A16z Crypto: What Do We See Behind the $2.2 Billion New Fund

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

Original title: “We raised a $2.2B crypto fund”

Translation: ChainCatcher

Cryptocurrency cycles often follow a certain pattern

Speculative waves bring attention and capital. Some of it is wasted, while the rest funds infrastructure that wouldn’t have been built otherwise. After the noise subsides, what remains is often more useful than at the peak and more enduring than at the bottom.

If you focus not just on prices, but on what is actually built during each cycle and what people continue to use after the hype fades, you will see this. We are currently in such a relatively calm moment. And the signals coming now are among the most encouraging in years.

The clearest evidence comes from stablecoins

Trading volume fluctuates with market ups and downs, but stablecoin usage continues to rise even during downturns. People use them for savings, cross-border remittances, and payments, often exposing the slow, costly, and unreliable nature of traditional alternatives. The growth of stablecoins appears less like speculation and more like network adoption: the compound growth in usage is because the technology itself is useful, not because people are betting on price movements.

Blockchain also proves its value in capital markets

Since the last cycle, we have seen meaningful growth in perpetual futures for price discovery, prediction markets revealing real information, and on-chain lending in the stablecoin credit market. Traditional assets are starting to be tokenized, and on-chain finance is beginning to apply to assets beyond network tokens. A new financial system is taking shape — it can operate continuously, settle almost instantly, cost nearly nothing, and be accessible to anyone with internet access.

Regulatory developments are also moving in a positive direction. The GENIUS Act exemplifies prudent policy: clear definitions, strong safeguards, and room for builders to innovate. We expect other areas of the crypto market to also see more regulatory progress through legislation and rulemaking. This will protect consumers, provide certainty for builders, and create pathways for mainstream institutions to participate.

Now is a particularly good time to step back and consider why this matters so much right now.

Software is becoming more complex and less trustworthy. AI systems are powerful but largely opaque. The infrastructure that the internet relies on is more centralized than ever. Against this backdrop, the attributes designed into crypto networks become increasingly important, not less:

Transparent and verifiable systems

Global networks from day one

Economies where users, creators, developers, and operators share aligned interests

Infrastructure that does not depend on a few middlemen

These attributes are being realized in actual products: payments, financial services, creator platforms, decentralized infrastructure, and new ways for humans and machines to coordinate. Most of these are built by startups and are increasingly adopted by financial institutions, tech companies, and others to deliver faster, cheaper, and more reliable services.

Practically, this means instant global remittances, assets tokenized for frictionless transfer without relying on banks holding dollars, composable networks that others can build on, and embedding these capabilities into various applications. It also includes new modes never before possible: users owning their assets and identities directly, holding inviolable digital property rights; clusters of intelligent agents making decisions, executing actions, and completing transactions on behalf of users, on demand acquiring computing power, data, and services; increasingly autonomous networks that can finance themselves, govern, and evolve through code.

This is why we are announcing the launch of the new Crypto Fund 5. This $2.2 billion fund is designed for this moment. Through the founders supported by this fund, we are investing in parts of the cycle that receive less attention but we believe will generate more long-term value: transforming new infrastructure into products that people use daily.

Every major computing platform ultimately becomes meaningful through this process; so too will crypto technology.