Dear Friends & Family,

Our friend, colleague, researcher and founder, Philipp Sandner, passed away on January 16, aged 43.

Philipp was the center of gravity of the German blockchain community. He was a source of energy and inspiration for many.

Read our obituary if you want to learn more about a person who has made an impact on so many of us and left a remarkable legacy beyond theory.

Web3 Investor Gathering in Davos

This January event in a quaint village in Switzerland often stirs glamorous conspiracy theories about Global Elite Control, the New World Order, and the Great Reset.

However, our "Web3 Investor Gathering" event was again a great way to start the year. It provided an excellent setting to meet with both current and potential fund investors, blockchain movers & shakers, and venture capital colleagues from across the globe.

Yat Siu, the Co-Founder and Chairman of Animoca Brands, and Anthony Scaramucci, the relentless "never give up" advocate and Founder of SkyBridge Capital, came for up close and personal fireside chats.

Twelve experts from leading companies in the crypto community shared their insights on our panels, sparking good discussions.

Our Panora­ma room in the Ho­tel See­hof was burst­ing at the seams, and judg­ing by the at­ten­dees' re­luc­tance to leave even af­ter four hours, our "Web3 In­vestor Gather­ing" event seemed to have achieved ex­act­ly what we had hoped for.

We'll be back in Jan­uary 2025.

Our in­vest­ment in Funds on Chain

The tech­no­log­i­cal mi­gra­tion from a cen­tral­ized clear­ing to blockchain tech­nol­o­gy in the fund in­dus­try is in­evitable.

But as self-ev­i­dent as the move to new tech­nol­o­gy in fi­nan­cial mar­kets may seem, it takes mis­sion-dri­ven founders with ex­ten­sive in­dus­try ex­pe­ri­ence, sta­mi­na, and con­vic­tion to drive the change. Volk­er Braun­berger and Jo­hann Hainzinger fit this mold re­mark­ably well.

And it seems that nu­mer­ous open-mind­ed fund ad­min­is­tra­tors, ea­ger to shape the fu­ture rather than re­act to changes post fac­to, agree, as ev­i­denced by the ex­ten­sive list of po­ten­tial clients the com­pa­ny is talk­ing to.

We are very glad to be the first ex­ter­nal in­vestor in Funds on Chain and have every con­fi­dence that this team will de­liv­er an at­trac­tive val­ue propo­si­tion to fund ad­min­is­tra­tors all over the world.

Rec­om­mend­ed

This month, there is one book that many peo­ple are talk­ing about, and it is fresh offthe press:

Chris Dixon's "Read Write Own: Build­ing the Next Era of the In­ter­net."

Dixon is a gen­er­al part­ner at the ven­ture cap­i­tal firm An­dreessen Horowitz and leads the cryp­to di­vi­sion. He was ranked #1 on the Forbes Mi­das List of the world’s best ven­ture cap­i­tal in­vestors.

Giv­en his po­si­tion and the lega­cy of his col­league Marc An­dreessen, who played a his­toric role in pop­u­lar­is­ing the Web1 In­ter­net with his Mo­sa­ic and Netscape browsers, Dixon's in­sights into the In­ter­net's fu­ture are high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed.

The book is well-writ­ten and easy to un­der­stand, even for those of us with­out Meta­mask wal­lets con­nect­ed 24/7.

Dixon cri­tiques the per­sis­tent "casi­no" as­pect of cryp­to yet op­ti­misti­cal­ly suggests that blockchain tech­nol­o­gy might be on the verge of its defin­ing mo­ment, akin to the iPhone's launch.

His per­spec­tive on the trans­for­ma­tive po­ten­tial of Web3, giv­en his deep in­volve­ment in the ear­li­er phas­es of the In­ter­net, makes for a most com­pelling sto­ry.

We’re in­vest­ing

There is a considerable gap between what is possible with technology an what is being done today.

And that is why, even amid geopolitical instability and financial market fluctuations, we wake up each morning filled with great optimism about the potential for technology to leave a positive and enduring legacy.

We're always looking for founders leveraging Web3 tech to solve problems 10x better, faster, or cheaper. If you should come across a great team in this space, we would love to hear about them.

As always, if you have any comments or questions, you can reply directly to this newsletter.

Thanks for reading!

Wolfgang, Ben, Marcel, and Sagar