KEY POINTS
  • Katie Haun is the first female general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and co-heads its $350 million cryptocurrency fund. She and the firm have been a driving force alongside Facebook to launch its libra cryptocurrency.
  • But in her former life as a U.S. Department of Justice prosecutor, she was investigating prison gangs, corrupt officials and the mafia. At one point, a colleague asked her to take down bitcoin.
  • "They said 'we have this perfect assignment for you' — there's this thing called bitcoin and we need to investigate it," she says. "That was the first time I'd ever heard of bitcoin."
  • Haun is now one of the most recognizable investors in the industry, or as Ben Horowitz calls her, "the credible face of crypto."
Katie Haun, Andreessen Horowitz general partner.

Seven years ago, bitcoin was a foreign language to federal prosecutor Katie Haun. That changed when her boss at the U.S. attorney's office asked her to look into shutting it down.

What's now the most widely used cryptocurrency was a niche payment method being used in the depths of the internet, in many cases being used to buy illegal goods on black markets. But Haun quickly decided the currency itself wasn't what needed probing.