From Bitcoin's 1,000-fold Increase to 100-fold Increase in "Coin Stocks", Crypto Venture Capital Pantera's 12-year Progress

Author: Fairy, ChainCatcher

Pantera is building a "multi-currency micro-strategy investment matrix".

As one of the earliest bettors in the crypto world, Pantera Capital has bet on the dawn of Bitcoin, the midsummer of DeFi, and also stepped into the deep pit of FTX.

Twelve years later, it is still active, and even more aggressive in the new wave of cryptocurrency stocks. Pantera is behind many listed companies that raise funds to buy cryptocurrencies.

What kind of VC is this veteran of crypto narratives and an immortal player in the cyclical battlefield? What new territory is he laying out now?

Pantera’s betting story

Pantera Capital started betting on the crypto industry in 2013 and is one of the earliest crypto venture capitals. It launched the first investment fund in the United States dedicated to Bitcoin, and bought about 2% of the world's Bitcoin between 2013 and 2015, ultimately achieving a return of more than 1,000 times.

However, what really supports Pantera through the cycle is not a successful bet, but the ability to continuously respond to changes in market structure.

When the ICO boom started, Pantera took the lead in launching an early token fund; after the advent of DeFi Summer, it established the Pantera Blockchain Fund to provide a full range of cryptocurrency and blockchain market investment opportunities. From fund form to strategy configuration, Pantera's response ideas are closely aligned with the market.

Currently, Pantera manages five major funds: venture funds, Bitcoin funds, early-stage token funds, liquid token funds, and Pantera funds. According to official website data, its managed assets exceed $4.2 billion, and the accumulated realized income is about $547 million.

Pantera's pace of investment remains tight. According to RootData, it has invested in 214 projects, ranking 13th among all investment institutions, and has participated in 18 projects in the past year. The investment layout is mainly concentrated in four major sectors: infrastructure, DeFi, CeFi and blockchain games.

Its investment portfolio includes many star projects such as Circle, Ripple, Polkadot, Coinbase, and StarkNet. However, not every investment has been successful. So far, 33 projects have terminated operations, including FTX and Lithium Finance.

In 2024, Pantera made a high-profile bet on TON, believing that it had the potential to have a network of 900 million active users. This judgment prompted it to make the largest investment in the history of the fund. According to on-chain analyst AI Yi, Pantera's investment in TON may exceed US$250 million. However, the price of TON has now retreated by more than 60% from its 2024 high.

Even so, Pantera's investment trajectory still clearly shows the self-iteration and phased adventure of a veteran crypto VC.

New battlefield: the rise of crypto stocks and Pantera’s strategy switch

At the beginning of 2025, the primary market cooled down, and liquidity and exit paths became new propositions for crypto VCs. However, in this context, the "coin stock wave" quietly emerged.

This time, Pantera Capital once again sensed the battlefield switching. In a few months, it evaluated more than 50 listed companies with "financing + buying coins" as the core strategy and began to participate deeply.

In order to take a bite of this new pie, Pantera has also launched a special "DAT Fund". Currently, several Pantera Fund limited partners have pledged to invest, and it is expected that a total of more than US$100 million will be invested in multiple DAT projects.

Today, its investment and layout can be seen in the "micro-strategies" of different currencies. The following are some of the Digital Asset Treasury (DAT) companies invested by Pantera:

It is worth noting that several companies in the table have seen their share prices rise more than 100 times in just one month. Pantera partner Cosmo Jiang calls this type of investment a "win on the upside, not much loss on the downside" structure.

[Note: Pantera usually enters the market when the DAT company is not yet publicly traded or is still priced close to its token net asset value (1.0x NAV), avoiding the high premium of the public market. ]

Regardless, Pantera Capital has already occupied a key position in this wave of cryptocurrency stocks. As crypto KOL AB Kuai.Dong said: "Live, die, Pantera."

Dan Morehead, the crypto-turned-macro player

When understanding Pantera Capital's style, one cannot avoid mentioning its founder Dan Morehead.

Dan Morehead has a very traditional background: he graduated from Princeton University with a degree in engineering, then entered Wall Street, honed his trading skills at institutions such as Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, and eventually became the chief financial officer and head of macro strategy at hedge fund giant Tiger Management. At that time, he managed assets worth billions of dollars and was adept at navigating global currencies and interest rates.

In 2003, he founded Pantera Capital, which was initially an ordinary investment company. It was not until 2013 that he had a four-hour in-depth discussion with two friends. That conversation completely ignited his interest in Bitcoin. Since then, Pantera has transformed into a venture capital institution in the field of encryption.

At that time, the price of Bitcoin was comparable to that of Tesla, so Morehead made a bold decision: sell all Tesla shares and bet on Bitcoin. This led to Pantera Capital's first success - the Bitcoin investment fund.

Dan Morehead once said that the key to investing is to lock in opportunities where the potential returns far outweigh the risks. Risks always exist, but what is really important is to find the right target that can bring explosive returns.

He emphasized: "If you want to get excess returns, you can't follow the mainstream and invest in projects that are watched by 20 analysts in every Wall Street company. This is why we repeatedly emphasize in our investor letter that 'make alternative investments even more alternative'."

Today, although Morehead rarely appears in the public eye, Pantera Capital still retains the deep imprint he left: bold, forward-looking, and closely aligned with market structure.

Twelve years, multiple rounds of narratives, and hundreds of projects, Pantera Capital is looking for signals in chaos and reshaping paths in structural fission.

In the never-ending race of crypto, Pantera is still betting.