Nic Carter

Carter earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy from the University of St Andrews and later an MSc in Finance (Finance and Investment) from the University of Edinburgh; he is a naturalized American citizen. Before founding Castle Island Ventures, he worked at Fidelity as the company’s first cryptoasset analyst, devising research frameworks for public blockchains.⁠[1][2][1][2]

In 2017, Carter and software engineer Aleksei Nokhrin started the blockchain data project Coin Metrics as an open source hobby project, bootstrapping it with their own funds for the following years.⁠[3]

In 2018, Carter and Matt Walsh, also a Fidelity alum, founded the venture firm Castle Island Ventures, both as founding partners; its first fund was $30 million. Carter recalled that the first fund launched in early 2018 during a prolonged bear market, when the founders they met cared deeply about the field and valuations were modest. The firm is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and invests in infrastructure products and services in the public blockchain ecosystem.⁠[4][4][4][4][4][2][5][5]

On February 27, 2019, Coin Metrics announced a $1.9 million seed round led by Castle Island Ventures with participation from Fidelity Investments, Highland Capital Partners, and Dragonfly Capital, and released its first suite of commercial products for institutions. Carter, then co-founder and board chairman, said the company planned to build whitelists of exchanges so that market reference rates would be drawn only from credible exchanges, excluding platforms that engage in wash trading; he also said that only a fraction of on-chain transactions are economically meaningful.⁠[3][3][3][3][3][3]

In January 2021, Castle Island Ventures published its comment letter on the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) proposed rule “Requirements for Certain Transactions Involving Convertible Virtual Currency or Digital Assets,” signed by Walsh and Carter as founding partners. The letter asked that the comment period be extended to 60 days and argued that onerous regulation and compliance costs would force startups to build their businesses in other jurisdictions.⁠[5][5][5][5]

On February 8, 2021, Castle Island Ventures announced the closing of its second fund, Castle Island Ventures II, at $50 million, to continue investing at the earliest stages in entrepreneurs building with public blockchain technology.⁠[6][6]

On February 16, 2022, Castle Island Ventures announced its third fund, the $250 million Castle Island Ventures III, investing across three themes: monetary networks, financial services, and internet architecture. Carter, then a CoinDesk columnist, said the new fund would continue investing at the intersection of blockchains and the regulated financial services industry, including brokerage, custody, exchanges, lenders, and banks, while becoming more active in Web3; he argued that an equity-focused approach is more attractive to limited partners who are familiar with equity rather than tokens.⁠[7][7][7][7][4][4][4][4]

In 2023, Carter wrote about the practice, beginning in 2023, of cutting the crypto industry off from banking services, calling it “Operation Choke Point 2.0” in reference to “Operation Choke Point,” an Obama-era program aimed at cutting off specific industries’ access to banking, and published a series of articles on Pirate Wires and other platforms. He considers the practice unconstitutional and has said the issue later became the subject of multiple congressional investigations.⁠[1][8][8][8]

In January 2023, Breed VC, a crypto venture firm founded by Jed BreedJed BreedJed Breed is a cryptocurrency venture investor and the founder and general partner of the early-stage crypto venture firm Breed VC.Open the full entry, closed fundraising for its first fund, with Carter investing as an individual. He said he had known Breed since meeting him in the Boston crypto scene in 2018, valued his track record and network, and that this was his first check as a limited partner; he also said his own first fund had likewise launched in a bear market, and that bear markets tend to be the best times to deploy capital. As of October 2026, the list of personal angel and LP investments on his personal website includes “Breed I/ II.”⁠[9][9][9][9][9][9][9][1][1]

Since 2025, Carter has published a series of articles on Substack about the threat quantum computing poses to Bitcoin’s cryptography, including the two-part “Bitcoin and the Quantum Problem,” “Bitcoin developers are sleepwalking towards collapse,” and, in 2026, “If the Quantum Canary Sings, It’s Too Late.” He believes a cryptographically relevant quantum computer may emerge within the next decade and that Bitcoin must begin its transition to post-quantum cryptography now.⁠[10][10][10][10][8]

On July 16, 2025, Talos, a provider of institutional trading and portfolio technology for digital assets, announced that it would acquire Coin Metrics, planning to incorporate Coin Metrics’ crypto market data, blockchain analytics, and benchmark indexes into Talos’s trading and portfolio management platform; Carter has since listed Coin Metrics as acquired by Talos.⁠[11][11][1]

Carter describes himself as not a Bitcoin Maximalist. He advocates freedom and Lockean property rights, argues that the Bank Secrecy Act is unconstitutional and should be repealed, and calls for restoring the private issuance of currency and currency competition; he considers stablecoins the most important application of blockchains after Bitcoin, restoring the properties of cash in digital form. His bylines have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, New York magazine, Fortune, Newsweek, CoinDesk, Pirate Wires, The Block, and Bitcoin Magazine, among others.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][8][8][1]

As of October 2026, Carter is a general partner at Castle Island Ventures, which invests at the intersection of blockchains and traditional finance; he co-hosts the podcast On The Brink with Matt Walsh, sits on the boards of Mash, Surus, Project11, and Robostrategy, and advises StablecoinX. The personal angel and LP investments he lists also include CoreWeave, Monad, and Mythos VC, among others.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1]

Personal website: https://niccarter.info/ (opens in a new window)⁠[1]

X: Public account: https://x.com/nic_carter (opens in a new window)⁠[1][1]

Substack: Personal newsletter: https://murmurationstwo.substack.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[1][1]

Medium: Archive of past articles: https://medium.com/@nic__carter (opens in a new window)⁠[1][1]

Castle Island Ventures: Official website: https://castleisland.vc/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]