The largest crypto exchange in the world in terms of trading volume, Binance announced the launch of a venture capital fund. The announcement was made on Wednesday by Binance Labs, the venture arm of the firm, and it disclosed that they had already raised funds worth $500 million for its startup. It also stated that they had secured this funding from a number of venture capital firms, such as Breyer Capital and DST Global, and some other unnamed corporations and family offices as well. This announcement comes after the one Andreessen Horowitz had made in the previous week.

He announced a massive fund worth $4.5 billion that would make investments in startups in the crypto space. In fact, Ripple Labs and FTX have also announced that they will be making acquisitions in the crypto space, as reduced market valuations means the time is ripe to do so. As far as Binance Labs is concerned, it said that they were going to use the said capital for investment in companies that are dedicated to ‘Web 3’. While the term does not have a proper definition as yet, it defines a future version of the internet, which is still hypothetical.

It has been envisioned as a more decentralized version and would also include the powerful blockchain technology that is behind numerous cryptocurrencies in the market. The launch of the new fund by the world’s top crypto exchange comes at a time when the crypto space as a whole has declined sharply. There has been an almost 50% decline in the price of Bitcoin since it hit its new all-time high of $69,000 back in November last year. This has had a major impact on companies in the space, particularly those that are publicly listed, such as Coinbase.

The company’s share price has plunged by almost 69% since the beginning of the year. Investors are concerned that this decline will eventually begin to affect startups as well, include those that are funded privately. However, Binance Labs’ Ken Li, who heads investments and mergers and acquisitions, disclosed that private markets had not seen much impact of the overall decline in the crypto market, but startups that have a valuation in excess of $1 billion or higher are seeing a slowdown. Like FTX and Ripple Labs, Binance is also interested in taking advantage of the plunge in the crypto market.

It wants to use it to find what may possibly be the next big thing. They are planning to make investments in early-stage startups as well as pre-seeds and even growth equity. In fact, they are also willing to buy tokens and shares alike. Li revealed that they were seeking projects that could result in the Web3 ecosystem’s growth. These projects could include non-fungible tokens (NFTs), infrastructure and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). According to estimates, there are between 300,000 and 500,000 developers who are currently part of the Web3 ecosystem and Binance is hoping that they can help in pushing up this number.