Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz said today it had raised a formidable $2.2 billion for a third fund to invest in blockchain and cryptocurrency.

The venture capital firm, founded by Marc Andreessen (pictured) and Ben Horowitz, said that the fund would allow a16z, as it’s commonly known, to continue investing in crypto networks and the founders and team-building in the market.

Andreessen Horowitz has been a prolific and highly successful VC firm since it was established in 2009. Its investments include Skype Inc., Appito Inc., Airbnb Inc., Lyft Inc., Stripe Inc. and Coinbase Inc., to name a few.

“This fund allows us to find the next generation of visionary crypto founders and invest in the most exciting areas of crypto,” Katie Haun, Chris Dixon and Ali Yahya, partners in Andreessen Horowitz’s cryptocurrency group, said in a statement. “The size of this fund speaks to the size of the opportunity before us: crypto is not only the future of finance but, as with the internet in the early days, is poised to transform all aspects of our lives.”

The size is a standout feature. Andreessen Horowitz’s first crypto fund in 2018 was $300 million, while its second fund in April 2020 was $515 million. The over fourfold increase speaks volumes to investor confidence in Andreessen Horowitz and a16z to deliver results.

Whereas Andreessen Horowitz highlighted DeFi when it announced its second fund, the firm’s third fund makes specific mention of nonfungible tokens. NFTs are digital representations of assets on a blockchain with a token that has a unique and immutable identifier using cryptography to ensure authenticity.

NFTs as an asset class has come to the fore this year. Dave Vellante, chief analyst at SiliconANGLE sister market research firm Wikibon, noted in March that while they may feel a bit “bubblicious,” they are another sign that the digital age is now fully upon us. Andreessen Horowitz is already an investor in the market, having participated in funding rounds into OpeanSea and Dapper Labs.

Along with the news of the new fund, Andreessen Horowitz also announced a range of new hires at a16z crypto. Among them are Bill Hinman, the former director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance, as an advisory partner, and Tomicah Tillement, a former senior adviser to now-President Joe Biden and two secretaries of state as the firm’s global head of policy.

Photo: JD Lasica/Flickr