Today, Andreessen Horowitz (known as a16z) a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz announced the launch of a16z crypto, a $300 million venture fund that will invest in crypto companies and protocols. The fund is designed to include the best features of traditional venture capital, updated to the modern crypto world.
The team said “We are focused on non-speculative use case. We want services powered by crypto protocols to be used by hundreds of millions and eventually billions of people. Crypto tokens are the native asset class of digital networks, but their value is driven by the underlying, practical uses cases.”
The announcement noted:
– We are long-term, patient investors. We’ve been investing in crypto assets for 5+ years. We’ve never sold any of those investments, and don’t plan to any time soon. We structured the a16z crypto fund to be able to hold investments for 10+ years.
– We have an “all weather” fund. We plan to invest consistently over time, regardless of market conditions. If there is another “crypto winter,” we’ll keep investing aggressively.
– We provide operational support to entrepreneurs. Our crypto investments have access to the same 80+ person a16z operating teams as do our non-crypto investments. Our operating teams have deep expertise in executive and technical recruiting, regulatory affairs, communications and marketing, and general startup management. We are responsible participants in the governance of companies and the governance of networks.
– We are flexible with respect to stage, asset type, and geography. One reason we created a new fund is to have maximum flexibility. We invest at all stages, from seed stage pre-launch projects to fully developed later-stage networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum. We’ll invest in traditional financial instruments like equity or convertible notes, and new instruments including the direct purchase of coins/tokens. Crypto is a global phenomenon, with great projects all around the world, and we’ll invest accordingly.
“Andreessen Horowitz’s new $300 million crypto fund, “a16z crypto”, is a clear sign of the levels of trust in the long-term market. Far from being a passing fad, we are starting to witness the migration of billions of dollars of institutional money into the sector. The floodgates will further widen as crypto custodian solutions are launched – Ledger and Coinbase recently announced their custodial services and BitGo have been in discussions with SEC after acquiring a qualified custodian called Kingdom Trust. Once these solutions are up and running (likely by the end of the year) we can expect to see a huge wave of capital hit the market.”
