A16Z
VC firm a16z pursuing crypto lobbying push in Washington
Andreessen Horowitz executives will seek to guide U.S. policymakers on standards for crypto and Web 3.0.
Anthony Albanese, chief operating officer of Andreessen Horowitz’s (a16z) crypto division, and Katie Haun, general partner at the firm, are among a high-powered delegation from the venture capital giant that will engage with lawmakers and administration officials in the United States on crypto regulations.
According to CNBC on Wednesday, the move is part of efforts by the Silicon Valley-based VC outfit to promote favorable regulation of the emerging Web 3.0 ecosystem.
Speaking to CNBC, a16z’s global policy chief Tomicah Tillemann decried the broken state of the current Web 2.0 status quo. According to Tillemann, Web 3.0 offers an alternative to the challenges posed by the issues in today’s internet.
In a Web 3.0 policy document issued on Wednesday, the VC firm argued for better regulatory standards for the new internet paradigm stating: “The easiest way to lose out on all of this potential is to treat web3 as if it were a monolith,” adding:
“Policymakers should focus on calibrating regulatory activities to the specific applications and their associated risks. Treating all digital assets the same is like having a single regulatory framework for stocks, real estate, cars, art, watches, and trading cards. We need policy that’s fit for purpose.”
Related: Former CFTC brass joins Andreessen Horowitz as an advisor
A16z’s current lobbying efforts for digital technology and Web 3.0 come amid fears of stringent policy measures that industry stakeholders say could derail America’s ability to establish itself in the expanding digital economy.
Crypto has come in for some negative comments from policymakers in Washington with the prevailing rhetoric being that digital assets require more regulatory oversight.
Indeed, a16z joined the push against plans to enact stringent regulatory measures targeted at self-hosted crypto wallets earlier in the year.
Back in August a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen called crypto a “fundamental technological breakthrough.”
As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the Silicon Valley VC firm launched the largest crypto venture fund valued at $2.2 billion at the time. The fund has since grown to reach a $3.1 billion valuation.
Top engineers working on Facebook’s wallet jump ship to A16z’s crypto fund
The engineers will provide technical advice to Andreessen Horowitz’s portfolio companies.
Andreessen Horowitz (A16z), a leading venture capital firm operating in the crypto sector, has nabbed two of the leading engineers working on Facebook’s digital currency project for its digital asset fund.
According to an Oct. 11 report from CNBC, Nassim Eddequiouaq and Riyaz Faizullabhoy have jumped ship from Facebook to A16z after spending two years working on the social media giant’s Novi digital wallet (formerly Calibra).
Faizullabhoy will serve as CTO while Eddequiouaq will take on the role of CIO at A16z’s crypto division. Faizullabhoy stated:
“Andreessen Horowitz has shown an impressive dedication to advancing the entire crypto ecosystem over the past decade, and we jumped at the chance to join their premier team and provide technical support to their rapidly-expanding portfolio.”
A16z founder, Marc Andreessen, has sat on Facebook’s board since 2008 — one year prior to the launch of Andreessen Horowitz.
Anthony Albanese, the COO of A16z, described the firm’s new talent as having a greater “opportunity to impact the crypto ecosystem on a very broad scale” through their new roles.
“They’re going to be advising our portfolio companies and protocols to help them make sure that they have the most secure and sophisticated systems around,” said Albanese, adding that their previous roles at Facebook were much more “specific.”
Eddequiouaq and Faizullabhoy also worked at crypto custody firm Anchorage before joining Facebook’s Novi project.
The pair are not the first engineers to have abandoned Facebook’s digital currency project, with Novi head of strategy Morgan Beller joining VC firm NFX in September 2020 and co-creator Kevin Weil heading to satellite imagery company Planet Labs in March of this year.
Related: Andreessen Horowitz launches biggest-ever crypto venture fund at $2.2B
While Andreessen Horowitz is viewed as a leading crypto venture firm due to its successful and early investments into the likes of Coinbase, Compound, and OpenSea, the firm has recently attracted controversy regarding how its governance voting rights for top decentralized exchange Uniswap have been disbursed.
While A16z’s votes have been divested to university law schools including the Harvard Law Blockchain and Fintech Initiative (BFI), the Harvard BFI launched a governance proposal in May advocating for the creation of a decentralized finance lobbying group dubbed the DeFi Education Fund (DEF). The proposal recommended transferring $20 million worth of UNI to the group to fund its operations, with the group assuring that it would gradually sell the tokens over the course of four to five years.
However, less than two weeks after the proposal passed and the tokens were transferred to the DEF at the start of June, the DEF suddenly announced it had liquidated $10 million worth of UNI to the shock of the DeFi community, attracting criticism of both the DEF and A16z.
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Arianna Simpson has been a general partner at the venture capital firm for more than a year as a16z led several high-profile raises for crypto and blockchain companies.
Major venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz will be promoting a former employee of digital asset infrastructure provider BitGo to assist in running its $2.2 billion crypto fund.
According to Andreessen Horowitz general partner Katie Haun, Arianna Simpson will be joining partners Chris Dixon, Ali Yahya, and Haun for the launch of the firm’s $2.2 billion venture fund, Crypto Fund III. Simpson has been a general partner at the company for more than a year, and will be promoted to the position of deal partner to assist the fund aimed at financing cryptocurrency networks and teams contributing to the decentralized economy.
Haun, who reportedly first connected with Simpson through a direct message on Twitter, cited the former BitGo employee’s ability to articulate crypto ideas “in a digestible way” as well as her commitment to the values of the ecosystem as positives in her contribution to the fund. Simpson has been a part of Andreessen Horowitz as the firm led several high-profile raises for crypto and blockchain firms, including the $40 million raised for Talos and $9 million for wallet provider Phantom.
Simpson, a former account specialist at BitGo and once part of Facebook’s global marketing solutions team, has been involved in the crypto space for more than seven years and helped launch venture capital firm Crystal Towers in 2015 — the company focuses on investments in cryptocurrencies and digital assets. Her promotion comes following Andreessen Horowitz announcing last month it had recruited former SEC director Bill Hinman and others to join its team.
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Andreessen Horowitz’s $2.2 billion crypto fund builds upon the firm’s previously launched Crypto Fund II, an initiative started in August 2020. The company has said the new venture will allow it “to find the next generation of visionary crypto founders, and invest in the most exciting areas of crypto.”