More

    Royal Flush of the Month: Coinbase Goes Public

    There is an “architectural shift” in technology and in the world brought upon by cryptoassets, which many crypto supporters miss, according to Marc Andreessen, co-founder of venture capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and founder of Netscape Communications Corporation.

    Today, a16z announced a new USD 2.2bn fund to continue investing in crypto networks.

    Meanwhile, in a recent interview with economic blogger Noah Smith, Andreessen compared the topic of crypto with the parable of the blind men and the elephant, allowing people to interpret many different parts in many different ways, or use it to make their point. As an example, he gave people seizing on “the money part,” then either glorifying crypto as a new type of monetary system that brings freedom from the nation-state, or “crucify[ing] it as a danger to economic stability and the ability for governments to tax.”

    However, while these are interesting arguments, Andreessen stressed,

    “I think they all miss a more fundamental point, which is that crypto represents an architectural shift in how technology works and therefore how the world works. That architectural shift is called distributed consensus — the ability for many untrusted participants in a network to establish consistency and trust.”

    According to him, the Internet has never had this until now and it will take thirty years to work through all of the things that can be done as a result. While money is the easiest application of this idea, other things that can now be built in theory include Internet native contracts, loans, insurance, title to real-world assets, unique digital goods aka non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and online corporate structures such as digital autonomous organizations (DAOs), among others, the investor said.

    This also presents a great impact on and shift in incentives – which further impacts reaching these applications.

    Collaborative human effort online so far was either in the form of a literal adoption of real-world corporate norms, such as a company with a website, or an open-source project like Linux that didn’t have any money directly attached to it, said Andreessen.

    “With crypto, you can now create thousands of new kinds of incentive systems for collaborative work online, since participants in a crypto project can get paid directly without a real-world company even needing to exist,” he said.

    While open-source software development has been great, people are generally willing to work more for money than for free, “and all of a sudden all those things become possible and even easy to do.” And though it will take a few decades to see the results of this as well, “I don’t think it’s crazy that this could be a civilizational shift in how people work and get paid,” said Andreessen.

    He also discussed the idea that AI is somewhat a left-wing idea, having centralized machines making top-down decisions, but that crypto is a right-wing idea, having many distributed agents, humans and bots, making bottom-up decisions, he said, citing another prominent venture capitalist Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal.

    The tech industry has historically been dominated by left-wing politics and today’s big tech companies are intertwined with the US Democratic Party, Andreessen said, noting,

    “Crypto potentially represents the creation of a whole new category of technology, quite literally right-wing tech that is far more aggressively decentralized and far more comfortable with entrepreneurialism and free voluntary exchange. If you believe, as I do, that the world needs far more technology, this is a very powerful idea, a step function increase in what the technology world can do.”

    As for a16z becoming known for innovating in the space of venture capital itself, Andreessen said that there is something old and something new about venture capital – and this something new includes crypto.

    “So we sit at the vortex of this combination of the very old and the very new. It’s certainly possible that venture capital itself gets pulled into this vortex and comes out the other side radically transformed, and in fact, this is what some of the smartest crypto experts are predicting,” Andreessen concluded.

    Stay in the Loop

    Get the daily email from CryptoNews that makes reading the news actually enjoyable. Join our mailing list to stay in the loop to stay informed, for free.

    Latest stories

    - Advertisement - spot_img

    You might also like...

    bitcoin
    Bitcoin (BTC) $ 27,259.30
    ethereum
    Ethereum (ETH) $ 1,898.91
    tether
    Tether (USDT) $ 1.00
    bnb
    BNB (BNB) $ 307.92
    usd-coin
    USD Coin (USDC) $ 0.999903
    xrp
    XRP (XRP) $ 0.521899
    staked-ether
    Lido Staked Ether (STETH) $ 1,897.70
    cardano
    Cardano (ADA) $ 0.37746
    dogecoin
    Dogecoin (DOGE) $ 0.072934
    solana
    Solana (SOL) $ 21.23
    matic-network
    Polygon (MATIC) $ 0.902252
    tron
    TRON (TRX) $ 0.08164
    litecoin
    Litecoin (LTC) $ 96.72
    polkadot
    Polkadot (DOT) $ 5.29
    binance-usd
    Binance USD (BUSD) $ 0.999775
    shiba-inu
    Shiba Inu (SHIB) $ 0.000009
    avalanche-2
    Avalanche (AVAX) $ 14.55
    dai
    Dai (DAI) $ 1.00
    wrapped-bitcoin
    Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) $ 27,223.29
    uniswap
    Uniswap (UNI) $ 5.09
    leo-token
    LEO Token (LEO) $ 3.61
    chainlink
    Chainlink (LINK) $ 6.42
    cosmos
    Cosmos Hub (ATOM) $ 10.72
    okb
    OKB (OKB) $ 46.03
    monero
    Monero (XMR) $ 147.19
    ethereum-classic
    Ethereum Classic (ETC) $ 18.21
    the-open-network
    Toncoin (TON) $ 1.75
    stellar
    Stellar (XLM) $ 0.092454
    bitcoin-cash
    Bitcoin Cash (BCH) $ 115.27
    internet-computer
    Internet Computer (ICP) $ 4.83
    filecoin
    Filecoin (FIL) $ 4.92
    true-usd
    TrueUSD (TUSD) $ 0.999657
    lido-dao
    Lido DAO (LDO) $ 2.30
    aptos
    Aptos (APT) $ 8.99
    quant-network
    Quant (QNT) $ 115.53
    hedera-hashgraph
    Hedera (HBAR) $ 0.050916
    arbitrum
    Arbitrum (ARB) $ 1.23
    crypto-com-chain
    Cronos (CRO) $ 0.059498
    near
    NEAR Protocol (NEAR) $ 1.62
    vechain
    VeChain (VET) $ 0.020031
    the-graph
    The Graph (GRT) $ 0.129159
    apecoin
    ApeCoin (APE) $ 3.14
    algorand
    Algorand (ALGO) $ 0.152778
    the-sandbox
    The Sandbox (SAND) $ 0.571833
    eos
    EOS (EOS) $ 0.916532
    paxos-standard
    Pax Dollar (USDP) $ 0.999262
    frax
    Frax (FRAX) $ 0.997518
    elrond-erd-2
    MultiversX (EGLD) $ 38.09
    rocket-pool
    Rocket Pool (RPL) $ 49.41
    optimism
    Optimism (OP) $ 1.49
    render-token
    Render (RNDR) $ 2.60
    aave
    Aave (AAVE) $ 63.73
    fantom
    Fantom (FTM) $ 0.321455
    decentraland
    Decentraland (MANA) $ 0.490697
    blockstack
    Stacks (STX) $ 0.621776
    tezos
    Tezos (XTZ) $ 0.912325
    theta-token
    Theta Network (THETA) $ 0.841537
    rocket-pool-eth
    Rocket Pool ETH (RETH) $ 2,039.61
    axie-infinity
    Axie Infinity (AXS) $ 7.19
    immutable-x
    ImmutableX (IMX) $ 0.799161
    flow
    Flow (FLOW) $ 0.732289
    neo
    NEO (NEO) $ 10.59
    havven
    Synthetix Network (SNX) $ 2.36
    usdd
    USDD (USDD) $ 0.999869
    gala
    GALA (GALA) $ 0.030486
    bitdao
    BitDAO (BIT) $ 0.498382
    kucoin-shares
    KuCoin (KCS) $ 7.44
    whitebit
    WhiteBIT Token (WBT) $ 4.90
    curve-dao-token
    Curve DAO (CRV) $ 0.851339
    radix
    Radix (XRD) $ 0.067917
    bitget-token
    Bitget Token (BGB) $ 0.464766
    injective-protocol
    Injective (INJ) $ 8.02
    bitcoin-sv
    Bitcoin SV (BSV) $ 32.90
    gatechain-token
    Gate (GT) $ 4.45
    maker
    Maker (MKR) $ 675.88
    conflux-token
    Conflux (CFX) $ 0.276901
    klay-token
    Klaytn (KLAY) $ 0.186187
    gemini-dollar
    Gemini Dollar (GUSD) $ 0.9981
    iota
    IOTA (MIOTA) $ 0.203705
    bittorrent
    BitTorrent (BTT) $ 0.00000059328096
    kava
    Kava (KAVA) $ 1.01
    pepe
    Pepe (PEPE) $ 0.000001
    chiliz
    Chiliz (CHZ) $ 0.10186
    casper-network
    Casper Network (CSPR) $ 0.046404
    tokenize-xchange
    Tokenize Xchange (TKX) $ 6.45
    pax-gold
    PAX Gold (PAXG) $ 1,953.57
    mina-protocol
    Mina Protocol (MINA) $ 0.54711
    xdce-crowd-sale
    XDC Network (XDC) $ 0.036021
    terra-luna
    Terra Luna Classic (LUNC) $ 0.000085
    sui
    Sui (SUI) $ 0.945914
    compound-ether
    cETH (CETH) $ 38.17
    gmx
    GMX (GMX) $ 55.96
    dash
    Dash (DASH) $ 42.74
    tether-gold
    Tether Gold (XAUT) $ 1,954.71
    ecash
    eCash (XEC) $ 0.000025
    huobi-token
    Huobi (HT) $ 2.94
    frax-share
    Frax Share (FXS) $ 6.56
    trust-wallet-token
    Trust Wallet (TWT) $ 1.08
    frax-ether
    Frax Ether (FRXETH) $ 1,897.29
    woo-network
    WOO Network (WOO) $ 0.241547