It was a philosophy rooted in personal experience. It promoted the cult of the founder - the idea that the hard-driving entrepreneurs who start a company are best positioned to lead - and instead of just supplying capital it offered help with recruiting, sales and marketing. “We are making big bets on founders and ideas with the potential to shape the future in the hope that they’ll topple the gatekeepers and middlemen of the past,” she said.įrom its inception in 2009, Andreessen Horowitz has trumpeted a different approach to venture capital. Rachael Horwitz, a spokeswoman for A16Z, said the company welcomed this debate. “They say things in a way that sounds reasonable, but it involves them essentially giving up very little in the public interest.” “This is a classic case of asking the fox to design the henhouse,” said Rohan Grey, a finance lawyer and law school professor who has advised congressional Democrats on legislation to regulate digital payments that is pending in the House. “This is a pretty nakedly transparent attempt to benefit their bottom line,” said Lee Reiners, a former supervisor of systemically important financial institutions at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.ĭraft legislation A16Z is circulating would give the companies it has invested in a leg up by exempting related entities from certain tax reporting, consumer protection and anti-money-laundering requirements. “That’s mutually beneficial.”īut the proposals, outside experts who have examined them say, are far more about self-interest than societal or national benefits.
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“To the extent policymakers can get access to good information, that is going to help them solve their problems and also enable the next generation of the internet to flourish in a way that’s going to be good for us,” Tillemann said. Their regulatory proposal highlights issues with general bipartisan support: overcoming China’s head start in digital currency and payments, reclaiming America’s role as the leading technology innovator and expanding economic opportunity. The vision that A16Z’s founders, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, are pursuing is to be at the center of a booming new ecosystem of digital technology that will disrupt industries as varied as art, banking, finance, gaming, e-commerce, music, social media and telecommunications. The firm has brought on so many people with industry expertise that the hiring spree has become a running joke on Twitter. It is also a major investor in Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, along with a number of newer startups.
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This summer it set up a new $2.2 billion investment fund to profit off the rapid growth of cryptocurrency and the technological and financial architecture behind it. Quintenz, who joined the effort just days after leaving the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a crypto regulator.Īlready, Andreessen Horowitz - also known by the nickname A16Z - has funded at least 50 crypto startups, with several new deals announced weekly, making it the largest crypto investor globally. They include Tomicah Tillemann, a former aide to Biden when he was a senator Katie Haun, a onetime Justice Department cryptocurrency prosecutor and Brian D. To push its agenda, the firm has hired an array of experienced government hands. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times The topic was always the same: “how to win the future” in the global race for cryptocurrency dominance - at least from the perspective of Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm that dispatched a team of Washington insiders to make its case during a recent five-day lobbying blitz.Īt a moment when technology companies have a bad odor in Washington and as the fast-evolving crypto industry is drawing increasing scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators, Andreessen Horowitz is pursuing a particularly audacious plan: to both own big chunks of the emerging world of digital currencies and have a hand in writing the rules for how it will operate. Then came a private dinner with a major financial regulator.
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Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and a meeting with some of President Joe Biden’s top economic aides. WASHINGTON - There was lunch at a French bistro near Congress with Sen. Tomicah Tillemann, left, who served as an aide to President Joe Biden when he was a senator, and Jai Ramaswamy, a former Justice Department official, are members of the team pushing Andreessen Horowitz's crypto agenda in Washington.