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Andreessen Horowitz has trumpeted its bet on the crypto space with the Wednesday launch of a $4.5 billion fund for blockchain-based projects; the venture capital firm sees the current market crash as an opportunity to dive into the web 3.0.

For its fourth crypto fund, the company will allocate $1.5 billion to seed investments and $3 billion to venture investments. As of this moment, it raised roughly $7.6 billion earmarked for crypto and web3 investments. 

"We think we are now entering the golden era of web3. Programmable blockchains are sufficiently advanced, and a diverse range of apps have reached tens of millions of users," a16z general partner Chris Dixon said in a statement, adding that the firm wants to work with others to build a "better" internet.

Web3 in part envisions the next phase of the internet as primarily powered by blockchain technology. 

Andreessen said that the new pool of funds will be dedicated toward bolstering developments in Web3 games, DeFi, and social media, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) communities, and privacy. 

The move comes during a tremendous crypto market crash. The crypto market has seen a dramatic selloff in bitcoin in addition to the collapse of algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD and its sister cryptocurrency Luna. The value of the broader crypto market has plunged by about $1 trillion during 2022 to $1.3 trillion as of Wednesday, according to CoinGecko. 

"What we've seen is that many of the best protocols and companies are actually built during periods of market instability or downturns," Arianna Simpson, general partner at Andreesen, told the Financial Times in a report published Wednesday. "Because it really allows people to focus on the technology and building rather than being distracted by short term price fluctuations." 

Andreessen Horowitz has been an early investor in Facebook, Twitter, Coinbase, Airbnb and Stripe.