Marc Andreessen, co-founder and normal companion at enterprise capital agency Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z), made a case for crypto and blockchain as essentially the most vital new structure change within the tech trade.
In a Bloomberg Wealth interview with David Rubenstein, Andreessen reframed the phrases of the talk and shifted away from the speak as as to if Bitcoin (BTC) — and crypto extra broadly — is or is not an endurable funding proposition.
“Crypto is a bit like the parable of the blind men and the elephant. People touch it from different sides. They get distracted and carried away and energized about these different topics,” Andreessen quipped. For a16z, nevertheless, essentially the most essential side of the cryptocurrency is that the agency sees it as a fundamental structure change within the tech trade, drawing in lots of the smartest minds in laptop science.
“We view it [crypto] as a technological transformation. There’s a fundamental technological breakthrough that has happened. It’s an area of computer science called distributed consensus […] Money is one application […], but it’s only one of many.”
Slightly than specializing in Bitcoin as an asset, Andreessen underscored the blockchain’s capability to allow interactions between actors and software program on the web to type belief relationships in an untrusted surroundings:
“These are new kinds of computers. This is where it gets very subtle. Bitcoin is an internet computer that’s spread out across hundreds of thousands physical computers around the world. It’s a transaction processing system that runs without any central location. […] It’s a new kind of financial system.”
For all these causes, the VC agency is taking crypto very severely, Andreessen mentioned. A16z has certainly doubled down on its dedication to blockchain improvement in 2021, saying Crypto Fund III — a $2.2-billion enterprise fund co-led by Andreessen Horowitz normal companions Chris Dixon and Katie Haun — in late June of this yr. The fund will spend money on blockchain tasks at any improvement part, “from early seed-stage projects to fully developed later-stage networks.”
Associated: Former BitGo worker will assist deploy Andreessen Horowitz’s $2.2B crypto fund
A16z has led quite a few necessary raises within the blockchain house, together with the $314-million non-public token gross sales for Solana Labs this June. Within the months prior, it led the $23-million increase for nonfungible token market OpenSea in March, a $28-million funding spherical in Aleo in April, and a $40-million increase for Talos in Could. Again in 2018, a16z was behind Dfinity’s $105-million funding spherical.
Main United States-based crypto trade Coinbase counts a16z as its largest backer. The VC agency owns shares within the trade price about $9.7 billion.
Sourced Merchandise
