Noted venture capital firm Bain Capital launched a $560 million crypto-specific fund earlier in March. The news broke on International Women’s Day, and Bain earned some online backlash for a photo of the all-male Bain Capital Crypto (BCC) team.
Those demographics changed on Tuesday with the announcement that Lydia Hylton is joining the team as a partner.
“I’ve gotten to know the BCC team over the last few months and have been blown away by their culture, intellectual rigor and investment judgment. We’ve pontificated at length about protocol defensibility, reflexivity and value accrual in the infrastructure stack. I’m excited to explore some of these topics working with an exceptional team,” Hylton wrote in an announcement post.
Hylton previously worked for Redpoint Ventures, a generalist venture capital firm that invests in seed, early and growth-stage projects. She shared a byline on the firm’s post announcing an investment in crypto infrastructure firm Alchemy in October.
At Bain, Hylton wrote that she will focus on decentralized finance (DeFi), consumer Web 3 and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO).
Bain Capital Ventures exec Stefan Cohen had posted the all-male team photo on March 8, sparking a backlash. He later deleted the tweet and apologized, writing that the firm was “committed to hiring women, investing in women-led projects and being a driving force in the industry for sponsoring the creativity and genius of women, non-binary people and people of color.”
Bain had followed Sequoia in launching a crypto-specific fund and was followed by a $250 million capital commitment from Bessemer Venture Partners toward crypto projects.
The trifecta of fund launches was widely seen as a signal that traditional finance firms are moving further into the nearly $2 trillion cryptocurrency sector.
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Brandy covers crypto-related venture capital deals for CoinDesk.
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