Autumn 2016
According to Maxim Avdeev, director for business development at Life.Sreda, currently banks are demanding new technologies, and the only place where they might find it is the community of fintech startups. For that reason, he believes, BB Fund may become the meeting point for bankers and developers of blockchain solutions for banking industry.
BB Fund will be headed by CFO Igor Pesin. He told ForkLog the foundation was currently at the fundraising phase, however, all preparatory works had been already performed.
“We have completely formed the team, developed the investment strategy, determined the investment pipeline, and established a legal entity. As soon as we raise the required funds (with the first closure scheduled for Q3 of 2016), the fund will start investing,” he said.
Pesin noted that BB Fund will be operating as a classic investment fund, which means that it is institutional players, like banks and funds, that will be investing in the signed startups.
Pesin was affirmative when asked about whether there are any agreements with banks as to implementation of forthcoming projects.
“Yes, we’re negotiating with different banks. Mainly, they are major European banks, however, there are several interested strategists from Asia,” he told ForkLog.
Apart from that, Pesin stated, the fund won’t be limited in geographic terms, however, most investment is expected to be concentrated in Europe. Pesin did not exclude Russia from the list.
“A part of investment may have been effected in Russia, if there are interesting projects and technologies. Currently, however, blockchain is poorly developed in Russia, even though some global blockchain-related top players are somehow related to Russia or the former USSR, like Ethereum or BitFury,” Pesin elaborated.
This April it was announced that Singapore-based Life.Sreda will create an investment fund for the blockchain space in cooperation with Chris Skinner, a fintech expert.
Banking on Blockchain Fund was planning to raise $50 million by the end of 2016, and the same amount in 2017. Life.Sreda also participated in the fund’s financing having invested $5 million this year.
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