From Semafor, November 16:
The Scoop
Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz turned down opportunities to invest in FTX, the failed exchange that has roiled the crypto market, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
These people say that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who resigned as CEO last week when his crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy, pitched Andreessen directly on an investment, but the venture capitalist declined in each funding round.
While the FTX meltdown has spread throughout the digital asset industry — contributing to a more than 70% drop in the crypto market’s total value from a year ago to $826 billion — Andreessen’s big bets in the space are still up, according to documents reviewed by Semafor. That’s because it was able to sell a portion of tokens it held as part of its investments before the downturn.
By the first quarter of this year, Andreessen’s first crypto fund, with $356 million in assets under management, had returned nearly five times the initial investment to the backers of that portfolio, according to the documents, which have not been disclosed previously.
Those returns came in the fiat currency known as dollars.
That means that even if all of the firm’s investments in crypto go to zero, the fund’s investors will still get at least five times their initial investment — a successful return.
Andreessen’s “paper” returns, which is what the firm expects to eventually recoup, was marked at nearly 15 times at the beginning of 2022, according to the documents. With the market rout that began earlier this year and now the collapse of FTX, the fund is almost certainly lower than it was at the start of 2022. But it is still on track to be one of the most successful in the firm’s history, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Andreessen declined to comment....
....MUCH MORE
Semafor has been very good about disclosing that Bankman-Fried was an investor in the outlet which only launched on October 18.
Here's Tablet Magazine's description of Bankman-Fried's direct efforts to influence media:
.....Over the past two years, Bankman-Fried cultivated the media lavishly, if not carefully. Drawing on what then seemed like an unlimited pool of cash, SBF (as we’ll call the mythologized version of the real person) dispersed investments, advertising dollars, sponsorships, and donations to key news outlets—including ProPublica, Vox, Semafor, and The Intercept—with extraordinary effectiveness.....
Bankman-Fried also trafficked in access and, well, we're linking to Tablet's story next.
