Billionaire tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen says the current proliferation of Web3 and Blockchain technology resembles the Internet of the late 1990s.
Billionaire tech entrepreneur turned venture capitalist Marc Andreessen says that Web3 and its underlying Blockchain technology remind him of the rise of the first internet.
Andreessen, best known today as a co-founder of the Blockchain-focused venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), initially succeeded in developing the first widely used web browser, called Mosaic, and later founded Netscape Navigator, which dominated the browser market for much of the 1990s.
Andreessen’s Podcast
On the Bankless podcast, along with his partner and colleague Chris Dixon, Andreessen stated that the rise in Web3 development and adoption closely resembles the activity of his early years in the tech world.
Andreessen insisted that he would not make this type of comparison arbitrarily and that it was the first time he had made such a claim:
“It’s the only time I’ve said that this: [Web3] is like the Internet. If you go through all of my historical statements, one would imagine that in my experience I could have said this about 48 times. I had never made the comparison.”
He further claimed that, “I’ve never said that about any other type of technology because I wanted people to know that I don’t take the comparison lightly.”
Although crypto enthusiasts have often drawn parallels between the adoption trajectory of Blockchain technology and the early days of the Internet (much to the chagrin of crypto critics), Andreessen’s front-line experience gives him a unique authority to make such statements.
He added that the current Web3 landscape attracts the world’s smartest people:
“The easiest way to think about it is when you have something like this that has a movement, that has this kind of collective effect and a movement behind it, and it’s attracting a lot of the smartest people in the world to work on it. Because of this, basically, the critics play differently than the critics think.”
Andreessen said that the Web3 technology is the Internet’s “missing” link, bringing trust, sovereignty, and financial utility to the ecosystem:
“We lacked […] trust, authority, and permission. We lacked the ability to negotiate with people to establish relationships of trust, to transact, to send money, to store money, and then to have all the other economic arrangements that the world wants to have, [like] loans and contracts and insurance and all these things. .”
About a16z
Previously known for its early investments in Instagram and Slack, a16z first entered the crypto industry with an investment in Coinbase in 2013 and has since backed major crypto-related companies including Polychain Capital, OpenSea, Solana, Avalanche, and Yuga Labs.
A week ago, the company announced the launch of its fourth cryptocurrency fund with $4.5 billion, bringing the total amount of capital invested by Andreessen Horowitz in crypto businesses to just over $7.6 billion.
According to a letter written by managing partner Chris Dixon, a16z launched the latest fund to capitalize on what Dixon calls the “golden age” of Web3 development.
Andreessen concluded the podcast with a succinct explanation of why a16z is pouring so much money into the industry:
“We could actually imagine the entire world economy running on the Blockchain in like 30 or 50 years.”
By Audy Castaneda
