Why Andreessen Horowitz Is Betting Big on NFTs
The top-tier VC led a $100 million round for a NFT marketplace called OpenSea. It sees non-fungible tokens as foundational technology for the internet of tomorrow.
By Mark Sullivan
Andreessen Horowitz is placing a big bet on NFTs, leading a huge $100 million funding round for the largest of the NFT trading marketplaces, OpenSea. With the round, OpenSea, founded in 2017, has a valuation of $1.5 billion.
Users connect their crypto wallet to OpenSea’s platform, and then are able to buy, sell, or create NFTs (non-fungible tokens). OpenSea takes a 2.5% fee on each transaction. NFTs have had a big 2021: OpenSea says it sold $160 million in digital assets on its platform during June, and saw a 45X increase in volume growth in the first half of 2021.
An NFT is a cryptocurrency token connected to the blockchain that represents a digital good, and permanently and traceably marks its ownership and uniqueness. So far we’ve seen NFTs for digital art, videos, music, gifs, games, text, memes, and code, but that list will likely grow.
NFTs are a new technology, and many see the tokens as something collected by crypto nerds, and that can’t hold much value because the assets…
