Castle Island Ventures

We believe that permissionless blockchains represent a new form of politico-economic institution that will fundamentally alter market structures and spawn entirely new industries

We are focused on supporting entrepreneurs that are on a mission to build the infrastructure services to push these networks to their potential

We bring a wealth of experience building for cryptoassets networks from within the financial services industry to founders and early stage teams Prior to founding Castle Island Ventures, Matt was a Vice President at Fidelity Investments where he led a number of the firm’s blockchain / cryptoasset initiatives While at Fidelity, he led the creation, operationalization, and the investment strategy of a private fund focused exclusively on the cryptoasset sector

Matt holds a BS in Business Administration from Babson College and an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business

Before founding Castle Island, Nic Carter worked for Fidelity as their first cryptoasset analyst, where he devised research perspectives on public blockchains He is the cofounder of Coin Metrics

He holds a degree in philosophy from the University of St Andrews and an MSc Finance and Investment from the University of Edinburgh

Prior to joining Castle Island Ventures, Sean was a Principal at Highland Capital Partners where he focused on early growth investments Prior to Highland, Sean was an investor at Pomona Capital in New York and Hong Kong Sean started his career covering financial institutions as an investment banker at Bank of America Merrill Lynch He holds a BA in Economics from Vanderbilt University

Prior to joining Castle Island Ventures, Ria was Director of Research at Fidelity Digital Assets where she worked on bitcoin and digital asset research Before joining Fidelity, Ria held the role of Senior Research Analyst at Circle, where she built out the Circle Research platform

Ria started her career as an Equity Research Associate on the Fintech and Payments team at Credit Suisse She holds a BS in Finance from the New York University Stern School of Business

Prior to joining Castle Island Ventures, Hunter was Head of US at Bitstamp where he was hired as the first employee in the region During his time there he was responsible for establishing, growing, and operating all aspects of the regulated crypto exchange's presence in the US Before joining Bitstamp, Hunter was Head of Trading at Coinbase, where he started the institutional trading desk and helped establish the New York office

Hunter started his career as an Equity Trader, having previously worked at Barclays, RBC, and Credit Suisse He holds a BA in Economics from Colgate University

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