Key Takeaways:
- The VC firm plans to raise up to $1bn for its third cryptocurrency fund
- Andreessen Horowitz already has two crypto-centered investment vehicles
Another Crypto Vehicle for Andreessen Horowitz
The venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is preparing to launch a cryptocurrency VC fund with an initial investment of $1bn. The fund will be the third crypto vehicle the company would have in its name. The high-profile venture capital firm from the Silicon Valley is now looking to raise between $800mn and $1bn from investors. The money will be used to purchase cryptocurrencies and to support crypto start-ups in need of seed capital.
The cryptocurrency vehicle would be one of the largest pools of capital in the crypto space. This is subject to the funding rounds meeting the target. The fundraising push comes at a time when other individual and institutional investors are rotating to cryptocurrencies. This is done in an effort to participate in the surging market in bitcoin and other digital assets.
Coinbase goes public
Last month, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, Coinbase, went public. The direct listing of Coinbase on the Nasdaq exchange was the first of its kind, marking the leap for a crypto-focused company to trade on the traditional stock market. One of the partners in Andreessen Horowitz, Marc Andreessen, is the biggest owner of shares in Coinbase with a stake that was worth around $11bn on the first trading day of the Coinbase stock, which opened with a price above $380, reaching a market valuation of around $100bn.
Andreessen Horowitz has two crypto-centered funds already, the last one managing roughly $515mn. The firm was founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, but it wasn’t until 2018 when the first fund dedicated to cryptocurrencies emerged. Since then, the investment firm has been closely following the digital asset space and had invested in various crypto projects, including Anchorage, a crypto platform, Dapper Labs, a marketplace for games and collectibles on the blockchain, and Uniswap, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange.