Venture capital firm 1confirmation is announcing a new, $45 million fund for investing in cryptocurrency startups.

Led by early Coinbase employee Nick Tomaino, the firm's first fund, focused on seed rounds, amounted to $26 million.

"We wanted to start off relatively small, prove out the model and raise more capital if the model was working," Tomaino told CoinDesk in an email. "The model is working well and we had strong support from our existing [limited partner] base to launch a larger second fund."

He says he's broadly optimistic about the crypto industry. In a blog post shared with CoinDesk in advance, Tomaino wrote:

1confirmation has invested in a wide array of new companies in the industry, including BloXroute, Tendermint, OpenSea and Commonwealth. The firm invests in both startup equity and cryptocurrency tokens.

While Tomaino declined to detail participants in the new fund, he noted that it is "largely backed by our existing Fund I LPs." When 1confirmation was first announced, limited partners included: Peter Thiel,  Marc Andreessen, Balaji Srinivasan, Brendan Eich, Runa Capital and Real Ventures, among others.

This larger fund will allow for the company to write larger checks while continuing to capitalize on being close to pioneers in the space, Tomaino told CoinDesk.

He wrote in an email:

In his blog post, Tomaino emphasizes the importance of not chasing the trend so much as investing in "focused, disciplined, mission-driven founders." Further, he predicts that bitcoin will continue to be the market leader and that ethereum will follow close behind, particularly as the platform for decentralized finance.

Tomaino writes:

Image: Nick Tomaino speaks at Token Summit 2018, via Brady Dale for CoinDesk