New York City ripe to reign as capital of fintech

A16Z has been an outspoken proponent for Web3, a decentralized vision of the internet. Web3 is a catchall term for technologies that allow people to interact and transact online outside of platforms controlled by large technology companies. New York is emerging as a hub for the concept—especially decentralized finance, or DeFi.

Fred Wilson, a co-founder of Union Square Ventures and a founding father of the city’s tech scene, noted that New York is already home to some of the biggest players in DeFi and Web3, including Brooklyn-based Consensys, which develops products based on the Ethereum blockchain.

“As Web3 is now exploding into the creative class … we will only see NYC’s strengths come to the front and center in the most important new sector in tech,” Wilson wrote this fall on his blog, AVC.

Both A16Z and Union Square Ventures are invested in SoHo-based Uniswap Labs, the main inventor of the world’s largest decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, Uniswap, an open-source protocol that allows users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies in a peer-to-peer fashion. Uniswap is now focused on building more Web3 applications.

Chief Operating Officer Mary-Catherine Lader joined the company in June, leaving BlackRock after eight years, most recently overseeing the firm’s Aladdin system as a managing director. She said she believed in decentralized finance and Web3’s overall vision of allowing people greater ownership of the value they create.

There is a lot of excitement in the sector, Lader said, with a new local Web3 startup launching seemingly every week.

“Web3 is a convergence of finance, technology and culture, and New York has long been a hub for all of those industries,” she said. “But New York has also long been a place for people who want to think of new ways to build the future to congregate.”