Andreesen Horowitz Establishes $300 Million Crypto Venture Fund

Andreesen Horowitz Establishes $300 Million Crypto Venture Fund

Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz has just announced their plans to invest $300 million into the cryptocurrency space through the “a16z crypto” fund. The firm says they have already been investing in crypto assets for more than 5 years, with no plans to sell them in the short term. In their opinion, the space is still in its very early stages even though Bitcoin’s genesis block was mined almost 10 years ago.

According to the firm, the next three technological “megatrends” will be next-generation computing devices (VR, IoT, autonomous vehicles…), artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency. The fund aims to cover a wide spectrum of the crypto space, investing in early-stage projects and established cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum alike.

Prior to the announcement of the fund, Andreesen Horowitz have already invested into the likes of Coinbase, TrustToken and OpenBazaar.

Apparently, Andreesen Horowitz are unfazed by the cryptocurrency market’s famous volatility and the decline in prices that has been the dominant trend in 2018 so far:

“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.”

At its current stage, the cryptocurrency market is known to be highly speculative, but the firm says that utility and potential for mass adoption will be a key factor when it comes to the allocation of the funds:

“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.”

Given that the cryptocurrency market has shown its potential for explosive growth before, it’s no wonder that venture capital is interested in the space. Coinbase, the top U.S. cryptocurrency broker, has established a blockchain and cryptocurrency venture fund a few months ago.