a16z Crypto: What We See Behind the $2.2 Billion New Fund

Written by: Chris Dixon, Ali Yahya, Guy Wuollet, Eddy Lazzarin

Original title: We raised a $2.2B crypto fund

Compiled by: ChainCatcher

Cryptocurrency cycles often follow a certain pattern

Speculative waves bring attention and capital. Some of it is wasted, while another part funds infrastructure that would not have been built otherwise. When the noise subsides, what remains often looks more useful than it did at the peak and more durable than it did at the trough.

If you focus not just on price but on what is actually being built in each cycle, and what people continue to use after the hype fades, you will see this. We are in a relatively calm moment. The signals coming through now are among the most encouraging we have seen in years.

The clearest evidence comes from stablecoins

Trading volume fluctuates with market ups and downs, but the usage of stablecoins continues to rise even during downturns. People use them for savings, cross-border remittances, and payments, often exposing the sluggishness, high costs, and unreliability of traditional alternatives. The growth of stablecoins seems less like speculation and more like network adoption: the compound growth in usage is because the technology itself is useful, not because people have expectations about price movements.

Blockchain is also proving its value in capital markets

Since the last cycle, we have seen meaningful growth in perpetual futures for price discovery, prediction markets for revealing real information, and on-chain lending in the stablecoin credit market. Traditional assets are starting to go on-chain, and on-chain finance is beginning to apply to assets beyond network tokens. A new financial system is taking shape—one that can run continuously, settle almost instantly, has costs close to zero, and is open to anyone with internet access.

Regulatory direction is also improving. The GENIUS Act is a typical example of prudent policy: clear definitions, strong safeguards, and leaving room for builders to build. We expect that other areas of the crypto market will also make more regulatory progress through legislation and rule-making. This will provide protections for consumers, certainty for builders, and pathways for mainstream institutions to participate.

Now is especially a time to step back and think about why this is particularly important.

Software is becoming increasingly complex and harder to trust. AI systems are powerful but largely opaque. The infrastructure that the internet relies on is more centralized than ever. In this context, the attributes that crypto networks are designed to provide become increasingly important, rather than less so:

• Transparent and verifiable systems
• Networks that are global from day one
• Economic models that align the interests of users, creators, developers, and operators
• Infrastructure that does not rely on a few intermediaries

These attributes are being reflected in actual products: payments, financial services, creator platforms, decentralized infrastructure, and new ways for humans and machines to coordinate. Most of this is being built by startups and is increasingly being adopted by financial institutions, tech companies, and other entities to provide faster, cheaper, and more reliable services.

In practical terms, this means global instant remittances, not relying on banks to hold dollars, tokenizing assets for frictionless transfer, accessing composable networks built by others, and embedding these capabilities into various applications. It also includes some new models that were previously unimaginable: users can directly own their assets and identities and hold inviolable digital property rights; clusters of software agents can make decisions, execute operations, and complete transactions on behalf of users, acquiring computing power, data, and services on demand; increasingly autonomous networks can finance, govern, and evolve themselves through code.

This is why we are announcing the launch of the new Crypto Fund 5. This $2.2 billion fund is set up for this moment. The founders we support through this fund are focusing on the less noticed parts of the cycle, which we believe will generate more long-term value: transforming new infrastructure into products that people use daily.

Every significant computing platform ultimately gains meaning through this process; so too will crypto technology.