Andreessen Horowitz launches $2.2 billion crypto fund and is 'radically optimistic' despite price fluctuations

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Invite Friends Highlighted Stories! Andreessen Horowitz launches $2.2 billion crypto fund and is 'radically optimistic' despite price fluctuations Andreessen Horowitz is launching a multibillion-dollar fund to invest in a volatile ecosystem it's betting will be as influential as the internet. The Silicon Valley venture capital firm, founded by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, announced its new $2.2 billion cryptocurrency-focused fund on Thursday. It plans to deploy that capital across blockchain and digital asset start-ups. "The size of this fund speaks to the size of the opportunity before us: crypto is not only the future of finance but, as with the internet in the early days, is poised to transform all aspects of our lives," Katie Haun and Chris Dixon, partners who run Andreessen's cryptocurrency group, said in a blog post. The company's first crypto-focused fund was launched three years ago, during what's now known as "crypto winter." That year, the value of bitcoin cratered roughly 80% from the highs in 2017. The latest fund also comes at another bearish moment for bitcoin. Continued here � � Biden's roads deal is all in the engineering The $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal President Joe Biden has struck with Republican and Democratic lawmakers is a miracle of engineering. For years, politicians' hopes of spending more on roads and bridges went nowhere . So the fact that the plan on the table actually looks doable is remarkable, regardless of what actually ends up being in it. The deal announced on Thursday is a win for Biden, who made infrastructure a part of his pitch as commander-in-chief. Eleven Republicans in the 100-person Senate helped craft the proposal to improve airports, highways and power grids. If all 50 Democrats support it, the bill will have the 60 votes it needs to pass. Roughly half of the spending will come from unused Covid-relief funds and other already-allocated money rather than new taxes. Meanwhile a companion plan, which may address social priorities like healthcare and tax hikes that progressive Democrats demand, is taking a different route - Biden hopes to pass that through a budget-related process that only needs 51 votes. In short, he may have found a way to prevent Republicans from sinking his bipartisan plan, while also appeasing Democrats who think it doesn't go far enough. That's an achievement. Continued here You Might Like � � � Conan O'Brien's long, strange late-night journey comes to a close Almost 30 years after becoming the "new guy" in late-night TV, Conan O'Brien is closing that chapter of his life. And while the key players associated with his long, strange odyssey made out better than fine, that doesn't mean the red-haired host wound up where he wanted to, or that the ride hasn't been a roller coaster. Having followed O'Brien's arc from the beginning, it's hard to believe he's become such a part of the cultural firmament. As a reminder, he was tapped to fill David Letterman's old slot at NBC in 1993, when Letterman jumped to CBS after losing out to Jay Leno in the first "The Tonight Show" succession battle. A 30-year-old unknown comedy writer when making his debut, O'Brien survived cancellation several times in the early going. NBC kept renewing the show in 13-week increments, underscoring its lack of faith, before he became such a valued player that the network anointed him to replace Leno, only to result in a scenario as messy as the first one. Continued here � Why A Three-Child Policy Doesn't Actually Help The Chinese People On June 1, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced that it will allow Chinese families to have three children. This adjustment is the latest in in a long string of CCP policies interfering in personal decisions about the size of Chinese families. This month's policy shift further highlights yet again the significance the CCP places on families as fundamental building blocks of society and demonstrates the lengths the Party will go to in order to control them. The three-child policy comes five years after Beijing shifted from its decades' long one-child policy to a two-child policy. The 2016 adjustment was made in response to shifting demographic trends that revealed a rapidly aging population simultaneous with a decline in the size of China's working age population. China precipitated its own demographic decline by keeping the one-child policy in place for nearly 35 years. And the decline is not yet over. Credit Suisse predicts that, as a result of the one-child policy, China will experience a four million to six million person labor shortage each year during the 2020s, reaching its height of 6.2 million in 2024 and then easing after that. Continued here You Might Like � � � Meltdown at Yale Law How a controversy over Amy Chua hosting students at her house has turned the campus on its head - again. Over the past several years, Yale Law School has faced a number of controversies involving two of its best-known professors: Amy Chua and her husband Jed Rubenfeld. The pair are the closest thing Yale Law has to a celebrity power couple, less for their legal and academic achievements than their boundary-pushing bestsellers and op-eds. In 2011, Chua kicked off publicity for her new book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, with a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," setting off a somewhat predictable firestorm that made her, for a time at least, a household name. In the years since, Chua and Rubenfeld have leaned into their role as provocateurs, and in 2014, they co-authored a new book, "The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America". This book again received widespread attention and blowback; the New York Times review of the book compared reading it to "being slugged over and over again by a bully wearing kid gloves." But while the couple has had many moments of public notoriety, nowhere are they more infamous than on Yale's own campus. In December 2019, following allegations that she made inappropriate remarks about both students and faculty and was drinking heavily with her students (Yale professors are allowed to drink socially with students but, as a recent email from the dean put it, "faculty should never drink excessively or allow students to do so"), Chua came to an agreement with Yale Law: She stopped socializing with her students, agreed not to teach required courses until it had been determined that her behavior had improved, and was removed from Yale's clerkship committee. (As a member of that committee, she was known for helping minority and first-generation students secure prestigious clerkships that would otherwise most often go to the students of wealthy and connected families.) Continued here � Video: Gaza's Deadly Night: How Israeli Airstrikes Killed 44 People We visited the scene, interviewed survivors and analyzed videos, photos and satellite images to find out what happened. Israeli airstrikes on May 16 turned three Gaza apartment buildings into rubble and killed 44 civilians. We found that Israel dropped heavy bombs without warning and with limited intelligence about what they were attacking. Continued here � TradeBriefs Publications are read by over 10,00,000 Industry Executives About Us | Advertise Privacy Policy Unsubscribe You are receiving this mail because of your subscription with TradeBriefs. Our mailing address is GF 25/39, West Patel Nagar, New Delhi 110008, India