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Andreessen Horowitz Gives up Venture Capital Status

Andreessen horowitz gives up venture capital status

Andreessen Horowitz Gives up Venture Capital Status

Andreessen horowitz gives up venture capital status

In an interesting turn of events, Andreessen Horowitz has registered all its employees as qualified financial advisers, essentially giving up their status as a venture capital firm in order to explore other options, as reported on April 2, 2019.

New Developments

The business world is ever-changing and as such, the firms in it are changing just as fast, whether by launching new products and services or exploring new markets and searching for new opportunities.

One such business that is undergoing massive changes is Andreessen Horowitz, who it was reported on April 2, 2019, has undergone some significant restructuring. As part of these restructuring efforts, all members of their staff have been registered as qualified financial advisors.

Before now, the company had been known as a venture capital firm and had raised over $1.7 Billion across seven funds, most of which was invested in tech and financial services ventures such as Lyft. By making this move, they are leaving their previous reputation behind and starting anew and it seems crypto might have something to do with this.

Moving Ahead

Form all Indications, the reason for this restructuring move is to allow for the firm to go into other types of business deals across other industries, including those that are deemed risky.

“If the firm wants to put $1 billion into cryptocurrency or tokens, or buy unlimited shares in public companies or from other investors, it can. And in doing so, the thinking goes, it’ll again make other firms feel like they have one hand tied behind their back,” the report says.

While this move will come with some new-found freedom, there will be some sacrifices made. For starters, because they are no longer a venture capital firm, their investors cannot speak publicly about the performance of their portfolios. On top of this, each employee will now be audited periodically.

While the company’s next move hasn’t been announced, it is safe to say that it might involve cryptocurrency at some point.

In 2018, they invested $15 million in MakerDAO via their a16z investment fund and bought out six percent of all the MKR tokens that exist. In the same year, they set up their cryptocurrency investment fund worth about $300 million which seeks to invest in blockchain and crypto projects.

They are hardly the only major company that is dipping its toes into the crypto waters as others such as JP Morgan and PayPal have recently done the same.

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Published at Fri, 05 Apr 2019 02:00:29 +0000

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Hacker Allegedly Siphons $31 Million Out of Tether, Driving Further Speculations About the Cryptocurrency

Hacker Allegedly Siphons $31 Million Out of Tether, Driving Further Speculations About the Cryptocurrency

Tether, a cryptocurrency pegged 1-to-1 to the U.S. dollar, was allegedly hacked today to the tune of $31 million.

Tether functions to convert U.S. dollars to a type of cryptocurrency. The project’s token (USDT) is pegged to the dollar and is used in exchange trading. The idea behind Tether is that instead of having to sell your bitcoin or other token for a fiat currency, you can convert it to USDT, and either hold it in USDT or else transfer your USDT to another exchange and use it to purchase tokens there.

As for the exchanges, USDT allows them to trade in something akin to dollars, without requiring them to have a bank account.

Tether operates on the “Omni Layer Protocol,” which itself operates on top of the bitcoin network, and uses bitcoin addresses. According to a blog post on the project’s website, $31 million worth of USDT was sent to an unauthorized bitcoin address on November 19, 2017.

In the blog post, Tether also noted it released a new version of the Omni Core software used by exchanges and wallets to support USDT transactions, thus implementing a temporary hard fork to the Omni Layer. As a result, the affected tokens are frozen in place, making them essentially worthless to the hacker.

“We strongly urge all Tether integrators to install this software immediately to prevent the coins from entering the ecosystem,” Tether wrote, adding that “any tokens from the attacker’s addresses will not be redeemed.”

Some exchanges, like Kraken, have stopped trading USDT temporarily while they upgrade to the newer software.

The heist was made in three separate USDT transfers out of Tether’s core Treasury wallet in the amounts of 23,000,000; 7,900,000; and 500,000 USDT. It is unclear why the hacker did not move all of the money out at once.

In addition to the other exchanges it trades on, USDT is widely traded on Bitfinex, an exchange that lost 119,756 BTC (worth $72 million at the time) in a hack that took place a year and a half ago.

News of the Tether attack comes at a time when some — notably the blogger “Bitfinex’ed” — are questioning whether USDTs are being issued without backing of actual U.S. dollars. Similarly, there has been growing speculation that Tether is being used in possible market manipulation to drive up the price of bitcoin.

The current market cap value of USDT is around $673 million. If that money is backed by real reserves, as Tether claims, the project would need to have at least that much in its bank account in Taiwan.

Tether publishes a bank account balance on its website’s Transparency page and claims the money is redeemable for U.S. dollars at any time directly through the Tether platform.

The project’s website has been up and down sporadically, since the hack. An archive of the site is available here.

The post Hacker Allegedly Siphons $31 Million Out of Tether, Driving Further Speculations About the Cryptocurrency appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

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