Why A16Z is so powerful and why ABCDE closed down

The high risk and rich returns of the great voyages gave birth to the modern financial industry. Both stocks and the company system originated at this time. Through continuous short-term speculation, the long-term colonization spanning several centuries shaped the world today. It has been repeatedly called up in the name of heroes to promote the growth of encryption.

Why is A16Z so powerful, and why did ABCDE close down?

As long as the geographical distribution of a species is wide enough, geographical variation will occur.

ABCDE was heartbroken by the BTC L2 track. It has invested a total of 40 million US dollars in 3 years. In the face of no higher returns, it directly entered the post-investment stage (refer to the previous issue: the closing stage of encryption VC, what did YZi invest in).

As early as 2023, some Chinese VCs have begun to move to the secondary market, or not raise new funds, and focus on supporting the projects they have invested in on Binance, Gate, and Matcha. They can withdraw some of them and lose less. Web3Port’s transformation is correct, but it’s a pity that it is a bit greedy.

Never make the last penny, otherwise you will become the target of public criticism as an emotional focus, but Li Chaoren, who said this, has also become a doomsday cucumber. The temptation of money is not transferred by personal will.

A16Z doesn’t think so. From the perspective of absolute return rate, Silicon Valley VCs who like to play the long game may not be as good as Chinese VCs, but a16z AI has raised $20 billion, and even the startup accelerator (CSX) has a starting investment of $500,000, while the overall Crypto fund size is as high as more than $7.6 billion.

This is no longer a mutation, it has been integrated into the existing ecology and even part of the future ecology.

Getting investment and getting a16z investment are two different things.

If we expand our perspective, the crypto industry begins to show the following rules: the West is responsible for concept issuance, the East is responsible for project development, the West is responsible for capital concentration, and the East provides liquidity.

Binance and other Chinese exchanges still have the largest liquidity, and Bitget is also famous for its proprietary market-making business, but why are we gradually "proud of internationalization" at all levels from exchanges to VCs, and the Chinese-speaking market is second?

Image description: a16z American Dynamism, Image source: a16z

In terms of exchanges, stablecoins, and even compliance, we are showing a backward basic appearance. We do not spread emotions, but only share facts. We are at a turning point in history.

Web2 already has it, and Web3 is more intense.

After DeepSeek R1 "exported to imported", traditional VCs that had been gradually silent since 2018 along with Chinese concept stocks began to recover, but we must admit that the concept of US dollar + BVI + VC + Chinese market has gradually disappeared.

More and more Internet strategic investments are independent and cancelled, local government industry guidance funds are more in love with "hard technology" and localization, the central government is planning and laying out future industries, and financial state-owned enterprises and central enterprises pay more attention to policy trends and value preservation and appreciation.

ABCDE, or the reason for the decline of the entire Chinese Crypto VC is actually self-evident:

1. a16z can love the United States and the US dollar. The companies invested in Silicon Valley are naturally worldly, and the new global information capitalism platform is embedded in their genes;

2. Chinese VC cannot directly embrace the Chinese market, and can only rely on the Western halo to compete with their peers by selling the liquidity of the Chinese market.

After the dissolution of A&T, Internet giants basically do not look at Web3, local governments and state-owned enterprises basically only talk about chains, and even talk about currencies, let alone participate in investment and market making, and the trial of a few state-owned and private financial groups in Hong Kong and Singapore is more like a strategic defensive posture.

The US dollar is a product, and the US market is the front station of the global market. A16z has a low fundraising threshold and a huge scale, but compared with the global market, it still has the possibility of huge profits.

A16z can fail 1,000 times until the next Meta or Google appears.

Mobilization or speculation: Where is the Chinese currency circle going?

Neanderthals have beautiful stone tools, but they are stupid craftsmen.

In Western history, finance has always been a means of mobilization. Behind the Dutch tulips and the British South Sea Securities is the unparalleled success of the Dutch and British East India Companies. Spain and Portugal, which insisted on royal monopoly, lost the whole world after robbing American silver.

The failure of the two yas is not because they did not deliver silver to the industrial field, but because they lacked the awareness of financial and social participation. The innovation of a king is not enough to change the fate of the country.

A new version of a new god

This is the case for all Chinese VCs. The high requirements and quick returns of LPs are not a problem. The inability to meet them is the problem of VCs. A16z does not solve this problem either, but YZi (Prev Binance Labs)'s investment preference is trading products, ranging from DEX to other CEXs, including FTX.

Similar to Arthur Hayes's family office Maelstrom, it does not care much about market trends, but walks out of its own aesthetic preferences, disenchantment with everything, and respects innovators. Facts have proved that Ethena Like / Delta Like products are about to become the mainstream choice of the market.

Innovation does not happen on Twitter, but more often in the hearts of individuals. What founders who have gone through countless hardships need is money or a big name, or the support of key figures and nodes, which is not something that outsiders can tell.

Assassins rebel against technology lords

The future is not necessarily progressive. The greater trend of various platforms is to become the "lords" of the information age, blocking the way for latecomers in the name of technology and progress, such as the all-female space travel group of Blue Origin, Vitalik's Risc-V concept after switching to PoS, and the names of DAO and foundations cannot prevent individuals from exerting influence in fact.

We need new people and new innovation paths.

Which will come first, the technological singularity or the surprise attack? Hyperliquid may be sophisticated enough, but the impact on Binance and USDT is not big enough.

Speculation is not long-termism

The fact now is that our role is a token dumping ground. We have the largest liquidity for nothing, but we have no power to resist Western VCs, policies and exchanges, because money will unite enough, but people are born with selfishness.

If some people are famous for long-termists, then remember that SBF likes to eat vegetarian food and spread effective altruism. Of course, Movement Labs has proved that being Trump's friend is more useful than this.

Speculation is speculation, long-termism is long-termism, and speculators will never agree with long-termism.

Bitcoin has only been around for 17 years. It is easy to tell who is real and who is fake: holding Bitcoin for profit, guiding others to hold and trade Bitcoin for profit, or exchanging your own tokens for profit.

Long-termism is similar to effective altruism. First, we need to solve how to survive until the day when the results are confirmed.

Conclusion

Income is a series of events. Only when the tide is surging can the true colors of heroes be revealed.

Cultural traditions, like TVL, will also become liabilities of the project party. Creditors are just waiting to exercise their rights, and projects that attract liabilities by junk terms are tantamount to futures dead.

The imbalance between the East and the West is like the distance from the Westernization Movement to Bitcoin. It seems far away and unrelated, but in fact, the fate of cause and effect has been determined in the eyes of the world.

The only question is, can our generation of crypto practitioners construct public goods for the whole world from the local liquidity market, and make profits from it?