Silicon Valley venture capital firm a16z, better known as Andreessen Horowitz, is hiring a team to manage a fund dedicated to crypto assets.
Whilst the company hasn’t explicitly announced the fund, its website now lists two positions related to a “separately managed fund focusing on crypto assets.”
Andreessen Horowitz is one of the world’s most prominent technology-focused venture capital firms and counts Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and GitHub amongst its portfolio companies.
Institutional Interest on the Increase
Partner Marc Andreessen, who co-founded Netscape, is a long-time proponent of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology and led early investment rounds in Coinbase, Ripple and Earn.com.
While dedicated crypto funds are nothing new, the fact that such a highly respected venture capital firm is launching a dedicated fund is significant. This may be a sign that the firm is seeing growing demand from institutional investors.
If pension funds and other institutional funds begin to invest in cryptocurrencies and tokens, the amount of money flowing into the industry would dwarf the capital that has so far been invested to date.
In March, Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures reportedly lobbied the SEC to create a ‘safe harbour’ for token sales. The firms were concerned that classifying tokens as securities would slow down the pace of innovation in the crypto industry and force blockchain projects to set up offshore.
Whether these lobbying efforts were successful or not is unknown. However, the fact that a16z is setting up a dedicated crypto fund signals that they are optimistic about the road ahead.
