The Texas-based Multicoin Capital hired Mable Jiang, an investor of Beijing, to lead the venture firm’s hunt for new deals in Asia.
0/ Today I’m excited to share that @Mable_Jiang is joining Multicoin Capital as a Principal on the investment team based on Beijing She will be leading our efforts in China and Asia more broadly https://t.co/I4qkoNhAi4 — Kyle Samani (@KyleSamani) December 6, 2019
The company said that Multicoin started publishing research reports and announcements in Mandarin last summer, so Jiang will also help “capitalize on the structurally broken information flow for secondary-market investment”.
Jiang said:
“I think we’ll see a wave of really interesting China-native projects and dapps come to market next year. We also believe a global presence is one of the best ways to deliver more sophisticated views to people in different markets.”
Very excited to join @multicoincap! Looking forward to the journey ahead. Also very grateful for all the support from @Nirvana_Cap in the past years. https://t.co/OulF1zHmZ1 — Mable Jiang (@Mable_Jiang) December 6, 2019
However, Multicoin is merely one of many American crypto hedge funds and venture capital firms seeking a foothold in token-hungry markets like China and Korea. For example, Polychain Capital increased its investment in Nervos, the Chinese token project, alongside China Merchants Bank International, and sent partners to travel in Asia for a variety of meetings.
Alexander Pack, the Founding Partner at Dragonfly Capital, said:
“Several firms have asked us for help in sourcing Asia partners and employees. Asia leads the world in crypto users and adoption by a mile – it’s not even close.”
Likewise, Avichal Garg, the Co-founder of Electric Capital, said that he helms one of the few Silicon Valley funds not looking to expand in Asia because it is “such a different universe” that requires significant resources to address sustainably.
Garg added:
“You see a lot of trade volume. A lot of the pushing of boundaries is coming out of Asia, in part because the regulatory climate there is different. But most [funds] are hiring more junior talent [in Asia], which I think is a mistake… Dragonfly is potentially doing this the best where they have extremely high caliber people in both geographies.”
Jiang may be in the first half of her career trajectory, but she also said that she has a unique opportunity to leverage local knowledge.
She said:
“Localization is absolutely a key component in the accuracy and speediness of judgment. “For a fund to manage a ‘global’ asset, it has to connect the geographic dots and seek to understand the behaviors driving each investment culture.”
So, in a letter that sent to Multicoin’s investors last month, the firm said, “a significant amount of information travels through word of mouth, WeChat groups, and Mandarin-only social media properties.”
As such, the letter said that Mable Jiang’s job will be to close the information gap.
In some ways, this renewed Asia push is a continuation of a trend that started during the 2018 bear market, when BlockTower Capital became one of the first funds to shift strategies by hiring multilingual Goldman Sachs alumni Steve SeungKeun Lee.
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On the other hand, Jiang said that this is not a trend; it’s a new way to look at stateless assets. From her perspective, crypto requires diverse investors with local cultural competence contributing to a mosaic approach.
Thus, Jiang said:
“Crypto is one of the few assets that is truly ‘global. I think the biggest misconception is the urge to generically stereotype things with a tag of ‘east’ or ‘west.”
Source: coindesk.com