Nearly two years in the past, Katie Haun left Andreessen Horowitz and raised two crypto funds totaling $1.5 billion. And then . . . a crypto market disaster occurred. At Ztoog Disrupt, she appeared again at what occurred over the previous couple of years and confirmed that she’s nonetheless very optimistic about the way forward for crypto.
When Katie Haun was a normal companion at a16z, bitcoin was buying and selling at $65,000 and Sam Bankman-Fried was nonetheless on the helm of FTX. And Haun agrees that these issues set the area again significantly. But it’s not a unhealthy time to be a crypto investor.
“I think there’s a perception out there that crypto is crickets chirping. We find ourselves very busy, but one of the things we did do is we saw this market correction, and we very purposely waited to make some deployments,” Katie Haun mentioned. “So I know this is going to sound a little odd, but we feel actually it’s a really good time to be investing in the space during this time.”
According to her, there are a few misconceptions about Haun Ventures. “I think another misperception is ‘Oh, wow, you raised it during a high market, great timing, peak.’ Actually, that was not the case,” Haun mentioned. “It was not a walk in the park. Number one, crypto market cap had dropped 40% from its peak.”
“The other thing is perception of our fund is we’re one huge, enormous $1.5 billion fund, and we’re not. We have two funds. We have an early stage fund, $500 million. We do A, B and C. And then we have an acceleration fund, which backs all kinds of later stage projects in crypto.”
When it comes to the bigger fund, Haun Ventures lately closed two offers with out asserting them in two “iconic brands” in crypto which can be rising quickly. Haun didn’t title these firms.
Without giving any exhausting numbers, Haun mentioned that her agency hasn’t deployed half of the bigger fund. “Of our earlier stage fund, it’s considerably less than that,” she mentioned.
She has no remorse elevating $1.5 billion throughout her two funds. She thinks it’s the fitting dimension and she or he believes Haun Ventures will stay dedicated to this form of fund dimension in the long term.
“And by the way, I’m sitting here publicly stating this on the record in a stage setting, even if the market is in a massive crypto bull run, we don’t intend to increase our size. We think we’ve picked our size and our strategy for a reason,” Haun mentioned.
SEC may want to come again to Earth
When speaking concerning the SEC and present regulatory considerations about cryptocurrencies, Katie Haun expressed some robust opinions about among the choices which were made by the company.
“The law and the regulations are decided in this country by courts and by Congress. They’re not decided by independent agencies. So just because an agency says something doesn’t really make it the law. And I think a lot of people don’t realize that. And so we’ve seen agencies, certain branches of government — by the way, across different administrations too — get very, very involved,” Haun mentioned.
In specific, she criticized the present management. “I think the SEC under [Gary Gensler] has really taken a very expansive view of their jurisdiction in a way that I think, by the way, make no mistake, it’s not just crypto, it’s on AI, it’s on climate,” Haun mentioned.
“And I think that’s a bit concerning, because that’s not how our system is set up. And I think that’s why you’ve started to see some federal judges starting to say, ‘Wait a second, this is a step too far,’” she added.
“I think what’s going on now is regulators need to prove that they’re the tough cop on the beat. And they’re going after whatever they can, even if they might not ultimately prevail.”
The finish of FTX
As a former federal prosecutor, Katie Haun additionally had ideas about Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX in normal. She did meet him a couple of instances at conferences.
“I was on team Coinbase and the audience was by and large a lot of FTX supporters. The only other time — I think I met him two or three times — the only other time I shared a stage with him was behind closed doors, so I won’t say too much about it. But I can tell you also, I was talking about government and there were some awkward moments where he was saying, oh, I was not registering,” she mentioned.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – SEPTEMBER 21: (L-R) Ztoog General Manager & Editor-In-Chief Connie Loizos and Haun Ventures Founder & CEO Katie Haun converse onstage throughout Ztoog Disrupt 2023 at Moscone Center on September 21, 2023 in San Francisco, California. Image Credits: Kimberly White/Getty Images for Ztoog