WSOP, courtesy of Sean LippelIn the winter of 2014, professional poker player Sean Lippel was going through a rough time. Lippel's fund is backed by hedge fund billionaire Alan Howard, who Forbes estimates is worth $2.8 billion, financial services giant Macquarie Group and the venture capital arm of trading firm DRW Group. After working his way up to principal in 2019 and partner earlier this year, Lippel was officially given the reins of his first fund—the DeFi Fund— about six months ago. At launch the fund, formally called the FinTech Collective DeFi Fund I, invested in seven companies. Existing investments in decentralized asset syndication platform Centrifuge (CFG, valued at $128 million) and decentralized platform for financial contracts Dharma were re-upped.

Source: Forbes August 18, 2021 18:00 UTC