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Billionaire tech entrepreneur turned venture capitalist Marc Andreessen says that Web3 and its underlying blockchain technology reminds him of the rise of the early internet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Andreessen, better known today as the co-founder of the blockchain-focused venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), originally found success by developing the first widely used web browser called Mosaic and then founded Netscape Navigator, which dominated the browser market throughout much of the 1990s. <\/p>\n
Appearing<\/a> on the Bankless podcast alongside investment partner and colleague Chris Dixon, Andreessen said that increasing adoption and a flurry of development in Web3 appears remarkably similar to the rush of activity that marked his early years in tech.<\/p>\n Andreessen stressed that he would not make this sort of sweeping comparison idly and that it was the first time he\u2019d ever made such a claim:<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the only time I\u2019ve ever said this [Web3] is like the internet. If you go back through all my historical statements, one could imagine that with my experience I could have said this like 48 times. I\u2019ve never made the comparison before.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never said it about any other kind of technology, because I just wanted people to know like I don\u2019t take the comparison lightly.\u201d<\/p>\n While the parallels between the adoption path<\/a> of blockchain tech and the early internet have often been made by crypto enthusiasts (to the chagrin of crypto critics), Andreessen\u2019s front-line experience lends him unique authority to make such statements. <\/p>\n He added that the current Web3 landscape is attracting the world\u2019s smartest people:<\/p>\n \u201cThe easiest way to think about it is, when you get something like this that has a movement, that has this sort of collective effect and has a movement behind it, and is attracting many of the world\u2019s smartest people to work on it, basically the criticisms play out differently than the critics think.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Pushing back against the \u201clong list\u201d of criticisms leveled at crypto and digital assets<\/a>, Andreessen said that Web3 entrepreneurs see these \u201cproblems\u201d as opportunities. <\/p>\n \u201cThe critics make this long list of all of the problems, but you\u2019re getting these genius engineers and entrepreneurs [who] flood into the space. What happens is, they look at that list of problems as a list of opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019d be like if you had a house project [that] was going sideways and you get all these complaints, and then all of the world\u2019s best architects and master builders showed up the next day to fix your house,\u201d he said. \u201cAll of a sudden you\u2019ve got the best house in the world. This can actually happen.\u201d<\/p>\n Andreessen said that Web3 is the \u201cmissing\u201d link for the internet, bringing trust, sovereignty and financial utility to the ecosystem:<\/p>\n \u201cWe were [\u2026] missing trust, authority, permission. We were missing the ability to transact with people for trusted relationships, transact, send money, store money, and then have all the other economic arrangements that the world wants to have [such as] loans and contracts and insurance and all these all these other things.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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 cryptocurrency-related businesses, including Polychain Capital<\/a>, OpenSea, Solana, Avalanche\u00a0and Yuga Labs<\/a>.<\/p>\n A week ago, it announced the launch of its fourth cryptocurrency fund<\/a> at $4.5 billion, bringing the total amount of capital invested by Andreessen Horowitz into crypto businesses to just over $7.6 billion.<\/p>\n According to a letter penned<\/a> by managing partner Chris Dixon, a16z launched the latest fund to capitalize on what Dixon calls the \u201cgolden era\u201d of Web3 development. <\/p>\n