a16z general partner Chris Dixon tops Forbes' list of "Best Venture Capitalists"

Crypto VCs have been investing at an unprecedented rate lately, and Andreessen Horowitz is one of the leaders in the industry, with huge returns on their investments.

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) General Partner Chris Dixon has topped Forbes' list of the best venture capitalists of 2022.

Very few crypto or Web3 funding rounds have been done without 16z being involved. According to an April 12 report by the publication, Dixon turned the $350 million Crypto Fund I into $6 billion in realized and unrealized gains in 2021. That equated to a stunning gain of 17.7 times, according to "sources with knowledge of the fund's financials."

In contrast, the entire cryptocurrency market itself has grown by only 200%, from $780 billion on January 1, 2021, to $2.3 trillion by the end of December of the same year.

a16z got into the crypto space early, bringing Coinbase $25 million in funding in 2013. By the time Coinbase goes public in April 2021, the company will hold a 15% stake after 14 funding rounds. The company's stock was valued at $10 billion on its first day of trading, giving the company a 60-fold return. However, this was years before Dixon’s crypto fund launched in June 2018, raising a total of $300 million, according to Crunchbase data.

a16z has made other notable investments including decentralized exchange Uniswap, the Avalanche blockchain, NFT creator Dapper Labs, and ethereum staking platform Lido, all of which have skyrocketed since then.

Dixon, who rarely gives interviews, told Forbes:

"My job is not to predict the future. My job is to be smart enough to know who's smart and who's going to be smart."

a16z is currently raising money for the world's largest crypto fund, valued at up to $4.5 billion. In January, a16z said it planned to raise $3.5 billion for the fund, in addition to raising another $1 billion for a Web3 seed investment.

Journalist Alex Konrad said that a16z “plans to roll back its crypto fund — putting cryptocurrency at the core of its main fund, similar to the cloud or the internet.”

Some crypto industry observers have raised concerns that excessive venture capital participation and investment in projects could undermine its decentralization. UNI tokens held by a16z and their influence in governance voting have been a particular issue. But either way, the crypto industry's most prominent venture capital firms are still looking for new investment opportunities in the industry.