New Layer Capital

Founder Nicholas Safford leads the investment team, supported by Operating Partners Alex Lyashok and Dave Perrill, plus Venture Partner Faisal Baig. Safford's background in energy-sector M&A at Aramco shapes the firm's focus on Bitcoin-linked infrastructure, while Lyashok and Perrill contribute operational and data-center expertise.

It operates both. The firm manages committed venture funds and runs an investment syndicate with over 1,000 members. The syndicate allows individual accredited investors — primarily tech entrepreneurs, finance executives and Bitcoin-ecosystem participants — to co-invest alongside the firm's managed vehicles.

The firm invests from Pre-Seed through Series B. Its approach is to provide early-stage capital and then remain engaged through commercial strategy support, financial planning guidance and geographic expansion assistance rather than passive monitoring.

The firm does not invest in generalist crypto or non-Bitcoin blockchain ecosystems. Its mandate stays within the Bitcoin protocol stack — energy and mining infrastructure, Lightning Network scalability, financial services, privacy and security, AI, and decentralized applications built on or servicing Bitcoin.

Sourcing leans on the team's deep energy and Bitcoin-industry networks. Nicholas Safford's Aramco tenure connects the firm to energy operators, while the 1,000-member syndicate provides proprietary visibility into emerging Bitcoin infrastructure deals. Operating Partners with data-center and mining backgrounds further narrow deal flow to physically settled, infrastructure-heavy businesses.

The firm's public portfolio and syndicate model suggest it regularly co-invests. The syndicate itself writes pro-rata allocations, and Operating Partner Alex Lyashok's history — including leading White Rock Management's U.S. expansion alongside other backers — indicates a comfort with syndicated and club-deal structures.

Operating Partner Dave Perrill founded Compute North, a large-scale high-performance computing and Bitcoin mining infrastructure company that filed for Chapter 11 in 2022. Perrill departed Compute North in September 2022. The experience informs New Layer Capital's diligence on mining and data-center investments but does not constitute an active operating relationship.