Spotlight on Pantera: an Ankr investor
Introduction
Ok guys — I’ve covered two of Ankr’s strategic partners so far (SAP and Celer), and hopefully unveiled some interesting information, but now it’s time to switch focus onto the other side —that of financial (rather than technical) investment.
It’s widely known that Ankr has financial backing from some major investment funds, and even a couple of top exchanges (KuCoin and Okex), but their biggest investor is someone you may not know so much about…
They’re called ‘Pantera Capital’ and they mostly invest in projects related to blockchain and digital currency. I think their pinned ‘tweet’ says so much about their passion for blockchain:
Pantera have a stake in some major projects such as Bakkt (yes, THAT Bakkt), BitStamp, Circle (the Goldman-Sachs backed exchange), Harbor, Polychain. ZCash and 0x.
Oh, and they also have a stake in Celer — the strategic partner of Ankr that I covered in my previous article, too — coincidence? I’ve never really believed in them myself…
The Krug Connection
Pantera’s CIO is a guy called Joey Krug — a very tech-savvy, super-bullish-crypto guy, based in San Francisco (the same city as Ankr — and you already know how I feel about coincidences).
Joey is also the co-founder of Augur, a very cool crypto project (look it up, trust me — it’s fascinating). Now, Augur is of note because it utilises decentralised Oracles — and as you may already know from the Ankr website, seamless integration with Oracles is a fundamental attribute of the platform.
Oracles and Ankr
What’s an Oracle? Well essentially, it’s a way for blockchain projects to interact with real-world occurrences or data. Stuff like being able to access weather system information, or market data or… data related to a complex calculation of any kind. It’s where the esoteric crypto world and the real world can meet.
Speculation time…
Of course, this is pure speculation on my part, but I could see there being a relationship between Ankr and Augur in the future; they seem to be a very good fit. It makes more sense than Ankr engineering their own Oracles, and there doesn’t seem to be a strategic partner listed on the Ankr site yet that could fill this gap. With this analysis, I’ll either look like a fool or a genius— I guess all will be revealed in good time!
Summary
So, to summarise, Pantera is a very well-connected company, and as one of Ankr’s leading investors, they’ll want to make sure the project succeeds. There are already several clear links between various projects connected by Pantera and there are clear indications that Augur could fit nicely in to this pattern too. I can also envisage the connections that Pantera have to some good exchanges being influential too.
SAP, Celer and now Pantera — the Ankr partnerships and investors just look better and better the more deeply I research them. I’m not sure where I’m going to look next, but one thing’s for sure, the more I dig in to the project and the relationships surrounding it, the more I like it.
Rest assured, I’ll be sure to share any new information I uncover with all of you here soon!