by Welcome back to Chain Reaction, a podcast that dives deep into the stories, backgrounds and breaking news with the biggest names in crypto.
For this week’s episode, I interviewed Gwendolyn Regina, chief investment officer at tier 1 blockchain BNB Chain. Prior to her current role, Regina worked at Facebook – or, as some now call it, Meta – building a new business unit for venture capital partnerships and startup growth. She is also a founder of a few different companies and a member of the founding team of an early stage technology investment firm, Thymos Capital.
As an investment director, Regina analyzes new projects, talks to developers and manages the BNB Network scholarship program, which attracts up to 10 projects per month to help them grow in the network.
BNB Chain was launched in September 2020 and was initially started by Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume.
Since then, BNB Chain has aimed to be a separate entity from Binance, decentralized and community owned, focusing on three audiences: retail markets, builders and developers, and linking the business of Web2.0 with web3, said Regina. “We are here to, number one, grow the blockchain and grow the pie.”
Although last year was unstable for cryptocurrency markets, BNB’s investment strategy takes a long-term view and is not mainly affected by day-to-day market events, explained Regina.
“Our investment thesis does not change, but it also changes”, joked Regina. “We all know that blockchain and cryptocurrency move incredibly fast, so we are more accurate in certain areas, but overall it hasn’t changed.”
All in all, through the bear market and “mini bulls” along the way, “we are in a phase where everyone is building,” Regina said. “And we want to enable more features on BNB Chain.”
Web3 games on BNB Chain have also grown “organically through robustness and cheaper fees,” but the blockchain team is now “doubling down” on this sector to encourage more players and developers to play and build on their chain, added Regina. Of the 1 million daily active users, about 40% are gamers, she shared.
“Our GameFi infrastructure has always been relatively strong, but as things evolve so much, we’re really trying to find a complete GameFi infrastructure,” said Regina. “Going back to our investment thesis, when we look at the different themes, we always ask ourselves what is missing now and more importantly (…) we have to think about what will be important in six months.”
For Regina and the BNB investment team, investments are “more than financial capital; there are really many incentives for growth”, among other elements.
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