Author: Zen, PANews

Earlier this month, the crypto market saw two long-awaited large-scale fund raisings.

On May 5, Haun Ventures announced the completion of a new $1 billion fund; a day later, a16z crypto announced the launch of its fifth crypto fund, Crypto Fund 5, with a total investment of $2.2 billion.

Compared to past bull markets fueled by high-growth narratives and fundraising frenzies, the timing of these two large-scale fundraisings is noteworthy. Currently, the US crypto market structure bill and stablecoin regulation are still underway, and the differences between the banking industry and crypto platforms regarding stablecoin yield mechanisms have not yet been fully bridged.

In this environment, the fact that LPs are still willing to allocate large sums of money to a few top managers indicates that capital has not actually left the market, but is simply redefining investment logic. A clear trend is emerging in this shift in investment focus: projects worthy of long-term investment are gradually shifting from prioritizing explosive growth to prioritizing long-term survival under regulatory cycles.

From the logic of a bull market to the logic of regulation

Looking back at the 2021 bull market, the primary market was more like a race for growth. At that time, the valuation logic of most projects was based on rapid expansion. VCs focused on TVL (Total Value Limit), user growth, trading volume, and expected token price. As long as a project could quickly capture the market and create a compelling narrative, it had the opportunity to secure huge funding.

However, starting in 2022, the market began to undergo fundamental changes. The sudden collapse of FTX not only led to a rapid contraction in industry liquidity, but more importantly, it profoundly changed the attitude of regulatory agencies towards the crypto industry. The US SEC, CFTC, and banking regulatory system began to intervene more deeply in the crypto market, with stablecoins, trading platforms, DeFi, and other areas gradually coming under regulatory scrutiny.

While the secondary market is sluggish, risk appetite in the primary market has also declined significantly. Although global crypto funding in 2025 has recovered somewhat compared to the bear market, funds are increasingly concentrated in leading projects and mature infrastructure sectors, and the era of diverse development and mass innovation is long gone.

This means that VCs' focus has shifted. In the past, capital was willing to pay for "potential future growth," but now more and more institutions are prioritizing a project's long-term viability within the future regulatory framework. Consequently, factors previously overlooked by the market, such as compliance capabilities, compatibility with the traditional financial system, and institutionalization capabilities, are beginning to re-enter the valuation process.

This change is particularly evident in the stablecoin sector.

Stablecoins are regaining their status as core assets.

Over the past year, stablecoins have become one of the most active areas for fundraising in the primary market. Compared to most crypto projects that rely on market sentiment, stablecoins have gradually developed real revenue models and financial infrastructure attributes. Tether's profitability essentially comes from the interest income generated by its massive US Treasury bond reserves; while Circle is attempting to shift from a single stablecoin issuer to a more complete payment and on-chain dollar network infrastructure.

More importantly, the attitude of US regulators towards stablecoins is also changing. For a long time, stablecoins existed in a state of ambiguity, lacking a clear regulatory framework. However, since 2025, discussions on stablecoin legislation in the US have accelerated significantly, and formal exploration into their integration into the financial system has begun.

Against this backdrop, stablecoins are beginning to exhibit a completely different market positioning than before. They are no longer merely a medium of exchange within the crypto community, but are increasingly being seen by institutions as part of the next-generation dollar settlement infrastructure. Traditional payment companies, including Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe, are continuously expanding their stablecoin-related initiatives.

This is why stablecoins have once again become one of the most attractive investment areas for venture capitalists. For the primary market, a sector that can simultaneously satisfy real income, regulatory certainty, institutional demand, and the potential of a "global payment network" is extremely rare.

Haun: An investment logic more like "crypto finance"

The shift in investment logic is crystal clear to VCs that have weathered the storms of the past few years. In the current crypto primary market, a16z and Haun Ventures, having just secured massive funding, represent two different yet increasingly convergent paths.

Compared to traditional cryptocurrency VCs, Haun Ventures has always had a unique style. Founder Katie Haun previously served as a U.S. federal prosecutor for many years and participated in numerous crypto-related case investigations. In 2018, Haun joined a16z, becoming one of a16z crypto's early core partners. In 2022, she left a16z to found Haun Ventures, quickly completing what was then the largest female-founded fund in the crypto industry.

Her background has given Haun Ventures a naturally stronger regulatory perspective from its inception. Haun focuses on stablecoins, payments, custody, and on-chain financial infrastructure, with its core strategy being to bet on crypto infrastructure that can gain access to the mainstream financial system. Its major investments include stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge and digital asset custody platform BitGo.

Regarding the deployment of the new fund, Haun Ventures announced three key areas: next-generation financial infrastructure, asset tokenization expansion, and "proxy economics," namely, scenarios where AI systems begin to conduct transactions on behalf of humans.

As we can see, Haun doesn't completely avoid risky projects, but compared to narratives of high volatility, it focuses more on which infrastructures can truly become part of the future financial system. This investment approach is closer to "long-term financial infrastructure construction" than short-term market speculation. Especially as regulations gradually take shape, projects that can truly survive in the long term are likely no longer platforms that rely solely on token incentives for rapid expansion, but rather infrastructures that can form synergistic relationships with the regulatory framework, the banking system, and traditional financial markets.

a16z is still betting on the "next-generation internet".

Compared to Haun, which leans more towards regulatory-friendly financial infrastructure, a16z crypto's fundraising logic for Fund 5 better reflects the current top crypto VCs' reassessment of the industry's changing stage.

In its latest fund announcement, a16z crypto did not emphasize the "Web3 boom" or rapid user growth as it did in the previous cycle. Instead, it repeatedly mentioned another key phrase: which products will continue to be used after the market bubble bursts. Fund 5's core investment focus clearly covers seven sectors: stablecoins, payments, on-chain finance, asset tokenization (RWA), perpetual futures, prediction markets, and AI agents.

In their announcement, Chris Dixon and others wrote that cryptocurrency cycles are often accompanied by a large influx of speculation and capital, but what truly matters are the infrastructure and genuine demand that remain after the noise subsides. Compared to the previous round, which emphasized token narratives and application explosions, a16z is clearly focusing more on areas that have already begun to form real-world use cases.

The most prominent example is stablecoins. In its announcement, a16z mentioned that even during market downturns, stablecoin usage continued to grow, with people starting to use them for cross-border transfers, dollar savings, and payment settlements. These demands, in turn, exposed the problems of traditional payment networks being "slow, expensive, and inefficient."

Compared to the market's enthusiasm for NFTs, GameFi, and high-yield DeFi in 2021, a16z now emphasizes on-chain finance, stablecoin payments, asset tokenization, prediction markets, and on-chain payment and collaboration capabilities of AI agents. A common characteristic of these directions is that they are no longer solely driven by market sentiment but are beginning to attempt to penetrate real-world financial and internet infrastructure scenarios.

In his first podcast after Fund 5 was founded, Guy Wuollet, a partner at a16z Crypto, said: “The whole space has gone from ‘we’re writing smart contracts in our mom’s basement in hoodies and flip-flops’ to ‘we’re putting on ties, shirts and ties and going to meetings with big banks that are seriously considering replacing the core ledger with blockchain.’”

Behind this change lies a16z's reassessment of the industry's stage. With regulations gradually taking shape and the industry entering a long-term development phase, the truly important question has become which infrastructure can sustain itself over the next decade and truly integrate into the global financial and internet systems.

To some extent, this explains why a16z, despite its drastically different style from Haun, ultimately completed a large-scale fundraising round around the same time. Both are essentially answering the same question: which company is better positioned to weather longer regulatory cycles in the future?

From a broader industry perspective, the primary market is currently at a point of significant divergence in funding: late-stage financing (Series C and above) has seen substantial year-on-year growth, while early-stage financing has contracted significantly. Capital is rapidly concentrating on leading institutions with full-cycle investment capabilities.

The crypto industry is transitioning from a period of rapid, unregulated growth to a more mature stage of integration into the mainstream financial system. At this turning point, whoever can find certainty within the regulatory cycle will define the next decade.