The data suggests a pattern. Traditional finance is not just dipping toes into crypto; it is building permanent infrastructure. Last week, Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square announced the launch of Pershing Square Ventures Ltd., an evergreen perpetual capital vehicle designed to hold private company investments through IPO and beyond. At first glance, this is a footnote for the crypto world—a billionaire hedge fund manager adding a VC arm. But trace the architecture. The evergreen structure, the family office asset roll-in, the regulatory gaps around information barriers—these are not just features of a fund. They are a blueprint for how traditional capital can capture the most attractive deals in crypto-native venture, and in doing so, undermine the very decentralization the industry claims to value.
Context: The Evergreen Paradox
Pershing Square Ventures is not a typical venture capital fund. Traditional VC funds have a 10-year lifecycle: invest, grow, exit, distribute, liquidate. The evergreen fund has no such termination date. It can hold assets indefinitely, collecting management fees on a growing AUM base. This is powerful for pre-IPO and post-IPO stages. The fund can participate in late-stage rounds of crypto companies—exchanges, custodians, Layer 2 infrastructure providers—and then continue to hold the tokens or equity after the company goes public. No pressure to sell at year 8. This is exactly what founders want: patient capital.
But the evergreen structure also introduces a subtle but dangerous incentive. Management fees are based on AUM. The longer the fund holds assets, the more fees it collects. This creates a natural bias toward holding positions rather than returning capital. For crypto projects, this means a large, permanent shareholder with no exit horizon. That shareholder is Ackman’s entity—a centralized decision-maker with a loud public voice. Contrast this with a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) where governance is distributed. The evergreen fund is the antithesis of that.
Ackman’s family office is rolling in existing private investments into the fund. That means the fund starts with a portfolio of assets that have already been selected. The entry price is a key variable. If the assets are transferred at cost, the fund instantly has unrealized gains—making it attractive to outside LPs. But the valuation process is opaque. There is no smart contract verifying the price. There is no on-chain transparency. The fund’s initial portfolio is a black box.
Core: Tracing the Structural Risks for Crypto Startups
Let me dissect the implications for a hypothetical crypto startup that accepts investment from Pershing Square Ventures. Assume the startup is a Layer 2 scaling solution, post-TVL but pre-token launch. The deal is structured as a SAFE with token warrants. Ackman’s fund invests $50 million at a $2 billion valuation. The evergreen fund holds the tokens. The startup goes public via a direct listing or a SPAC. The fund continues to hold.
Now, the threat model. Ackman is an active Twitter user. He has a history of making public statements that move markets. On a typical day, he tweets about a company’s fundamentals. For a crypto project, such a tweet could be seen as market manipulation. The SEC’s Reg FD rules apply to material non-public information. If Ackman learns something about the startup’s upcoming token unlock or a key partnership, and then tweets about it, he could create an information asymmetry. The fund’s size amplifies the impact. This is not a hypothetical; Pershing Square Capital Management was fined by the SEC in 2024 for internal control failures around Reg FD. The same risk exists in the venture arm.
But the deeper risk is centralization of governance. Many crypto projects have token-based voting. A fund that holds a large percentage of the token supply—especially if the tokens are locked or subject to vesting—can dictate protocol upgrades. The evergreen structure means the fund will hold those tokens for years, not months. This creates a permanent veto power. The project’s DAO becomes a facade. The real governance is in the hands of a single limited partner: Ackman’s fund.
Based on my audit experience with several DeFi protocols, I have seen how concentrated token ownership leads to extractive behavior. The largest holder can push for fee structures that benefit them, or block upgrades that dilute their holdings. The evergreen fund’s fee model only exacerbates this: the fund wants AUM to grow, so it will support actions that increase the token price in the short term, even if they harm long-term decentralization. This is a classic principal-agent problem. The fund’s interests are not aligned with the protocol’s long-term health.
Furthermore, the fund’s ability to hold post-IPO means it can participate in secondary offerings and lock-up agreements. This gives it access to insider information about future token distributions. The information barrier between Ackman’s public persona and the fund’s private dealings is a regulatory minefield. The SEC has already signaled increased scrutiny of private funds’ use of material non-public information. Crypto projects, with their token-based compensation and frequent insider updates, are particularly vulnerable.
Contrarian: The False Promise of Institutional Legitimacy
The prevailing narrative is that Pershing Square’s entry into venture capital is a net positive for crypto. It brings institutional capital, brand recognition, and a path to public markets. The evergreen structure allows crypto projects to avoid the “VC dump” at token unlock events. This is true on the surface. But the contrarian view is that this structure is a Trojan horse for centralization.
Consider the competitive landscape. Traditional VC funds like Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and Paradigm have already moved into crypto. They have dedicated teams, technical due diligence, and tokenomics expertise. Pershing Square does not have a crypto-native team. The article mentions no venture team composition. The fund’s technical depth is likely low. It will rely on the brand of Ackman to win deals, not on technical insights. This means it will attract deals that are already pre-vetted by other investors—the “hot” rounds. It will follow the herd, not lead.
But the herd is moving toward centralized, regulated entities. The largest crypto VC firms are now lobbying for regulatory clarity that favors traditional finance. Pershing Square’s evergreen fund is a perfect vehicle for this: it can hold Reg S tokens, sponsor ETFs, and provide liquidity to institutional investors. The fund becomes a bridge between the crypto world and the traditional financial system. That bridge is one-way. Capital flows into crypto, but governance flows out. The crypto project gains a permanent, centralized shareholder that has no incentive to distribute power.
Another blind spot: the fund’s structure is designed for equity, not tokens. Equity in a crypto company is not the same as native tokens. Tokens have utility, governance, and monetary properties. The evergreen fund may hold tokens, but its legal structure is optimized for equity. This creates a mismatch. The fund may demand preferential treatment in token issuance, such as priority redemption rights or anti-dilution clauses. These terms are common in traditional VC but can cripple a token’s monetary policy. I have seen this in practice: a project that sold a large equity stake to a traditional investor later faced pressure to burn tokens or suppress inflation to protect the investor’s valuation. The result was a token that favored holders over users.
Takeaway: The Architecture of Capture
Pershing Square Ventures is not a venture fund. It is a permanent capital vehicle designed to capture the most lucrative part of the crypto lifecycle: the transition from private to public. The evergreen structure, the family office roll-in, the regulatory gaps—these are not accidents. They are deliberate architectural choices that reveal the true intent of the fund: to hold and control, not to support and exit.
For the crypto ecosystem, the question is not whether to accept such capital. It is whether the cost of that capital—the permanent governance overhang, the regulatory risk, the centralization of power—is worth the liquidity. The answer is likely no. But the market is euphoric, and founders are desperate for names like Ackman to validate their projects. I have seen this before. In 2021, when NFT standards were audited, the rush to partner with influencers led to code-level vulnerabilities. Now, the same rush is happening with institutional capital. The math does not negotiate. The architecture reveals the true intent. And the intent of an evergreen fund is to hold forever.
Tracing the gas cost anomaly back to the EVM—I have learned that the most dangerous vulnerabilities are not in the code but in the incentives. Pershing Square Ventures is a new incentive structure. It is designed to be permanent, centralized, and opaque. The crypto community should treat it with the same skepticism it applies to any protocol that claims to be decentralized but has a single point of control. Because underneath the brand, the architecture is the same: a permanent holder, a permanent risk.