More

    What Are The Risks Of An ICO in 2021?

    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) $ 27,149.27
    ethereum
    Ethereum (ETH) $ 1,681.20
    tether
    Tether (USDT) $ 1.00
    bnb
    BNB (BNB) $ 216.94
    xrp
    XRP (XRP) $ 0.507594
    usd-coin
    USDC (USDC) $ 1.00
    staked-ether
    Lido Staked Ether (STETH) $ 1,680.66
    cardano
    Cardano (ADA) $ 0.253026
    dogecoin
    Dogecoin (DOGE) $ 0.062075
    solana
    Solana (SOL) $ 20.27
    tron
    TRON (TRX) $ 0.088711
    the-open-network
    Toncoin (TON) $ 2.24
    polkadot
    Polkadot (DOT) $ 4.11
    litecoin
    Litecoin (LTC) $ 66.32
    matic-network
    Polygon (MATIC) $ 0.525257
    bitcoin-cash
    Bitcoin Cash (BCH) $ 239.60
    wrapped-bitcoin
    Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) $ 27,144.27
    shiba-inu
    Shiba Inu (SHIB) $ 0.000007
    chainlink
    Chainlink (LINK) $ 7.78
    dai
    Dai (DAI) $ 0.999519
    true-usd
    TrueUSD (TUSD) $ 0.998444
    leo-token
    LEO Token (LEO) $ 3.65
    uniswap
    Uniswap (UNI) $ 4.49
    avalanche-2
    Avalanche (AVAX) $ 9.34
    stellar
    Stellar (XLM) $ 0.114178
    monero
    Monero (XMR) $ 145.80
    okb
    OKB (OKB) $ 43.36
    ethereum-classic
    Ethereum Classic (ETC) $ 16.00
    binance-usd
    BUSD (BUSD) $ 1.00
    cosmos
    Cosmos Hub (ATOM) $ 7.17
    hedera-hashgraph
    Hedera (HBAR) $ 0.049949
    filecoin
    Filecoin (FIL) $ 3.32
    lido-dao
    Lido DAO (LDO) $ 1.63
    internet-computer
    Internet Computer (ICP) $ 3.12
    maker
    Maker (MKR) $ 1,493.41
    crypto-com-chain
    Cronos (CRO) $ 0.050747
    quant-network
    Quant (QNT) $ 90.59
    aptos
    Aptos (APT) $ 5.43
    mantle
    Mantle (MNT) $ 0.397517
    vechain
    VeChain (VET) $ 0.016995
    arbitrum
    Arbitrum (ARB) $ 0.907829
    optimism
    Optimism (OP) $ 1.34
    near
    NEAR Protocol (NEAR) $ 1.11
    kaspa
    Kaspa (KAS) $ 0.047959
    aave
    Aave (AAVE) $ 67.20
    rocket-pool-eth
    Rocket Pool ETH (RETH) $ 1,827.66
    the-graph
    The Graph (GRT) $ 0.088759
    algorand
    Algorand (ALGO) $ 0.101016
    whitebit
    WhiteBIT Coin (WBT) $ 5.20
    usdd
    USDD (USDD) $ 0.998268
    xdce-crowd-sale
    XDC Network (XDC) $ 0.049557
    blockstack
    Stacks (STX) $ 0.482221
    havven
    Synthetix Network (SNX) $ 2.10
    immutable-x
    ImmutableX (IMX) $ 0.579197
    frax
    Frax (FRAX) $ 0.997686
    elrond-erd-2
    MultiversX (EGLD) $ 25.09
    eos
    EOS (EOS) $ 0.577018
    theta-token
    Theta Network (THETA) $ 0.64454
    bitget-token
    Bitget Token (BGB) $ 0.4565
    tezos
    Tezos (XTZ) $ 0.675446
    the-sandbox
    The Sandbox (SAND) $ 0.308811
    injective-protocol
    Injective (INJ) $ 7.54
    radix
    Radix (XRD) $ 0.060476
    bitcoin-sv
    Bitcoin SV (BSV) $ 32.07
    axie-infinity
    Axie Infinity (AXS) $ 4.57
    thorchain
    THORChain (RUNE) $ 1.93
    render-token
    Render (RNDR) $ 1.54
    decentraland
    Decentraland (MANA) $ 0.302915
    fantom
    Fantom (FTM) $ 0.191287
    neo
    NEO (NEO) $ 7.37
    gatechain-token
    Gate (GT) $ 3.72
    kava
    Kava (KAVA) $ 0.633816
    ecash
    eCash (XEC) $ 0.000025
    paxos-standard
    Pax Dollar (USDP) $ 1.00
    compound-ether
    cETH (CETH) $ 33.81
    flow
    Flow (FLOW) $ 0.452307
    pax-gold
    PAX Gold (PAXG) $ 1,881.19
    tether-gold
    Tether Gold (XAUT) $ 1,872.97
    apecoin
    ApeCoin (APE) $ 1.26
    curve-dao-token
    Curve DAO (CRV) $ 0.525661
    frax-share
    Frax Share (FXS) $ 6.06
    kucoin-shares
    KuCoin (KCS) $ 4.63
    frax-ether
    Frax Ether (FRXETH) $ 1,677.23
    rocket-pool
    Rocket Pool (RPL) $ 22.27
    iota
    IOTA (MIOTA) $ 0.1529
    chiliz
    Chiliz (CHZ) $ 0.05945
    rollbit-coin
    Rollbit Coin (RLB) $ 0.12623
    tokenize-xchange
    Tokenize Xchange (TKX) $ 4.95
    first-digital-usd
    First Digital USD (FDUSD) $ 0.998959
    huobi-token
    Huobi (HT) $ 2.41
    gala
    GALA (GALA) $ 0.014153
    terra-luna
    Terra Luna Classic (LUNC) $ 0.000064
    mina-protocol
    Mina Protocol (MINA) $ 0.378158
    sui
    Sui (SUI) $ 0.464378
    bittorrent
    BitTorrent (BTT) $ 0.00000038606744
    klay-token
    Klaytn (KLAY) $ 0.114825
    casper-network
    Casper Network (CSPR) $ 0.031337
    gmx
    GMX (GMX) $ 38.45
    dydx
    dYdX (DYDX) $ 1.96
    coinbase-wrapped-staked-eth
    Coinbase Wrapped Staked ETH (CBETH) $ 1,762.50