Quick Take:
- Giant venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has invested in PleasrDAO.
- PleasrDAO is an investor group targeting the emerging NFT market.
- The group is known for buying Wu-Tang Clan’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” album and the original Doge image.
Andreessen Horowitz, popularly known as a16z, on Tuesday, told TechCrunch it has backed an NFT focused investment group. The Menlo Park, CA-based multi-billion venture capital firm is investing in PleasrDAO, an investment group that targets the non-fungible token market.
Announcing the partnership General Partner at a16z, Ali Yahya tweeted:
The group is popular for buying Wu-Tang Clan’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” album and the original Doge image. PleasrDAO is made up of a group of investors that have been joining together to invest in high-priced NFTs.
The Doge image cost them (1,696.9 ETH), which is roughly $4 million at the current ETH price, before later fractionalizing it and selling it to the cryptocurrency community. As of this writing, it has an implied market capitalization of about $100 million.
PleasrDAO also paid another $4 million for the Wu-Tang Clan album, whilst also coughing out $5.4 million a work from Edward Snowden.
DAO is the acronym for Decentralised Autonomous Organization, which is basically an organization formed by a group of people that make decisions about investments based on a blockchain voting mechanism.
Andreessen Horowitz latest bet is not the first on the cryptocurrency market-focused funds. In October, the firm also invested in the Friends With Benefits (FWB) DAO, valuing it $100 million at the time.
Although the firm has not disclosed its investment in PleasrDAO, council member Santiago Santos noted that the firm’s bet on DAO governance tokens was less than 5%.
Andreessen Horowitz crypto-centric fund debuted this summer and has since grown to the value of about $2.2 billion. The firm’s total assets under management reached $18.8 billion in August, implying that the crypto investing arm is potentially less than 10% of the entire fund.
Yahya told TechCrunch that the DAO concept is potentially the best illustration of what web3 and crypto are all about.
On Wednesday, he also revealed on Twitter that the firm was leading a funding round for sound.xyz a platform that builds Web3 tools for artists.
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