Crypto rock star Katie Haun on Wednesday said she is leaving Andreessen Horowitz to start her own company focused on backing ventures in digital assets and Web 3.0 in early 2022.
Haun said she plans on continuing to manage an existing crypto fund and will retain her board seats in her portfolio companies associated with the fund. She co-chairs, along with Andreessen general partner Chris Dixon, a $2.2 billion crypto fund that Andreessen Horowitz announced earlier this year.
“When Chris and I started our first crypto fund in 2018, it was a moonshot experiment. Thanks to the hard work of many, it has exceeded both of our wildest expectations. Today it’s more apparent than ever that web3 will transform the internet,” Haun wrote via Twitter on Wednesday.
Haun created the first federal cryptocurrency task force as a prosecutor in the U.S. Justice Department, according to the New York Times. And she has turned into a crypto luminary and one of the most prominent female executives in the digital-asset sector.
Her announcement comes as crypto appears to be gaining traction among corporations as well as individual investors, but her move also comes as the digital properties appear to be on the precipice of exponential growth, despite swirling uncertainty surrounding the nascent sector.
The so-called Web 3.0, or Web 3, whose proponents — such as CEO Mark Zuckerberg of Meta Platforms
FB,
the former Facebook — foresee a revolutionary step for the internet, centers on decentralization and platforms pegged to bitcoin
BTCUSD,
or Ether
ETHUSD,
on the Ethereum network, as well as other blockchain-related assets like nonfungible tokens, or NFTs.
Haun’s VC deals have included that of NFT platform OpenSea, as well as Celo, Arweave and Royal, according to Axios, which broke the news of Haun’s plans. Haun also led Andreessen Horowitz’s investment in Coinbase Global
COIN,
where she is an independent director.
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