Written by: Chris Dixon, Ali Yahya, Guy Wuollet, Eddy Lazzarin

Original title:《We raised a $2.2B crypto fund》

Compiled by: ChainCatcher

Cryptocurrency cycles often follow certain patterns

The wave of speculation brings attention and capital. Some of it is wasted, while another part funds infrastructure that would not otherwise be built. When the noise subsides, what remains often appears more useful than it did at the peak and more durable than it seemed at the trough.

If you focus not just on price, but on what is actually being built in each cycle, as well as what people continue to use when the hype fades, you will see this. We are in a relatively quiet moment like this now. The signals coming through at this time are among the most encouraging we have seen in years.

The clearest evidence comes from stablecoins

Transaction volumes fluctuate with the market, but the usage of stablecoins has continued to rise even during downturns. People use them for saving, cross-border remittances, and payments, revealing the sluggishness, high costs, and unreliability of traditional alternatives. The growth of stablecoins seems less like speculation and more like network adoption: the compounded growth in usage is due to the utility of the technology itself, not expectations about price movements.

Blockchain is also proving its value in capital markets

Since the last cycle, we have seen meaningful growth in perpetual futures for price discovery, prediction markets for revealing true information, and on-chain lending in the stablecoin credit market. Traditional assets are starting to go on-chain, and on-chain finance is beginning to be applied to assets beyond network tokens. A new financial system is taking shape — it can operate continuously, settle almost instantly, has costs close to zero, and is open to anyone with internet access.

The regulatory direction is also improving. The GENIUS Act is a typical example of prudent policy: clear definitions, strong safeguards, and space left for builders to build. We expect that other areas in the crypto market will also gain regulatory progress through legislation and rule-making. This will provide protection for consumers, certainty for builders, and a pathway for mainstream institutions to participate.

Now it is especially worth taking a step back and thinking about why this is particularly important at this moment.

Software is becoming increasingly complex and harder to trust. Artificial intelligence systems are powerful yet largely opaque. The infrastructure that the internet relies on is more centralized than ever before. Against this backdrop, the attributes designed to be provided by crypto networks become increasingly important, not increasingly trivial:

• Transparent and verifiable systems
• Globally accessible networks from day one
• Aligned economic models for users, creators, developers, and operators
• Infrastructure that does not rely on a few intermediaries

These attributes are being realized in actual products: payments, financial services, creator platforms, decentralized infrastructure, and new ways for people to coordinate with machines. Most of these are being built by startups and are increasingly being adopted by financial institutions, tech companies, and other entities to provide faster, cheaper, and more reliable services.

In practical terms, this means global instant remittances, asset tokenization for frictionless circulation without relying on banks to hold US dollars, access to composable networks built by others, and embedding these capabilities into various applications. This also includes some previously unattainable new models: users can directly own their assets and identities, holding inviolable digital property; software agents can make decisions, execute operations, and complete transactions on behalf of users, obtaining computational power, data, and services on demand; increasingly autonomous networks can self-fund, govern, and continuously evolve through code.

This is why we are announcing the launch of the new Crypto Fund 5. This $2.2 billion fund is specifically established for this moment. The founders supported by this fund are focusing on the parts of the cycle that receive less attention, but we believe will generate more long-term value: transforming new types of infrastructure into products people use daily.

Every significant computing platform ultimately gains meaning in this way; so too will cryptographic technology.

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