Andreessen Horowitz Looks to Double Down on Crypto With New $450M Fund

Private venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz may have plans for another crypto asset fund.  Established by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz over 10 years ago, the firm looks to start its second crypto investment fund, hoping to garner $450 million in capital for the endeavor, Financial Times said in an April 14 article, citing sources familiar with the situation. The firm is known in crypto Also going by the name a16z, Andreessen Horowitz provides tech companies and visionaries with funding. The outfit has three funds used for investment in startups and the like,…

Algorand Announces $43 Mln Grants Program to Foster ‘Borderless Economy’

The Algorand Foundation announced a 250 million ALGO (roughly $43 million) grants program to foster development on the Algorand blockchain on April 14. Cointelegraph spoke to Fangfang Chen, the Algorand Foundation’s head of operations, to find out more about the program. Algorand launches $43 million grants program The funds will be allocated to “qualified investors across four major categories: innovative research, development tools for the Algorand blockchain, use cases for decentralized applications (Dapps) […], and education and community initiatives.” Chen emphasizes that the grants are intended to bring about the…

Atomic Loans Launches Bitcoin DeFi Solution

Atomic Loans is launching a decentralized finance (DeFi) product that is likely to be the closest to a direct implementation on Bitcoin’s (BTC) chain. It doesn’t quite avoid using an external smart contract platform, but it allows directly using Bitcoin for collateral. The startup announced on April 14 that it had raised $2.45 million in seed funding in a round led by Initialized Capital and with participation from ConsenSys, Morgan Creek Digital and Joe Lallouz and Aaron Henshaw from Bison Trails. Simultaneously, it is launching the Bitcoin side of its…

China Sees New Blockchain Innovation Alliance, With Huawei and Alibaba as Members

China has welcomed its first provincial-level Blockchain Innovation Alliance on April 14, according to ChinaNews.  Major enterprises settles  More than 100 well-known enterprises, both domestic and foreign, have joined the alliance. Members include Inspur, Tsinghua Unigroup, Huawei, IBM, Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu, according to the announcement.  The Alliance is located in the intelligent industry cluster in Yuzhong District.  It aims to build an open platform for blockchain communication, cooperation, innovation, and application among joint enterprises.  Major players in China’s communications industry join with scientific research institutes on the alliance. Luo…

Bitmain to Compensate its Past Customers After Price Cut

Leading cryptocurrency mining application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) producer Bitmain announced the intention to grant a partial refund to the customers that bought its AntMiner S17+ and T17+ before the price cuts. A post published by Bitmain on April 14 announced that customers who purchased AntMiner S17+ and T17+ machines from mid-February to the end of April will receive compensation coupons. Who gets refunds and where can they use them? If the machines shipped after April 13 but the customer paid the original, higher, price, then the buyer will receive…

This Altcoin Has Thrived Amid Global Lockdown, Seeing 102% Growth in 28 Days

Little-known altcoin Komodo (KMD) had a strong month amid the global lockdown. In the past 28 days the KMD coin price increased 102% against the dollar, while many larger cap cryptocurrencies struggled for momentum.  From a coin price of $0.239453 on March 16, the value of Komodo climbed to a peak of $0.485010 on April 14 — a 102% increase.  KMD/USD 1 Month Chart: Coin360 That’s in stark contrast to the previous month’s performance, which saw the coin price drop by over 75% from February’s high of $0.920051. Komodo’s recent…

Ethereum Co-Founder Says Crypto Mining on Phones is a “Fool’s Game”

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, voiced a low opinion of the idea of cryptocurrency mining via mobile phones. Tweeting on April 13, Buterin said mining on mobile phones “is a fool’s game,” referring to the announcement by mobile phone manufacturer giant HTC to allow users to mine Monero (XMR) through its blockchain phone, Exodus. Ethereum’s co-founder added the following in reaction to the announcement: “[It] goes against everything we know about hardware economies of scale and more likely to trick users with false hope than help them.” Furthermore, he…