GameStop and Dogecoin Show How Memes Can Move Markets

    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) 24.984,68 1,78%
    ethereum
    Ethereum (ETH) 1.492,21 2,13%
    tether
    Tether (USDT) 0,938226 0,05%
    bnb
    BNB (BNB) 198,04 1,69%
    xrp
    XRP (XRP) 0,477519 1,74%
    usd-coin
    USD Coin (USDC) 0,938454 0,01%
    staked-ether
    Lido Staked Ether (STETH) 1.490,37 2,00%
    dogecoin
    Dogecoin (DOGE) 0,057712 1,84%
    cardano
    Cardano (ADA) 0,230495 2,78%
    the-open-network
    Toncoin (TON) 2,20 2,87%
    solana
    Solana (SOL) 18,26 3,73%
    tron
    TRON (TRX) 0,077983 1,66%
    polkadot
    Polkadot (DOT) 3,76 3,43%
    matic-network
    Polygon (MATIC) 0,488047 4,20%
    litecoin
    Litecoin (LTC) 60,81 0,18%
    wrapped-bitcoin
    Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) 24.975,29 1,81%
    shiba-inu
    Shiba Inu (SHIB) 0,000007 3,92%
    bitcoin-cash
    Bitcoin Cash (BCH) 194,78 3,61%
    dai
    Dai (DAI) 0,939789 0,06%
    chainlink
    Chainlink (LINK) 6,26 3,34%
    leo-token
    LEO Token (LEO) 3,60 0,95%
    true-usd
    TrueUSD (TUSD) 0,93716 0,13%
    uniswap
    Uniswap (UNI) 3,99 3,10%
    stellar
    Stellar (XLM) 0,107239 2,00%
    avalanche-2
    Avalanche (AVAX) 8,32 2,44%
    monero
    Monero (XMR) 136,72 1,53%
    okb
    OKB (OKB) 40,34 1,32%
    binance-usd
    Binance USD (BUSD) 0,93885 0,04%
    ethereum-classic
    Ethereum Classic (ETC) 14,31 2,34%
    cosmos
    Cosmos Hub (ATOM) 6,73 3,60%
    hedera-hashgraph
    Hedera (HBAR) 0,047309 1,59%
    filecoin
    Filecoin (FIL) 3,02 4,77%
    lido-dao
    Lido DAO (LDO) 1,40 5,34%
    crypto-com-chain
    Cronos (CRO) 0,047067 2,08%
    quant-network
    Quant (QNT) 83,64 1,51%
    internet-computer
    Internet Computer (ICP) 2,72 3,46%
    mantle
    Mantle (MNT) 0,370109 1,85%
    vechain
    VeChain (VET) 0,016041 4,84%
    aptos
    Aptos (APT) 4,80 2,00%
    maker
    Maker (MKR) 1.218,04 3,82%
    near
    NEAR Protocol (NEAR) 1,05 1,96%
    arbitrum
    Arbitrum (ARB) 0,773889 4,35%
    optimism
    Optimism (OP) 1,22 7,20%
    kaspa
    Kaspa (KAS) 0,042851 6,12%
    rocket-pool-eth
    Rocket Pool ETH (RETH) 1.619,15 2,07%
    aave
    Aave (AAVE) 58,74 4,82%
    the-graph
    The Graph (GRT) 0,082306 5,21%
    whitebit
    WhiteBIT Coin (WBT) 4,99 0,32%
    immutable-x
    ImmutableX (IMX) 0,623643 1,73%
    algorand
    Algorand (ALGO) 0,09111 2,57%
    usdd
    USDD (USDD) 0,937219 0,04%
    xdce-crowd-sale
    XDC Network (XDC) 0,048741 4,76%
    elrond-erd-2
    MultiversX (EGLD) 24,18 6,98%
    frax
    Frax (FRAX) 0,935359 0,15%
    havven
    Synthetix Network (SNX) 1,93 3,48%
    blockstack
    Stacks (STX) 0,441717 4,11%
    eos
    EOS (EOS) 0,539814 1,40%
    bitget-token
    Bitget Token (BGB) 0,425271 1,02%
    tezos
    Tezos (XTZ) 0,617906 3,10%
    the-sandbox
    The Sandbox (SAND) 0,276894 2,75%
    bitcoin-sv
    Bitcoin SV (BSV) 29,20 0,97%
    radix
    Radix (XRD) 0,05465 0,43%
    injective-protocol
    Injective (INJ) 6,66 4,98%
    render-token
    Render (RNDR) 1,49 2,56%
    theta-token
    Theta Network (THETA) 0,555088 1,32%
    axie-infinity
    Axie Infinity (AXS) 4,13 3,71%
    decentraland
    Decentraland (MANA) 0,275437 3,24%
    thorchain
    THORChain (RUNE) 1,66 0,78%
    fantom
    Fantom (FTM) 0,177392 3,34%
    gatechain-token
    Gate (GT) 3,61 0,79%
    neo
    NEO (NEO) 6,99 2,85%
    paxos-standard
    Pax Dollar (USDP) 0,937337 0,00%
    kava
    Kava (KAVA) 0,586424 1,80%
    tether-gold
    Tether Gold (XAUT) 1.804,65 0,36%
    pax-gold
    PAX Gold (PAXG) 1.793,20 0,58%
    compound-ether
    cETH (CETH) 29,87 2,25%
    ecash
    eCash (XEC) 0,000022 4,31%
    flow
    Flow (FLOW) 0,411208 5,56%
    kucoin-shares
    KuCoin (KCS) 4,24 0,07%
    frax-ether
    Frax Ether (FRXETH) 1.486,24 2,13%
    rocket-pool
    Rocket Pool (RPL) 19,64 4,02%
    iota
    IOTA (MIOTA) 0,13841 1,45%
    apecoin
    ApeCoin (APE) 1,04 1,55%
    chiliz
    Chiliz (CHZ) 0,054866 2,17%
    frax-share
    Frax Share (FXS) 5,00 0,54%
    first-digital-usd
    First Digital USD (FDUSD) 0,938202 0,02%
    huobi-token
    Huobi (HT) 2,29 0,62%
    curve-dao-token
    Curve DAO (CRV) 0,415285 0,77%
    tokenize-xchange
    Tokenize Xchange (TKX) 4,48 5,75%
    casper-network
    Casper Network (CSPR) 0,030675 3,60%
    mina-protocol
    Mina Protocol (MINA) 0,355134 2,02%
    rollbit-coin
    Rollbit Coin (RLB) 0,104613 6,18%
    bittorrent
    BitTorrent (BTT) 0,00000035850457 1,19%
    terra-luna
    Terra Luna Classic (LUNC) 0,000056 3,17%
    sui
    Sui (SUI) 0,411152 3,86%
    gala
    GALA (GALA) 0,012373 6,06%
    klay-token
    Klaytn (KLAY) 0,102066 4,24%
    dydx
    dYdX (DYDX) 1,85 2,95%
    coinbase-wrapped-staked-eth
    Coinbase Wrapped Staked ETH (CBETH) 1.561,57 2,09%
    trust-wallet-token
    Trust Wallet (TWT) 0,738804 2,28%