McKenna, a former ROK Capital researcher, and Ilya Paveliev, former head of growth at Haruko, founded a cryptocurrency investment firm called Arete Capital. The company launched its first fund on April 1, focusing on institutional DeFi and blockchain gaming verticals with a target size of $20 million.
The founders said the fund has $10 million committed at launch and is expected to be fully settled in the next two months. Half of the fund will be allocated to venture capital and the other half will be used for liquidity token investments. It will focus primarily on institutional DeFi, real-world assets, blockchain games, and other emerging crypto ecosystems. The fund has appointed three advisors: Collin Erickson, an independent consultant for projects such as Centrifuge; cryptoanon Spark C, co-founder of cryptocurrency gaming group Wolves DAO; and Cryptoanon Odysseas, an engineer at Phylax who previously worked at Nomad.