The total market cap for all cryptocurrencies stands at $293 billion, and while much of this value has been generated by individual traders buying and selling their own private stashes of crypto, it's also largely the result of big investment funds. These are companies that have crypto assets under management worth as much as $1 billion or upward, with most of them qualifying as the whales the cryptocurrency community often talks about after every market movement.
Yet, aside from simply trading Bitcoin, Ether or many other cryptocurrencies, funds also often invest venture capital (VC) in blockchain — and crypto-related startups. This makes them doubly important for the growth of the cryptocurrency industry, given that they support not only the currencies of the future, but also the platforms and companies that will harness these currencies to build entirely new financial ecosystems.