By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Proof of Capital, a U.S. venture capital fund, was launched on Wednesday with funding of $50 million, its founders said in a statement. The fund will invest in blockchain projects.
Blockchain, which first emerged as the system powering bitcoin, is a shared database maintained by a network of computers connected to the internet.
In a separate email to Reuters, the fund said the $50-million investment was raised last month. Its backers include HTC Exodus, a Taiwanese maker of smartphones and other consumer electronics, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, and Taiwanese company Formosa Plastics.
The fund, which has headquarters in San Francisco and Hong Kong, will invest in companies focused on financial technology relating to payments and custody, infrastructure, as well as the hardware and consumer layers of the blockchain ecosystem.
The fund said it has already made its first investment in Latin America-based blockchain platform Ubanx.
"We want to meet and build long-term partnerships with founders who want to define this new internet," said Edith Yeung, one of the fund's founders. Yeung is also a partner at 500 Startups, an early stage venture fund based in Silicon Valley.