Report Says VC Firm Behind Snapchat Looks To Ramp Up Its Crypto Investments

The funding firm behind Snapchat is looking at approaches to expand their interests in the crypto industry, tech journal Recode revealed May 17.

Lightspeed is a point-of-sale and an online business software provider situated in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.  Lightspeed gives little and medium-sized retail and restaurant businesses with point of sale solutions.

Now, 50,000 businesses using Lightspeed in more than 100 nations and $15 billion in transactions processed by customers annually.

Aaron Batalion, an associate at venture capital firm Lightspeed, is leading an effort to support the association’s investment by exploring three strategies: setting up another fund, carving out a segment of an existing fund, or launching a new project, recode reports, referring to “sources”.

According to recode, Lightspeed is inclining toward carving out a piece of a current fund for crypto investment as opposed to setting up a new fund which they had been thinking about over the past couple of months.

Recode also includes that Batalion purportedly might not have wanted to pause and is thinking about stepping down from his position as a general partner at Lightspeed to launch his own crypto-centered project. Referring to a source near Batalion, Recode reports that Lightspeed is prepared to financially back the new potential project.

Batalion isn’t the main partner at Lightspeed keen on cryptocurrencies. Jeremy Liew, who led the company’s investment into Snapchat and is currently a bullish Bitcoin defender, was a piece of Lightspeed’s sponsorship of crypto wallet Blockchain.com’s initial funding in 2014.

Lightspeed’s enthusiasm for cryptocurrency is shared by numerous other major traditional VC firms. As Cointelegraph announced a month ago, both Comcast Ventures and the Rockefeller family’s venture capital arm Venrock are making their own moves into the crypto space.