Valar Ventures

Valar Fund V is an early-stage venture capital fund managed by Valar Ventures, a firm founded in 2010 and based in New York City. The fund focuses on investing in technology companies, particularly within the financial technology sector, and aims to partner with entrepreneurs across the globe. Valar Ventures, backed by Peter Thiel, recognizes the growing potential of transformative technology companies emerging outside of Silicon Valley and aims to provide these founders with support tailored to their specific challenges and opportunities. Valar Fund V, established in 2019, reflects the firm's commitment to fostering innovation and entrepreneurship on a global scale.

Amina Abrahams

Principal

Giff Carter

Investor

James Fitzgerald

Founding Partner

Andrew McCormack

Founding and General Partner

Erin Ashley Porterfield

Associate

Reuben Kobulnik

Operating Partner

Michael Roth

Principal

John Rees Selby

Principal

Sahar Shirazi

Principal

Past deals in Bitcoin

Yellow Card

Series B in 2022
Yellow Card Financial, LLC operates an online cryptocurrency trading platform that facilitates the buying and selling of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies without the need for a bank account. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Chamblee, Georgia, the company offers a range of services including over-the-counter cryptocurrency trading, payment solutions, and currency exchange. Additionally, Yellow Card provides gift cards for cryptocurrency, aiming to transform the traditional remittance market in Nigeria and other countries. The company also has physical locations in Nigeria, Tanzania, Cameroon, Kenya, and South Africa, enhancing its accessibility for customers seeking to engage in cryptocurrency transactions.

Yellow Card

Series A in 2021
Yellow Card Financial, LLC operates an online cryptocurrency trading platform that facilitates the buying and selling of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies without the need for a bank account. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Chamblee, Georgia, the company offers a range of services including over-the-counter cryptocurrency trading, payment solutions, and currency exchange. Additionally, Yellow Card provides gift cards for cryptocurrency, aiming to transform the traditional remittance market in Nigeria and other countries. The company also has physical locations in Nigeria, Tanzania, Cameroon, Kenya, and South Africa, enhancing its accessibility for customers seeking to engage in cryptocurrency transactions.

Xanpool

Series A in 2021
XanPool, founded in 2019 and headquartered in Singapore, operates an automated peer-to-peer platform that facilitates cryptocurrency to fiat transactions without the need for custody of customer funds. This unique omni-channel solution allows individuals to automate their own financial transactions across various platforms, including bank accounts, e-wallets, and cryptocurrency wallets. By enabling users to become Liquidity Peers, XanPool creates a decentralized network that can efficiently route and settle capital transactions in a borderless manner. This innovative approach significantly enhances the speed and cost-effectiveness of transactions, achieving instant settlements and reducing costs by over 80% compared to traditional financial systems.

Bitpanda

Series C in 2021
Bitpanda GmbH, founded in 2014 and headquartered in Vienna, Austria, operates a digital investment platform that simplifies the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies, stocks, and commodities. As a retail broker, Bitpanda aims to democratize investing by removing financial barriers and providing users with transparent, easy access to digital assets. The platform features low fees, 24/7 trading, and real-time settlement, allowing users to manage their investments on their own terms. Additionally, Bitpanda offers diverse payment and payout options, along with a debit card that enables users to spend their investments like cash, thereby empowering individuals to take control of their financial futures.

Vauld

Series A in 2021
Hi there! if you’re reading this, you’re probably like us – have pretty much all your wealth stored in digitized (or soon to be digitized) assets like money in your bank, mutual funds, stocks or real estate. You probably have a financial advisor guiding you through your investments, a manager from your bank who helps you stay on top of your mortgage payments and a government that prints money responsibly to not de-value your lifetime of savings. But how do you know that the bank manager or your financial advisor has your best interests at heart instead of their own fee and commissions? Your contract explicitly states that they are not responsible for your loss even as they verbally assure you otherwise. How do you know that the digital assets won’t be hacked (traditional bank websites get hacked all the time)? Or that your physical assets won’t be stolen(bank robberies) or taken by fraud (enough examples in real estate)? Governments fall all the time, or change their monetary policies - and your currency today can literally have no value tomorrow (Indian demonetization, Argentina, Venezuela). How do you know it won’t happen to your country? Do you ask these questions? Well, we do all the time. To answer these questions and why we created the Bank of Hodlers, we have to dive into the details of how banking evolved. As early as the 2nd century BC, people who could save money started lending them out to people who could borrow and pay back with interest. Banking as an industry thrived in Italy and grew with the expansion of the Roman Empire. During the 20th century, developments in telecommunications and computing caused major changes to banks' operations and let banks dramatically increase in size and geographic spread. This consolidated the industry and gave the power to a few firms. Fast forward to 2007: their recklessness caused the financial crisis of 2007–2008 forcing failure of many banks, including some of the world's largest banks. The government let the banks live by infusing 1.2 trillion dollars of the taxpayer’s money into a handful of banks and in turn, created the need, wave of innovation and a community for blockchain and the concept of decentralization to thrive. Here’s Alan Greenspan (Chairman – Federal Reserve: 1987-2006), the guy who decided how much money to print in America, admitting that his model was flawed in 2008. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5lZPWNFizQ In 2009, something magical happened, Satoshi Nakamoto released his white paper which removed the need for a centralized authority to facilitate transactions in a purely peer to peer and decentralized fashion and making truly beneficial for every user holding the currency. Some governments, after looking at the threat that bitcoin poses, have decided to take an anti-crypto stance. This ensures the network effect doesn’t happen at a scale where it replaces their national currency. This is where we come in. At the Bank of Hodlers, we intend to treat your cryptocurrencies as a separate asset class and offer services to ensure technologies based on blockchain are usable as of today, negating the need for the network effects and government acceptance to come in. We give every HODLer the ability to completely bank on blockchain today. Every once in a while, there’s a technology jump so large that completely leapfrogs every existing solution out there. Blockchain is this technology jump and the banks know this.

Bitpanda

Series B in 2021
Bitpanda GmbH, founded in 2014 and headquartered in Vienna, Austria, operates a digital investment platform that simplifies the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies, stocks, and commodities. As a retail broker, Bitpanda aims to democratize investing by removing financial barriers and providing users with transparent, easy access to digital assets. The platform features low fees, 24/7 trading, and real-time settlement, allowing users to manage their investments on their own terms. Additionally, Bitpanda offers diverse payment and payout options, along with a debit card that enables users to spend their investments like cash, thereby empowering individuals to take control of their financial futures.

BlockFi

Series D in 2021
BlockFi, Inc. is a financial services company focused on providing wealth management products for cryptocurrency investors. Established in 2017 and headquartered in New York, it offers a range of services including the BlockFi Interest Account, which allows clients to earn interest on their holdings of Bitcoin, Ether, and Gemini Dollar. The company also facilitates secured loans in U.S. dollars, backed by clients' cryptocurrency assets, thereby enhancing liquidity in the blockchain asset market. In addition to lending and interest-earning accounts, BlockFi provides a trading platform for exchanging various cryptocurrency pairs and offers services tailored for institutional clients. By holding clients' digital assets with a registered custodian, BlockFi aims to deliver transparency and efficiency in digital financial markets. The company's mission is to address the evolving needs of both individual and institutional investors in the cryptocurrency space.

BlockFi

Series D in 2021
BlockFi, Inc. is a financial services company focused on providing wealth management products for cryptocurrency investors. Established in 2017 and headquartered in New York, it offers a range of services including the BlockFi Interest Account, which allows clients to earn interest on their holdings of Bitcoin, Ether, and Gemini Dollar. The company also facilitates secured loans in U.S. dollars, backed by clients' cryptocurrency assets, thereby enhancing liquidity in the blockchain asset market. In addition to lending and interest-earning accounts, BlockFi provides a trading platform for exchanging various cryptocurrency pairs and offers services tailored for institutional clients. By holding clients' digital assets with a registered custodian, BlockFi aims to deliver transparency and efficiency in digital financial markets. The company's mission is to address the evolving needs of both individual and institutional investors in the cryptocurrency space.

TaxBit

Series A in 2021
TaxBit is a company that specializes in cryptocurrency tax calculation and compliance services. It offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform designed to assist investors, exchanges, and payment services with tax and accounting needs. The platform automates the collection and validation of financial information, integrates this data with existing financial systems, and supports robust examination processes. By streamlining digital asset accounting, TaxBit helps enterprises and government entities manage their tax obligations more efficiently.

TaxBit

Series A in 2021
TaxBit is a company that specializes in cryptocurrency tax calculation and compliance services. It offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform designed to assist investors, exchanges, and payment services with tax and accounting needs. The platform automates the collection and validation of financial information, integrates this data with existing financial systems, and supports robust examination processes. By streamlining digital asset accounting, TaxBit helps enterprises and government entities manage their tax obligations more efficiently.

TaxBit

Venture Round in 2021
TaxBit is a company that specializes in cryptocurrency tax calculation and compliance services. It offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform designed to assist investors, exchanges, and payment services with tax and accounting needs. The platform automates the collection and validation of financial information, integrates this data with existing financial systems, and supports robust examination processes. By streamlining digital asset accounting, TaxBit helps enterprises and government entities manage their tax obligations more efficiently.

Bitpanda

Series A in 2020
Bitpanda GmbH, founded in 2014 and headquartered in Vienna, Austria, operates a digital investment platform that simplifies the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies, stocks, and commodities. As a retail broker, Bitpanda aims to democratize investing by removing financial barriers and providing users with transparent, easy access to digital assets. The platform features low fees, 24/7 trading, and real-time settlement, allowing users to manage their investments on their own terms. Additionally, Bitpanda offers diverse payment and payout options, along with a debit card that enables users to spend their investments like cash, thereby empowering individuals to take control of their financial futures.

BlockFi

Series C in 2020
BlockFi is a secured non-bank lender that offers USD loans to crypto-asset owners who collateralize the loan with their crypto-assets. Their products bring additional liquidity to the blockchain asset sector and meet the needs of both individuals and institutions holding blockchain assets. BlockFi holds clients' Bitcoin and Ether with a registered custodian and issues loans in USD to their bank accounts. Currently operating in beta launch, lending in 35 US states to retail investors and companies. BlockFi’s mission is to provide liquidity, transparency, and efficiency to digital financial markets by creating products that meet the needs of consumers and corporations across the globe. They leverage a sophisticated infrastructure that integrates with multiple blockchains, they plan to expand their product set based on their retail and institutional client's needs.

BlockFi

Series B in 2020
BlockFi, Inc. is a financial services company focused on providing wealth management products for cryptocurrency investors. Established in 2017 and headquartered in New York, it offers a range of services including the BlockFi Interest Account, which allows clients to earn interest on their holdings of Bitcoin, Ether, and Gemini Dollar. The company also facilitates secured loans in U.S. dollars, backed by clients' cryptocurrency assets, thereby enhancing liquidity in the blockchain asset market. In addition to lending and interest-earning accounts, BlockFi provides a trading platform for exchanging various cryptocurrency pairs and offers services tailored for institutional clients. By holding clients' digital assets with a registered custodian, BlockFi aims to deliver transparency and efficiency in digital financial markets. The company's mission is to address the evolving needs of both individual and institutional investors in the cryptocurrency space.

TaxBit

Seed Round in 2020
TaxBit is a company that specializes in cryptocurrency tax calculation and compliance services. It offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform designed to assist investors, exchanges, and payment services with tax and accounting needs. The platform automates the collection and validation of financial information, integrates this data with existing financial systems, and supports robust examination processes. By streamlining digital asset accounting, TaxBit helps enterprises and government entities manage their tax obligations more efficiently.

BlockFi

Series A in 2019
BlockFi, Inc. is a financial services company focused on providing wealth management products for cryptocurrency investors. Established in 2017 and headquartered in New York, it offers a range of services including the BlockFi Interest Account, which allows clients to earn interest on their holdings of Bitcoin, Ether, and Gemini Dollar. The company also facilitates secured loans in U.S. dollars, backed by clients' cryptocurrency assets, thereby enhancing liquidity in the blockchain asset market. In addition to lending and interest-earning accounts, BlockFi provides a trading platform for exchanging various cryptocurrency pairs and offers services tailored for institutional clients. By holding clients' digital assets with a registered custodian, BlockFi aims to deliver transparency and efficiency in digital financial markets. The company's mission is to address the evolving needs of both individual and institutional investors in the cryptocurrency space.
Spot something off? Help us improve by flagging any incorrect or outdated information. Just email us at support@teaserclub.com. Your feedback is most welcome.