Andreessen Horowitz conducts research on cryptocurrency with new 2.2B USD fund

In 2013, the Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz led a round of financing for a startup called Coinbase. Cryptocurrency has hardly become mainstream, but Coinbase, which is only one year away from Y Combinator, has positioned itself as the financial exchange of the future. Andreessen Horowitz led a $25 million financing, the first of multiple investments that made Coinbase the world’s most well-funded cryptocurrency company.

Eight years later, this investment has paid off. In April, Coinbase became The first large-scale crypto company to go public And to do so in such a passionate way that even cryptocurrency skeptics have noticed. Coinbase’s first day of trading closed at $328.28 per share, valued at $85.8 billion-this is Anderson Horowitz’s largest exit so far. (Today it is trading at $226.01 per share.)

Now, the company is betting that its growing interest in cryptocurrencies can continue to make it very wealthy. Andreessen Horowitz today announced the establishment of the third crypto-focused fund for the “next generation of visionary crypto founders”.The $2.2 billion Crypto Fund III will be one of the largest capital commitments to the crypto ecosystem in history, about four times the size of the company The second cryptocurrency fund a year ago. “We believe that the next wave of computing innovation will be driven by encryption,” several partners wrote in a report. Blog post, Which shows potential innovations in governance, networks, and distribution of economic benefits.

Andreessen Horowitz’s new fund coincides with the crypto gold rush. According to reports, so far this year, venture capitalists have invested $17 billion in crypto companies. Bloomberg. Another early investor in Coinbase, Union Square Ventures, will Keep 30% It is a new $251 million fund set up by crypto companies. Even more traditional players, such as PayPal and Visa, have begun to get involved in the crypto space by joining Blockchain Capital’s new company. $300 million fundMany of these investors are betting that other startups can replicate the great success of Coinbase and the recent enthusiasm for the like Irreplaceable tokens Many new encryption projects will be triggered.

Nevertheless, the fate of these startups is largely related to the price of Bitcoin and other mainstream cryptocurrencies. These prices may fluctuate. The price of Bitcoin fell from a record high of $63,000 in April to about $33,000 this month. Recently, according to Elon Musk’s tweets and news about crypto mining, prices have seen a seesaw.

Cryptocurrencies have been unstable since they existed, but this has not stopped entrepreneurs from pouring in when the time is right. Chris Dixon, general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, called it “Crypto price innovation cycle“: The price soared, and the enthusiasm that followed, new startups were established, and venture capitalists rushed to provide them with funds. Then the price fell, which attracted more media attention, and some startups also fell. But Dixon believes that In the past decade, this “chaotic” cycle has led to many innovations. Andreessen Horowitz used his $515 million Crypto II fund to fund some of these companies, including helping to establish Decentralized applicationAnd Goldfinch, this is a platform for crypto lending without crypto collateral.

Although the cryptocurrency craze is close to the highest level in history, regulators have also begun to pay more attention to digital currencies: Blow About Bitcoin miners and startups that facilitate crypto transactions. In the United States, some regulators have also called for stronger enforcement of cryptocurrency exchanges.

To this end, Andreessen Horowitz also introduced several new consultants to the encryption team, who aim to help “transform encryption into the mainstream” and may guide future supervision of the encryption market. Tomicah Tillemann, former chairman of the Global Blockchain Business Council and White House consultant, will join as the head of global policy. Two other people with government experience-Bill Hinman, the former director of the Corporate Finance Department of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and Brent McIntosh, the former Undersecretary of International Affairs at the Treasury Department-will also join as consultants. Anthony Albanese left the New York Stock Exchange last year to join Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto team and will now serve as chief operating officer.

With its huge new fund, Andreessen Horowitz plans to do more than just respond to future challenges. It hopes to find the next Coinbase-or something bigger.

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