Private American venture capitalist firm, Andreessen Horowitz has announced they will be launching a $300 million fund focused on crypto companies, cryptocurrencies and crypto protocols.
The fund is called a16z and has recently announced that Kathryn Haun will be a general partner and a lead investor for the fund. Kathryn Haun is a former federal prosecutor and Assistant U.S. Attorney, Chris Dixon will be the other co-lead investor.
The co-lead investors recently said in an interview that the a16z fund will be a separate legal entity to Andressen Horowitz, the parent company. According to Dixon, Andressen Horowitz has almost hit the limit of crypto related investments which is the primary reason for setting up a separate legal entity.
A16z recently stated from a blog post that it will be a long-term, “all weather” fund that is focused on non-speculative use cases, across a wide array of; geographies, asset types and stages. Chris Dixon said:
“We plan to invest consistently over time, regardless of market conditions. If there is another 'crypto winter,' we'll keep investing aggressively.”
The rationale behind the fund was linked to being ‘deep believers in the power of software’. The blog post went on to say that to many in a16z the crypto boom feels like the ‘early days of the internet, web 2.0, or smartphones all over again.’
Some critics believe that the scalability and privacy concerns will block attempts to create widely adopted applications on top of crypto technology. Time will tell if crypto technologies can create a multi trillion dollar industry – as the internet has done.
