Bitcoin is just kinda hanging around today, complaining to its mum that it’s bored. But the web3-obsessed venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz is having none of that.

Also known as a16z, the prominent Silicon Valley VC today announced it’s raised a stupendous US$4.5 billion for a new crypto fund – its fourth and the biggest the industry has seen so far.

In a timely confidence boost for the market, the new Crypto Fund 4 more than doubles the size of a similar fund a16z raised in June last year and completely eclipses rival VC Paradigm’s massive US$2.5 billion crypto fund announced in November.

“We think we are now entering the golden era of web3,” wrote a16z partner Chris Dixon in today’s blog-post announcement. “Programmable blockchains are sufficiently advanced, and a diverse range of apps have reached tens of millions of users.”

“More importantly, a massive wave of world-class talent has entered web3 over the last year. They are brilliant and passionate and want to build a better internet,” he added.

Notably, seed investments will be receiving a US$1.5 billion allocation of the funding, and the firm reiterates that it is particularly excited about blockchain gaming, DeFi, decentralised social media, layer 1s and layer 2s, NFTs and DAOs, among other sectors.

And speaking of gaming, this funding news comes white hot on the heels of another not-small a16z announcement just last week – the reveal of its US$600 million Games Fund One.

 

Hang on, more big funding news?

Yep… but wait, there’s more…

• StarkWare, an Israeli startup that utilises ZK-rollup technology for scaling Ethereum, has quadrupled its valuation to US$8 billion after raising US$100 million in a Series D round. 

The project aims to further expand its ecosystem with the funding, which was led by Greenoaks Capital and Coatue, with participation from Tiger Global, among others. 

• Singaporean VC firm NGC Ventures has launched a new crypto-focused ecosystem fund, aiming to help foster the development of a decentralised internet.

The firm has raised US$100 million from investors including Babel Finance, Huobi Ventures, Nexo Ventures, Altonomy and GBIC.

 

While all that fresh capital inflow (and we’re seeing plenty more of it, besides) is extremely encouraging for the crypto/Web3 industry, bear-market prices are still the order of the day. Let’s get a sense of the daily action…

 

Top 10 overview

With the overall crypto market cap at roughly US$1.32 trillion, up 0.6% since this time yesterday, here’s the current state of play among top 10 tokens – according to CoinGecko.

 

Like we mentioned earlier, Bitcoin (BTC) and, in fact, most of the crypto majors, are kinda just hanging around today and a little flat. Guess a little short-term consolidation ranging never hurt anyone.

One of Ethereum‘s main layer 1 competitor’s, Solana (SOL) is offering a slightly larger daily discount, however. That said, Solana’s NFT ecosystem has been catching a bit of a boost, lately, with its overall sales volume starting to rival that of Ethereum’s.

The YouTuber EllioTrades posted an in-depth video on the topic yesterday, which is well worth a look if you’re interested in what might be a developing NFT trend. (Note, though, it’s not particularly SHOCKING, despite its thumbnail billing. Pfft… YouTubers, eh?)

 

Uppers and downers: 11–100

Sweeping a market-cap range of about US$11 billion to about US$547 million in the rest of the top 100, let’s find some of the biggest 24-hour gainers and losers at press time.

DAILY PUMPERS

• Loopring (LRC), (market cap: US$725 million) +8%

• Celo (CELO), (mc: US$608 million) +7%

• Arweave (AR), (mc: US$766 million) 7%

• NEO (NEO), (mc: US$808 million) 6%

• Stacks (STX), (mc: US$635 million) 5%

 

DAILY SLUMPERS 

• Osmosis (OSMO), (market cap: US$614 million) -4%

• KuCoin Token (KCS), (mc: US$1.58 billion) -3%

• Avalanche (AVAX), (mc: US$7.44 billion) -3%

• Elrond (EGLD), (mc: US$1.97 billion) -2.5%

• Helium (HNT), (mc: US$759 million) -2%

 

Around the blocks

Guggenheim Partners CIO Scott Minerd is raising a fair few eyebrows on Crypto Twitter (if that’s even possible) this week for his US$8,000 BTC call…

Meanwhile, heavyweight US investor Ray Dalio still quite likes Bitcoin, it seems… confirming as much in discussion at the World Economic Forum meet in Davos, Switzerland this week…

Elsewhere…

As for this one, if you don’t feel like clicking on Cole South’s link, we’ll give you the spoiler… it goes straight to Rick Astley singing “Never gonna give you* up”.

(*ETH)

 

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