Morning Minute: a16z Drops 'Crypto' From Its Fund

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors chop as oil goes higher; BTC at $81.8k
• BTC ETFs see $635M in net outflows in big reversal
• a16z drops “crypto” from its fund name, though will continue investing
• Pump launched EVM limit orders in its app
• Decrypt announces onsite trading via Jupiter partnership

$84.8k$83.5k$82.2k$80.9k

24h HighHigh$81,939

24h LowLow$80,989

VolVol$982.9M

Market projectionsOdds by Myriad

a16z Drops 'Crypto' From Its Fund

Andreessen Horowitz is renaming its crypto fund “a16z Frontier” and widening the mandate to cover AI, autonomous machines and biology. Chris Dixon, who has run the crypto team since 2018, leads the new fund alongside Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Eddy Lazzarin and Guy Wuollet.

Although “crypto” is removed from the name, the firm calls it “an expansion” and says it will keep investing in crypto. The most recent fund size on record is $2.2 billion, announced in May.

Dixon’s argument is that blockchains have faded into the background of products shipped by Wall Street and fintech firms—so companies should be judged by what they do, not by the plumbing underneath. Which, if you’ve been reading this newsletter for the past month, is hard to argue with. JPMorgan put deposit tokens on Ethereum. Mastercard built agent payments on Base with Coinbase wallets. BNY tested tokenized Treasuries with Citadel. None of those were pitched as crypto products. They just use crypto.