CoinFund is a New York-based crypto-native investment firm founded in 2015 by Jake Brukhman. It is one of the longer-standing dedicated crypto funds in the United States, predating the 2017 ICO boom and the subsequent wave of crypto-specialist venture firms. The firm invests across early-stage and growth-stage Web3 projects, with a particular focus on decentralized infrastructure, DeFi protocols, and developer tooling.
In 2022, CoinFund closed its third flagship fund at approximately $300 million – the largest vehicle in its history at the time. The raise came during a period of significant institutional appetite for crypto venture, though the fund began deploying into a market that would turn sharply downward in mid-2022. The firm has generally described its mandate as backing foundational layers of the Web3 stack: base-layer networks, middleware, decentralized data and oracle infrastructure, and consumer-facing protocols with genuine on-chain activity.
CoinFund positions itself as a research-driven shop. Before the term "crypto VC" became common, the firm published analysis on token economics and decentralized network design that attracted attention in early developer communities. That intellectual orientation has shaped its portfolio, which skews toward infrastructure projects rather than short-cycle consumer applications.
Notable investments
- The Graph (GRT) – decentralized indexing protocol for blockchain data, now a widely used piece of Web3 infrastructure
- Filecoin – decentralized storage network built by Protocol Labs; CoinFund participated in early rounds
- Kraken – one of the largest US-based crypto exchanges; CoinFund is among early backers
- Dapper Labs / Flow – creator of NBA Top Shot and the Flow blockchain; backed prior to mainstream NFT attention
- Stacks (STX) – Bitcoin layer for smart contracts and decentralized apps
- Compound – foundational DeFi lending protocol on Ethereum
Public information on the full portfolio breakdown and individual deal sizes is limited. The 21-project portfolio count (per CoinMagnetic data) suggests a relatively concentrated strategy compared to larger multi-stage funds that run 50-100+ positions.
Team
Jake Brukhman is the founder and managing partner. He has a software engineering and mathematics background and was writing publicly about decentralized networks as early as 2015 – before most institutional investors treated crypto as a serious asset class. Seth Ginns joined as a managing partner and brought a traditional finance background, having spent years managing crypto allocations at a large hedge fund. Chris Perkins served as president and was previously a senior derivatives executive at Citi. Public information on current headcount and any partner departures or additions since 2024 is limited.
Recent activity
CoinFund has maintained a focus on decentralized data infrastructure and emerging DeFi primitives through the 2023-2025 cycle. The firm has been public about interest in restaking, decentralized sequencer networks, and applications built on Bitcoin layers – consistent with its long-standing Stacks investment. Specific deal announcements from 2025-2026 are not fully confirmed in public sources at the time of writing.
For verified recent announcements, the firm's official site and press releases are the most reliable source: coinfund.io. Coverage from The Block and CoinDesk tracks the firm's announcements regularly. Crunchbase maintains a CoinFund profile with funding round data where disclosed.
With a decade of operation, CoinFund carries more institutional credibility than most crypto-native funds. Its Fund III vintage places it in the difficult 2022-2023 cohort, meaning mark-to-market performance depends heavily on token recovery across its infrastructure positions. The 16.46% retail ROI figure in available data reflects the mixed outcomes of that deployment period. Whether Fund IV emerges – and at what size – will be a meaningful signal of where the firm stands heading into the next cycle.
