The Case for Crypto

Chris Dixon is the founder and managing partner of a16z Crypto, Andreessen Horowitz's VC fund for crypto and Web3 startups. He's also the author of a new book, Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet. We're having a lot of Silicon Valley people on, uh, of late. We had Aileen Lee on last week. Welcome, Chris.

Thanks, Karen. Thanks for having me.

So, uh, so, it's been a, uh, a rough couple of years for crypto and blockchain, but you're still making a case for it in this book. Um, actually, Scott has too in a lot of ways. But why don't you, why don't you explain why you're still a believer?

Yeah. Sure. So, I mean, in the book I try to explain what I would call the productive aspects of blockchains and why I think that blockchains can help us, um, return the internet to its original ideals as being an open and democratic network, which is why I got involved. I've been involved in the internet for 25 years. I got excited by the early ideals of the internet and, you know, look, if you fast-forward to today, the internet's become very consolidated. The top five tech companies account for half of the Nasdaq-100 market cap. Top 1% of social networks, 95% of traffic. You know, Google and Apple have a duopoly on what y- mobile operating systems. I'm sure you both have talked about this plenty. It, the internet, I worry the internet's at risk of becoming, like, '70s broadcast TV or something where you have three channels. Um, and I think that's bad for the world. I also think it's bad for our business. You know, we're in the startup business. Um, we, we want a dynamic internet.

But you write about, uh, blockchain technology and this is a quote from you. "This is a chance to create the internet you want, not the internet you inherited." It's something we talk about a lot. Like that the same companies are in charge. Um, what does that, what do you mean by that? It, when you say there's lots of opportunities for innovation here, uh, that starts from ground zero presumably versus starts with Google in charge or Microsoft or whoever.

I, I'm guessing that we s- somewhat agree on the problem.

Mm-hmm.

Um, meaning, uh, ph- having five companies control everything is, um, not ideal. Um, I think there's different ways one could think about solving that. And so for example, a lot of people talk about regulation. I believe there is a role for regulation. Um, I think, you know, we'll see what happens with DOJ and Apple and things like that. Um, I, my proposal is to also try to do it through innovation. And by, and, and through that, we want to create a new wave of internet services that return power to the edges of the network. And so to give you an example, o- one of the reasons that social networks are so powerful is you're locked in. Right? They have network effects, so you know, I know, I think you switched recently to Threads. Um, and when you did, you had to give up your audience, right? You had to go build a new audience.