Billionaires, Black Swans, and Therapy: Inside Dao5’s $222M Crypto Fundraising Romp 🍸🚀

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Darlings, Tekin Salimi—the grand puppet master at Dao5—confided that the latest VC spectacle amassed its glitzy $222 million from a select coterie of just 15 limited partners. Picture family offices, mysterious billionaires, and the kind of “notables” one only encounters under chandeliers while sipping champagne. Apparently, the sparkling performance of their former fund lured this marvellous gaggle back for more.

Dao5 Catapults Past Financial Gloom: $222M Fund Secured Despite Existential Doldrums

While the rest of the financial world nibbles on its fingernails and mutters about “market conditions,” Dao5 has, with alarming cheerfulness, gathered a war chest. Born in 2022—when optimism in crypto was as unfashionable as corduroy—Dao5 has gallantly announced a $222 million crypto fund, even as IPOs everywhere perform tragic, art-house fainting fits.

Salimi, the dapper ringleader at Dao5, let slip to Fortune that this latest fund is almost as exclusive as a By Invitation Only soirée. The original investors have already wrung out every last cent and more from their initial bets—one must assume they’re smiling somewhere on yachts, caressing their returns.

“I credit that to a big part of why we’re able to have a successful fundraise in this market,” said Salimi, no doubt enjoying the peculiar Swedish massage that only enormous piles of money can provide.

Dao5’s je ne sais quoi? A full-service experience for their chosen startups. “Venture capitalist by day, therapist by night”—oh, to be a crypto founder in need of both a seed round and a shoulder to cry on! One assumes Dao5 keeps couches onsite, just in case anyone needs to recline and process the existential terrors of web3.

Against all odds (and through storms of black swans), Dao5 performed a neat party trick in 2022: raising $125 million just as FTX detonated spectacularly. The rest of the industry reeled, but Dao5 pirouetted their way into projects like Berachain and Bittensor with remarkable aplomb.

Things, however, have turned a touch more terrestrial. Gone are the madcap “extremely sci-fi” projects of the first fund; now, this ravishing new $222 million will adorn more sensible endeavours like stablecoins and asset tokenization. “It’s almost like the less sexy products are now more important,” Salimi sighed, the agony of practicality etched across his brow. 🥂

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2025-05-03 13:59