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a16z Crypto Operating Partner Jason Rosenthal posted on the X platform that cash flow is the moat. The best companies often establish themselves by placing themselves in the "cash flow," and cryptocurrency is the first modern technology born for this purpose. If your startup has not designed its products and business models around these principles, you will miss a great opportunity. Thanks to stablecoins, funds and value can now flow at the speed of the internet—global settlement, 24/7 uninterrupted, with end-to-end programmability.Railway companies do not make money from locomotives, but from every ton of goods that pass through the tracks; companies like Visa and Jane Street are all part of the cash flow. Cash flow combined with network effects is one of the most enduring business structures in history. There is a lot of profit margin in traditional financial services, and processes such as payments, custody, lending, foreign exchange, settlement, and market making can all be compressed. Crypto entrepreneurs have the opportunity to build the next generation of cash flow businesses that are programmable, instant, and global.This model can also be extended to computing, GPU markets, AI training data, energy, robotics, space, rare earth metals, and other fields. Founders should ask themselves: Are you in the cash flow? When the value of product activities grows tenfold, does your revenue grow accordingly? In your target market, where are the segments with the highest profit margins relative to the value created?

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the venture capital firm a16z, published an article outlining his stance on AI regulation by the U.S. government. He stated that if so-called regulation means creating complex rules by people who do not understand the technology, suppressing innovation through layers of approval and compliance requirements, and ultimately becoming a tool for large enterprises to consolidate market positions and hinder newcomers, then he will firmly oppose such regulation.In his view, excessive regulation often leads to startups being crushed by cumbersome procedures and high compliance costs, causing innovative talent to flow to more open markets, while regulatory agencies themselves continue to expand, ultimately deviating from their original goals.Andreessen specifically criticized the regulatory mindset centered on the "precautionary principle," arguing that if this concept is amplified indefinitely, it could lead society to reject new technologies out of fear of potential risks. Many regulatory measures often arrive late, after fundamental changes in technology and industry have already occurred, making it difficult to address real issues and potentially becoming obstacles to innovative development. He also attributed the relatively lagging state of technological innovation in Europe in recent years to a culture of excessive regulation, believing that regulation should not become a moat to protect vested interests and raise market entry barriers.However, Andreessen emphasized that he does not oppose all forms of regulation. On the contrary, he supports rules that can build market trust, ensure public safety, and maintain fair competition. For example, preventing AI from faking voices to commit financial fraud, preventing deepfake content from interfering with elections, preventing technology from being used to harm vulnerable groups, and ensuring that consumers and businesses can safely use new technologies.In his view, reasonable regulation is like guardrails on a highway and a braking system in a car; it does not hinder technological progress but rather allows innovation to develop in a faster and more sustainable manner. Andreessen stated that what is truly worth pursuing is not "zero regulation" or "heavy regulation," but finding a balance between innovative vitality and social trust, which is also his unwavering stance.Previously, the U.S. government forcibly "recalled" commercial models due to jailbreak risks, leading Anthropic to take Fable 5 offline overnight and publicly protest.

a16z Crypto published an interpretation of the investment in Digital Asset, stating that the three major obstacles hindering institutional adoption of crypto technology in the past included blockchain performance, regulatory uncertainty, and privacy issues. Now, the blockchain performance issue has been largely resolved, with L1 and L2 networks meeting the scale, speed, and complexity required by institutions; the US GENIUS Act has come into effect to address regulatory issues.a16z Crypto believes that traditional public chains default to public transaction information, which facilitates verification, but institutional financial transactions need to meet requirements for selective disclosure, compliance, and multi-party collaboration. For example, when banks conduct treasury bond transactions or repurchase transactions, both parties need to share information but should not expose their positions, counterparties, and transaction sizes to all network participants. Therefore, privacy remains a core challenge for institutions entering the blockchain. Most blockchain projects attempt to make institutions adapt to the crypto system, while Digital Asset chooses to adapt crypto technology to institutional needs, and mature privacy technologies have become a key breakthrough to attract institutions to enter the market.

According to The Block, Canton developer Digital Asset has completed a $355 million financing round, led by a16z crypto, with participation from subsidiaries of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Apollo Global Management, BNP Paribas, Bodhi, Castle Securities, CME Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Greenwulf Asset Management, Hanwha Investment & Securities, HSBC, Liberty City Ventures, Optiver, Polychain, S&P Global, SBI Group, SoFi, Tradeweb, and William Blair.The company stated that after this financing round, Digital Asset has entered a profitable state. Its CEO Yuval Rooz pointed out that the financing expansion of the balance sheet not only enhances the company's financial flexibility but also allows it to more freely pursue mergers and acquisitions, engage in emerging projects, and assist partners in building on-chain financial business systems.

Former Dragonfly investor and Delphi Digital researcher Robbie Petersen announced on the X platform that he will soon join a16z Crypto as an investment partner. Petersen stated that his core belief in cryptocurrency has always remained unchanged: if one believes in the arc of technology adoption trending towards efficiency, market forces will inevitably reveal that blockchain is the most efficient technology for global coordination. This trend has already been reflected in stablecoins, perpetual contracts, prediction markets, and tokenized assets. He believes that the only bottleneck preventing blockchain from engulfing other global markets and creating entirely new markets is time. Petersen pointed out that the gap between sentiment and fundamentals in the cryptocurrency market has never been so wide, which makes him more bullish than ever.

a16z Crypto elaborated on why it co-led a $175 million financing round for the decentralized lending protocol Morpho in partnership with Paradigm and Ribbit. a16z views on-chain lending as "the next frontier of credit" and a key technological node for human prosperity, believing that a blockchain-based open credit network can reduce infrastructure costs, create a more competitive credit market, and provide broader channels for capital and yield acquisition.a16z stated that when they first engaged with the Morpho team in 2022, founder Paul Frambot was still in university but had already gathered nearly all of France's top blockchain talent; the team's pioneering on-chain lending optimizer achieved a Pareto improvement in interest rates by coordinating peer-to-peer loans on top of the underlying peer-to-pool protocol, and the project symbolizes a transformation for the global financial system.In 2024, Morpho launched the Morpho Blue protocol, focusing on over-collateralized loans of crypto assets with floating interest rates and variable terms. Now, Morpho is moving towards a larger vision—becoming the open credit network of the internet. The next product, Morpho Midnight, will support fixed-rate term on-chain loans collateralized by traditional assets, equipped with customizable KYC tools. More importantly, clients can initiate their own lending markets based on Morpho's underlying infrastructure while sharing the network's liquidity and network effects.a16z believes that we are currently at a critical window for disrupting the traditional credit system and building a more open and efficient credit network.

According to a report by Fortune, the DeFi lending protocol Morpho has completed a $175 million financing round at a valuation of $2 billion, led by a16z crypto, Paradigm, and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Apollo Funds, Circle Ventures, VanEck, IOSG Ventures, Variant, and others.Morpho allows institutions to customize lending markets and risk parameters on-chain, and has already attracted users such as Coinbase, Kraken, Anchorage Digital, and Galaxy Digital. The protocol has a total locked value of approximately $6.6 billion and is accelerating its competition with traditional DeFi lending protocols like Aave, while planning to further expand into high-yield DeFi asset allocations sought by traditional financial institutions.

According to on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa, a16z affiliated entities have increased their holdings by 90,091 HYPE in the past 10 hours, valued at approximately 5.238 million USD.On-chain data shows that this entity has accumulated a total of 6.996 million HYPE since 2026, with a total value of approximately 327 million USD and an average acquisition price of about 46.85 USD.

According to on-chain analyst Ai Yi's monitoring, a16z affiliated entities have withdrawn a total of 224,118 HYPE from various exchanges in the past 24 hours, valued at 15.156 million USD. The total amount of HYPE accumulated for 2026 has increased to 6.906 million (32.2 million USD), with an average price of 46.7 USD, currently yielding a floating profit of 13.1 million USD.

According to monitoring by Ai Yi, the largest external entity of HYPE, a16z (0x41A...A93, 0x643...103), has increased its holdings by 155,321 HYPE in the past 14 hours, valued at $11.126 million; since 2026, it has cumulatively increased its holdings by 6.754 million HYPE, with a total value exceeding $312 million, an average price of $46.24, and a current floating profit of $14.1 million.

According to TechFundingNews, AI company Lassie, founded by former Robinhood and Superhuman employees Steijn Pelle and Frédéric Renken, has completed a $35 million Series A funding round led by a16z, with participation from Night Capital, the founder of Superhuman, the co-founder of Plaid, the co-founder of Wise, among others, bringing the total funding to $47 million.The two co-founders worked manually for months at a dental clinic before writing code, handling insurance claims and reconciling payments. Currently, Lassie operates in over 700 clinics across 49 states in the U.S., saving owners more than 250,000 hours of administrative work each year. a16z general partner Alex Rampell has joined the board of Lassie. Lassie's AI agent directly accesses the clinic's insurance portal, pulls reimbursement data, reconciles, updates system records, and verifies bank funds, completely replacing human labor rather than adding a software layer.

According to Techinasia, AI startup Special, founded by former U.S. government efficiency members Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Fox, has completed a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with investors including Valor Equity Partners founder Antonio Gracias, former xAI CFO Anthony Armstrong, Steve Davis, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, and Palantir Technologies CTO Shyam Sankar.Special plans to reduce costs through company acquisitions and the use of AI. The company also announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire a healthcare company in Texas, which will incorporate the Figure Health business line focused on the aging population.

a16z Crypto published an article analyzing the unique value and challenges faced by prediction markets. Prediction markets allow participants to trade on the outcomes of events, aggregating dispersed information through price signals to provide real-time estimates of the probabilities of future events. Unlike traditional polls, prediction markets have the ability to update in real-time and incentivize participants to bet their capital on their information, thereby improving prediction accuracy.The article points out that prediction markets are used not only by companies for product launches and research experiment forecasts but also by the media as a source of "crowd wisdom," covering a wide range of events from geopolitical issues to AI model performance. Its core advantage lies in providing independent probability estimates for specific events, rather than relying on indirect signals from overall asset price movements. However, prediction markets still face challenges related to infrastructure and market design, including event verification, contract settlement, participant information adequacy, and potential manipulation risks.a16z believes that if these issues are resolved, prediction markets are expected to become important tools for decision-making and information aggregation, expanding financial and societal insights into future events.

On-chain data shows that a whale address believed to be associated with a16z has increased its holdings of HYPE again. Since mid-April, its total purchase scale has approached 200 million dollars.

According to TechFundingNews, Lightning Capital announced the establishment of a $100 million "AI Ripple Effect" early-stage fund and appointed former Andreessen Horowitz partner Michele Griffin as the fund's managing partner and COO. It is reported that the fund will invest in startups focused on the secondary impact of AI as it transitions from experimentation to implementation on industries, infrastructure, and ways of working, while also providing secondary market and cash management strategies and offering flexible liquidity options for family offices and corporate investors.

According to crypto analyst Ai Yi @ai_9684xtpa, after a 5-day break, the a16z affiliated entity has started to accumulate a large amount of HYPE again.Data shows that in the past 7 hours, this entity has withdrawn a total of 253,947.43 HYPE from multiple exchanges and market maker addresses, worth approximately 15.03 million USD, with an average withdrawal price of about 59.2 USD. Currently, HYPE has retraced about 10% from its historical high, now reported at 58.13 USD.