Asian VCs Invest $100M in Assembly Blockchain

Several large Asian venture capital firms and crypto hedge funds plan to invest $100 million on further developing apps on the new Assembly blockchain, Reuters reported Monday (Dec. 13).

LD Capital, Signum Capital, Huobi Ventures, UOB Venture Management, HyperChain Capital and Du Capital were among the firms investing in Assembly.

Assembly is a smart contract network like the Ethereum blockchain. It was rolled out by Berlin-based research and engineering group IOTA in November, and Dominik Schiener, co-founder of IOTA, said it will be a place for decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and games to be hosted.

“Assembly is now its own network that’s built on top of IOTA and enables anybody to create their own blockchain network, and this blockchain network is deemed secure and connected through IOTA,” Schiener told Reuters. “You can think of Assembly as being a network of networks, where there are many blockchains that are now being secured and connected through the same architecture.”

Reuters writes that Assembly’s beta version is live as of Dec. 13. Schiener said it will be rolled out officially next year, and that developers, creators and early contributors would be rewards with around 70% of the entire token supply.

PYMNTS writes that the Chinese crackdown on tech companies and crypto has seen many venture capitalists looking at companies in the U.S. as opposed to Asia, something that hasn’t happened since 2017.

See also: Crypto Startup Investors Bypass Asia in Favor of Backing US Firms

China was once the epicenter for crypto, but the tech crackdown has seen crypto firms and blockchain startups looking for capital negatively affected, per data from CB Insights.

As of September 2021, Beijing has banned crypto mining and declared crypto transactions of any kind illegal.

This has seen China’s crypto startups withering, but global investors have been benefiting from the change, with Q4 this year on track to be the biggest yet for those kinds of companies.