Matt Huang, co-founder of crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm, says he is still devoted to crypto even though artificial intelligence (AI) in his opinion is “too interesting to ignore.”
“We’ve never been more excited about crypto and we continue to invest across all stages,” Huang said Tuesday on Twitter, while adding “We’re also a group of curious nerds and the developments in AI are too interesting to ignore.”
The venture capitalist went on to say that he does not see crypto and AI as being in some kind of competition where one will win and the other will lose, despite others holding that opinion.
“It seems trendy to frame crypto vs AI as a zero-sum competition. But we don’t buy it,” he wrote, before finally adding:
“Both are interesting and will have plenty of overlap. We’re excited to continue exploring.”
The comments from Huang, who is well-known in crypto circles for his involvement with decentralized finance (DeFi) projects like Uniswap, dYdX, and come just a month after his firm took a step away from a pure crypto focus to a broader “frontier tech” investing strategy that includes AI.
As part of the shift to a broader focus, Paradigm also removed all mentions of the words “crypto” and “Web3” from its website.
Not surprisingly, the move has been seen by some in the crypto community as an attempt to distance the firm for its beginnings as a pure crypto investment fund.
This was also pointed out in the comments under Huang’s latest tweet, Adam Cochran, a popular contributor to several DeFi projects, who shared screenshots showing Paradigm’s website before and after the firm changed all mentions of crypto.
“[…] if you think crypto is a defining technology, you would think you’d be comfortable defining yourself by it – not just with lip service on [crypto Twitter],” Cochran wrote.