Eddy Lazzarin, CTO of A16z Crypto, one of the largest cryptocurrency-focused venture capital funds, has criticized the meme coins’ effect on the broad appreciation of the cryptocurrency market. Lazzarin stated that meme coins undermined the “long-term vision of crypto” that has maintained some actors in the space, making it look “like a risky casino.” A16z […]
Bitcoin News
Eigen Labs Secures $100 Million A16z Investment for Ethereum Protocol Expansion
On Thursday, the Eigen Labs development team, responsible for the Eigenlayer restaking protocol, announced a 0 million investment from A16z Crypto. This substantial funding comes after the project’s million Series A round in March 2023. Eigenlayer’s Development Team, Eigen Labs, Garners 0M from A16z Crypto Eigen Labs has secured a 0 million investment from […]
Bitcoin News
VC Company A16z Expands to London to Take Advantage of Friendly Web3 Regulation
A16z, a tech-focused venture capital company, has announced that it will open its first office in London to take advantage of the friendly regulatory environment in the U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak stated he was thrilled about this expansion and that the U.K. would continue to embrace innovations like Web3, powered by blockchain tech.
A16z to Open First Office in London Later This Year
A16z, a tech and Web3 venture capital company, has announced that it will expand to London to take advantage of the friendly regulatory environment. Chris Dixon, general partner and founder of A16z Crypto, explained that the company had been working with different policymakers, finding a receptive attitude in the U.K.
About this, Dixon stated:
It has become clear that the U.K. government sees the promise of Web3. U.K. authorities are also willing to work with the industry to create policies that incentivize startups to pursue decentralization.
In this sense, Dixon explains that policymakers in the U.K. are taking “an approach that is uniquely tailored to blockchain and digital asset regulation,” identifying the traits and possibilities of Web3 technology while also putting customer protection at the forefront.
The office, which will be opened later this year, will be led by Sriram Krishnan, a general partner, and will focus on building the startup and cryptocurrency ecosystem in the U.K., taking it as an entrance to Europe.
A16z clarified that it remains invested in the U.S. and is willing to push for clear regulations in the crypto environment.
Government Support
Rishi Sunak, prime minister of the U.K., welcomed A16z’s expansion into the country, stating he was thrilled to receive it and also about its decision to “open their first international office in the U.K. – which is testament to our world-class universities and talent and our strong competitive business environment.”
On the role of these technologies in the development of the U.K, Sunak declared:
As we cement the UK’s place as a science and tech superpower, we must embrace new innovations like Web3, powered by blockchain technology, which will enable start-ups to flourish here and grow the economy.
The expansion announcement comes after several legal actions were exerted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against two behemoth cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinbase and Binance. Several lawmakers, including Sen. Cynthia Lummis, have stated these actions are taking cryptocurrency companies and innovation out of the U.S. and into countries like China.
What do you think about A16z’s expansion to London? Tell us in the comment section below.
Crypto Pioneer Backed By a16z, Alchemy Raises Value to $3.5B
Alchemy, the pioneer of crypto infrastructure, raised its value to .5 billion with a 0 million Series C round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Alchemy is the leading platform for blockchain and Web3 developers. Currently, they intend to reinvest in the ecosystem’s expansion.
Alchemy has seen exponential growth in the past six months with revenues rising over 15 times. They pin their success to their main goal: “make building on the blockchain and Web3 so easy, anyone can do it.”; which turned out to have bigger demand than they expected, boosting their rapid growth.
They stated that their achievements surpassed their initial vision, and that being already a big picture consisting of creating a platform for the developers’ community managing to do for them “what AWS has done for the web or what Windows and Mac did for computing.”
What we didn’t realize was just how big of a need this was! Today, we power the majority of DeFi and almost every single NFT marketplace that has made that whole industry
The company further explained that their “reliability and scalability” is what the ecosystem’s leading companies “are building their success” on. Meaning that this new round of funding will not only help their growth as a company, but it will turn into new benefits for more than one industry.
Related Reading | Yieldly’s CEO Says Interoperability In DeFi Is More Important Than A Market-Leading Blockchain
Crypto AWS To Reach Full Potential
Alchemy’s potential is so large that one cannot possibly narrow it down to one industry. It is at the core of NFTs, DeFi, exchanges, financial institutions, multinational organizations, and more.
They publicly launched around a year ago and now lead as “the solution of choice” for many of the largest crypto companies we can think of: OpenSea, CryptoPunks, Axie Infinity, as well and the ones that are showing new interest in the blockchain, such as Adobe, and others.
Alchemy’s platform has shown the truth about the blockchain: it goes beyond currencies and trading. The possibilities it has given to programmers around the world are just the beginning of the emerging capabilities of DeFi and NFTs. From investors to gamers and creators, the blockchain’s technology prepares the soil for many generations to come.
Related Reading | 17% Of Ethereum Addresses Hold Majority Of NFTs
Ali Yahya, General Partner at a16z, showed their enthusiasm in their public announcement stating that Alchemy is “one of the fastest-growing companies we’ve ever seen in any category,”. He also deepened an explanation of their work:
In the same way that Apple and Amazon built platforms that help developers build on PCs, smartphones, and the cloud, Alchemy is building a platform that helps developers build on modern blockchains. (…)
The biggest misconception about blockchains is that they are just about money, cryptocurrencies, or finance, the truth is that they’re actually much more powerful and allow for a much broader set of applications.
During the past year, Alchemy’s co-founders have shown a long-term vision and a fierce way to build up their performance and achieve worldwide innovation. Nikil Viswanathan, co-founder and CEO of the company, commented that “Empowering developers is the key to bringing the magic of blockchain to the world.”
With tens of millions of users worldwide, Alchemy powers over billion of annual web3 transactions. Other than a16z, they are also backed by Stanford University, Coinbase, Pantera Capital, the Google Chairman, and others.
Brilliant minds, strong believers. This decade has just begun, but Alchemy has already led the blockchain into a level of development only a few had even dreamt of. 10 years from now the advantages of investments like this one will most likely be part of everyone’s life.
Crypto total market cap at .59 trillion on the daily chart. – Source: Tradingview
NewsBTC
a16z, Mark Cuban invest $23 million in NFT platform OpenSea
OpenSea’s CEO, Devin Finzer, announced a successful funding round. Led by investment first a16z, with participation from Mark Cuban, Naval Ravikant, Tim Ferris, 3LAU, Standard Crypto, and others, the Non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace raised million.
The platform was founded in 2017 under the prospect of building a new internet economy. OpenSea has been at the core of the recent NFT’s craze. Therefore, the transaction volume on the platform has increased by 100x. Finzer said in the post:
At OpenSea, we are growing and shaping this economy by building the world’s best, largest, and most trusted marketplace for this new type of digital asset. Over the coming years, billions of people will be introduced to digital ownership, and we’ve built OpenSea as a trusted entrypoint into that world.
Announcing our M Series A, led by @a16zhttps://t.co/WlM1tngJDH
— OpenSea (@opensea) March 18, 2021
NFTs take over the world
The platform has welcomed all kinds of creators to launch their projects. Over 20 million NFTs are currently available on the marketplace, as Finzer claims, under full control of the users. Collections like Hashmasks, 3DPunks, CryptoPunks, and others have sold for thousands of ETH. OpenSea’s CEO said in his statement:
We’ve had the fortune to work with hundreds of projects and creators: from game companies to digital artists to musicians to professional athletes. The world is waking up to the power of this technology, and it’s happening quite suddenly.
Over the past months, there has been growing attention on this type of token. The high point of interest was reached when a digital artist known as Beeple sold an NFT for over million on auction house Christie’s.
The sale is the first of its kind and. Via Twitter, Beeple thanked art specialist Noah Davis and spokeswoman for the auction house, Rebecca Riegelhaupt for the “groundbreaking” event:
(…) this unprecedent move took a lot of courage and conviction but true progress always does. the digital art community owes them a debt of gratitude for helping push the space forward and i firmly believe they will eventually be seen as visionaries in the broader art community.
Crypto Tidbits: Bitcoin Hits $9ks, a16z Raises $500M Crypto Fund, Ethereum 2.0 Nears
Another week, another round of Crypto Tidbits. Bitcoin has been one of the best-performing assets in financial markets over the past week, managing to rally as high as ,500 — over 25% higher where it started this week. Altcoins, interestingly, have underperformed the market leader, with Ethereum and XRP both gaining around 10% over the past seven days.
Crypto’s strength this week comes as the stock market has started to stagnate in the 2,800-2,900 point range, seemingly playing with the idea of a reversal as the economic outlook remains dismal, with a total of 30 million Americans filing for unemployment over the past month.
Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, went as far as to say that the U.S. economy is currently in its worst rut in history due to the outbreak of COVID-19. The recovery will not be V-shaped, Powell added, asserting that it may take a while for life to return to pre-virus levels due to the long-lasting effects of the shutdown of the world’s biggest economic powerhouse.
Whatever the case, analysts are still bullish on Bitcoin.
Roch Rosenblum, the co-head of trading at GSR, remarked to Bloomberg that the ongoing BTC rally is predicated on the macroeconomic environment:
“This latest run past ,000 is as much about positive macro sentiment as it is about the upcoming halving. We’re starting to have a lot more certainty, as more countries begin to share their plans to reopen the economy in May.”
Chart from Coin360.io
This optimism was echoed by Zac Prince, a co-founder of crypto startup BlockFi, who said that the “current market dynamics are driving a bolstered interest [for] digital currency.” These dynamics he was referencing was the Federal Reserve’s commitment to money printing and the growth in stablecoins.
Related Reading: Crypto Tidbits: Bitcoin Surges to ,800, More U.S. Stimulus, Tether Erupts
Bitcoin & Crypto Tidbits
Elon Musk ‘Talks’ About Bitcoin Again: Elon Musk created quite the stir in global financial markets on May 1st, when he tweeted “[The] Tesla stock price is too high imo,” resulting in the asset collapsing by approximately 10% during the day’s trading session. Although many holders of TSLA saw Musk’s statement as controversial because of the seeming effect it had on their investment, the operator of the @Bitcoin account on Twitter, which has over one million followers, decided to leverage the situation to tweet that the “Bitcoin price is too low imo.” The Tesla chief executive surprisingly responded, first with the tweet below that has Musk laughing at the comment. Musk followed this up ten minutes later by asking @Bitcoin how much it would cost for “some anime Bitcoin.” While he made these comments in jest, Musk has previously mentioned crypto in interviews in a positive manner.
Bitcoin price is too low imo
— Bitcoin (@Bitcoin) May 1, 2020
Bitcoin Spikes in Popularity in China: According to Samson Mow — CSO of Bitcoin development company Blockstream — the Chinese term for “BTC” (比特币) recently exploded in popularity on Weibo. This comes shortly after the Chinese term for “Bitcoin halving” experienced a similar treatment last week, suggestive of a larger hype cycle for cryptocurrency. As of April 29th, the search term was the 19th most popular term on the trending page, registering hundreds of thousands of comments on the matter from the over 400 million users that frequent the social platform.
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Raises Big Crypto Fund: This week, Katie Haun and Chris Dixon, partners at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) — one of the largest Silicon Valley venture capital firms — unveiled “Crypto Fund II,” a new “5 million fund that will be used to invest in crypto networks and businesses.” The two partners claim they will be focusing on five main categories of investments in the cryptocurrency space, one of them being DeFi: next-generation payments, modern store of value, decentralized finance, new ways for creators to monetize, web 3.0.
Ethereum 2.0 Draws Ever Closer: The “Topaz” testnet for Ethereum has continued to gain transaction, with the network recently hitting 100,000 slots. The Topaz testnet is currently testing Ethereum 2.0 software, which is expected to be launched in late-June or July to the mainnet.
Milestone! 100k slots at Topaz testnet! 24.4k validators3200 finalized epochs90% participation@prylabs controls less than 53% of the networkSome nodes with 300 peers pic.twitter.com/LDZxiC8a0r
— Terence Tsao (@terencechain) May 1, 2020
Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash
NewsBTC
DeFi Startup Compound Finance Raises $25 Million Series A Led by A16z
It’s one of the largest venture capital investments in a decentralized finance DeFi startup to date.
CryptScout #BitFeed RSS – Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency News 24/7
A16z, Polychain Invest $25 Million in Crypto Payments Startup Celo
Mobile-friendly cryptocurrency payments startup Celo has raised millions from A16z and Polychain in a private token sale.
CryptScout #BitFeed RSS – Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency News 24/7
A16z Moves to Place Bigger Bets on High-Risk Assets Including Crypto
Andreessen Horowitz has reportedly registered all 150 of its employees as financial advisors to invest more heavily in risky assets such as crypto.
CryptScout #BitFeed RSS – Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency News 24/7
a16z Puts $15 Million Behind Stablecoin Platform MakerDAO
n nn nn Stablecoins are becoming big business these days. In a million deal, Andreessen Horowitzs a16z crypto fund is buying 6 percent of the total MakerDAO maker MKR token supply. The investment will give a16z a financial and governance stake in the dai stablecoin.A16z made the announcement today, September 24, 2018. MakerDAO also received million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital in December 2017. A stablecoin is a token pegged
CryptScout #BitFeed RSS – Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency News 24/7