Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz announced Wednesday that it will create a new $4.5 billion fund for cryptocurrency startups, all amid the bear market. The Silicon Valley-based investment fund, which runs $2.7 billion worth of business, says we are in the midst of the “next big computing cycle.”
Article which was shared by its website, mentions that of the USD 4.5 billion, USD 1,500 million will be dedicated to initial investments and USD 3,000 million to risk investments. This raises their total fund dedicated to cryptocurrencies at over $7.6 billion raised.
Arianna Simpson and Chris Dixon, general partners of Andreessen Horowitz, they describe the opportunity they have with cryptocurrencies in the long term as “the next big computing cycle”. “Since the advent of information in the 1940s, there has been a major computing cycle every 10 to 15 years. These include PCs in the ’80s, the Internet in the ’90s, and mobile computing in the 2000s,” the article mentions.
Most computing cycles have their golden eras when the right mix is brought together, including new talent, viable infrastructure, and community knowledge. With mobile computing, for example, the golden age was from 2009 to 2011, when companies like Uber, Venmo, Snap, and Instagram were launched.
Chris Dixon, General Partner of Andreessen Horowitz.
Investment opportunity during the bear market
Today, the cryptocurrency market is going through a bearish stage or “crypto winter” where bitcoin and the other altcoins go through a price correction. As of this writing, BTC is at $29,625, which is a loss of more than 50% from its peak of $66,970 reached in November 2021.
It is possible that with the recent bear market and what happened recently with Terra, people are now scared to invest in cryptocurrencies or funds that support them. Nevertheless, Andreessen Horowitz is confident that the technological development behind cryptocurrencies will mark a “new computing cycle”.
Andreessen Horowitz is known for his large investments in the world of cryptocurrencies. Since the first time he invested in a cryptocurrency fund during the past “crypto winter”, which began in 2017, the Silicon Valley firm has made very significant contributions to the industry since 2013.
The last investment it had was on June 24, 2021 when the company decided to invest in a fund of USD 2.2 billion in digital assets and startups in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry, as reported by CriptoNoticias.