In 2021, Coinbase Ventures associate Connor Dempsey published a portfolio breakdown, revealing that DeFi was tied with centralized finance as the top category.
Coinbase Ventures is the venture capital arm of Coinbase, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. According to Dempsey’s post, the firm made just under 150 new deals in 2021, bringing its total portfolio to 250 companies.
DeFi tops Coinbase’ charts
Both DeFi and “CeFi” accounted for roughly 23% of the total. Recent notable investments in each category include the firm’s support for DeFi wallet startup DeBank and the financial advisor-focused crypto investment platform Onramp Invest.
The next most important category, according to the firm, was “protocols and web3 infrastructure,” which accounted for 20% of the total. This was followed by 17 percent of “non-fungible token(NFT)/metaverse” investments. The music platform Royal is one notable NFT startup that the venture firm has recently backed. In the meantime, Coinbase intends to launch its own NFT marketplace.
Platform and developer tool investments, such as CoinTracker, a crypto tax reporting platform, accounted for 15% of Coinbase Ventures’ portfolio in 2021. The remaining 2% went to unclassified recipients.
