Meta Change Capital Launches With €100M Venture Fund Aimed At Blockchain

Blockchain professionals Nikola Stojanow and Luka Sucic announced the creation of Meta Change Capital on Monday and are raising a €100 million venture capital fund focused on blockchain development in emerging markets.

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Stojanow is co-founder of Lichtenstein-based æternity Blockchain and creator of AE Ventures, an investment arm for entrepreneurs building companies using æternity blockchain. Sucic is former head of investments and acceleration at AE Ventures.

The agnostic fund, which equates to about $112 million, is regulated in the United Kingdom and will focus on underdeveloped parts of Europe, Middle East, Asia and Africa. The United States is not off the table for investment opportunities, but there is so much innovation in the blockchain space coming from outside the U.S., where blockchain infrastructure isn’t as developed, Sucic told Crunchbase News.

“The U.S. is functioning very nicely, has a good infrastructure, but in other places, that infrastructure is nonexistent, very bad or absolutely needed,” he said. “We are going to focus on the places where we build that vast network.”

Stojanow added that the fund will also focus on the emerging talent coming out of those areas and provide funding—where there often is none—to people trying to innovate, solve problems and monetize their ideas.

Blockchain technology is often used to send a transaction, such as digital currency, from one place to another in a democratized way, Sucic said.

“Blockchain is so complex,” he said. “The United States has one unifying currency, but there is no such thing in the rest of the world. There is no freedom of transaction, but blockchain technology democratizes finances.”

Eager to begin funding startups, Stojanow and Sucic said they have already performed due diligence on about 30 startups. They see their portfolio consisting of a diverse mix of blockchain companies with ideas including crowdsourcing power plant investments and gaming where reward tokens can be transferred between games.

Stojanow didn’t disclose how much money has been raised for the Meta Change Capital fund so far, but did say there are commitments. He is waiting for the travel bans, put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, to lift so he can close many of the deals. The fund is expected to close by the fourth quarter of 2020.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias