Narrative over Numbers: Andreessen Horowitz's State of Crypto Report

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/andreessen-horowitzs-state-of-crypto

by rideontime • 3 years ago

87 60 3 years ago

newsletter.mollywhite.net

PaulHoule2• 3 years ago

One odd things is that blockheads have been going ahead with the blockhead things they do even though normies have lost interest.

What it is going to take to turn a generation permanently away from crypto is a serious drop in prices and that hasn’t really happened yet. I mean, Bitcoin has fluctuated, not in any particular direction. Bored Apes are down from the peak but it hasn’t been a bloodbath.

So blockheads are starting to spam the Bitcoin blockchain with shitcoins and Pepecoin is getting talked up (how is it we didn’t have Pepecoin three years ago?) but now most people just don’t care. In my pod we are taking bets on if Pepecoin or BRC-20 are going to get mentioned at all in Bloomberg Businessweek at all.

dilyevsky2• 3 years ago

We printed an enormous amount of money that mostly went into insane asset bubble which includes shitcoins among other things. It’s going to take time for it to percolate back into real economy (assuming they keep interest rate where it is for that long)

Robotbeat2• 3 years ago

I’d say much more of it went into inflating house prices.

ChainOfFools3• 3 years ago

There was a Pepe coin, and I guess technically there still is, started five or six years ago. but it was issued on a different Bitcoin based colored coin protocol called mastercoin. edit: I just remember the token was actually called Pepe cash, and was pretty much a complete, functional implementation of what would eventually be called an NFT a couple years before the term even existed.

Mastercoin IIRC was further tweaked into something called Counterparty, on top of which ERC-20 -like tokens can be created that exist on the Bitcoin blockchain. I'm pretty sure there are special wallets that still trade them floating around somewhere, because it's not on its own separate blockchain. That said it was like all crypto spaces, a sock puppet filled ghost town as there are vanishingly few people who are interested in collecting obnoxious self-centered tech libertarian brolet memes.

I mean everything has been done before in crypto, often multiple times, with no success that lasts, because the people in charge are almost universally incapable of cooperating with one another in the public's best interest. The same public they want to lure into their little feudal utopian experiment.

spir2• 3 years ago

We'll never turn permanently away from crypto because the underlying technology and networks are a revolutionary improvement.

jb12• 3 years ago

Improvement over what exactly?

lisasays3• 3 years ago

Ponzi schemes are indeed revolutionary improvements for those who benefit form them.

rvz2• 3 years ago

One odd things is that blockheads have been going ahead with the blockhead things they do even though normies have lost interest.

Yeah, and Worldcoin is still scanning eye-balls for proof-of-personhood [0] whilst AI bros here are AI generating everything in front of your screen all for the sake of this 'AGI' nonsense. None of it can be stopped and there is nothing to trust since it can be easily faked with AI.

What it is going to take to turn a generation permanently away from crypto is a serious drop in prices and that hasn’t really happened yet.

Believing that there is something to 'turn a generation permanently away from crypto' is just as delusional and naïve as believing that there is something out there to stop the influx of deepfakes and faked AI generated content.

In both cases, and especially public blockchains and AI projects, the cat is out of the bag and it cannot be stopped and both will continue to be used.

[0] https://worldcoin.org/blog/engineering/humanness-in-the-age-...

dS0rrow• 3 years ago

I still cant believe people voluntarily scanned their fucking eyeballs!

csomar• 3 years ago

It was a bloodbath especially for NFT (90%+ of value lost). Of course, there will be always a floor price. You can't have a $0 Bitcoin in crypto, since it'll enable you to buy it all of the available supply.

The market has moved from speculative to mature. The prices will always fluctuate but it'll remain a 1-3 Trillion market for the time being and for the use cases that it enables.

rchaud3• 3 years ago

For the generation to turn away from get-rich-quick schemes pumped by millionnaires (incl crypto), there has to be a reasonable standard of living that's achievable by the majority of society.

Anything short of that will simply lead to crypto being replaced by some other craze: meme stock, MLM products, forex derivatives and what have you.

PaulHoule2• 3 years ago

You can make the case it is the other way around, bubbles tend to inflate when the business cycle is on the upswing and there is money to steal.

JumpCrisscross4• 3 years ago

“a16z cut off the data at roughly May 2021, despite claiming on that slide that the data was as of December 31, 2021”

I hope she gets her whistleblower reward. This is the sort of trivial yet concrete lying regulators love.

ChainOfFools3• 3 years ago

Agreed, although since she's not an insider I'm not sure if she counts as a whistleblower? But the asymmetry of bullshit is so staggering in crypto that it's a real risk to one's mental and financial security to go all in on being the Cassandra. There is just no upside to it financially, and it's an incredibly expensive and draining role to take on.

JumpCrisscross4• 3 years ago

since she's not an insider I'm not sure if she counts as a whistleblower

Unsure. Statute doesn’t seem to require being an insider, just providing “the Commission with information in writing that relates to a possible violation of the federal securities laws” [1]. (This may not count as independent knowledge, i.e. “factual information in [her] possession that is not derived from publicly available sources” [2].)

[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-17/chapter-II/part-240/su...

[2] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-17/chapter-II/part-240/su...

strangattractor• 3 years ago

VC fee structure %2 and %20. %2 of $4.5 billion is $90,000,000. Nice work if you can scam it or get it rather.

krunck• 3 years ago

Meanwhile... people doing things with their money that you wouldn't do with your money continue to do those things.

ChainOfFools3• 3 years ago

Nice try spinderella, but you left out the part that these people want to turn our money into their money.

They can go pound sand, or even better get publicly mocked and despised as accomplices to a thinly disguised confidence game aiming to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense. Anyone pushing back on this is doing the lord's work.

spir2• 3 years ago

Criticize crypto however you like. Much or all of it is justified. But, don't make the mistake of believing that crypto is a nothingburger. Crypto tech, including stablecoins and NFTs, will eat the economic world.

recursive• 3 years ago

I've heard that a lot of times. I don't think it's getting any more true. Regardless the details of the math, there seems to be a problem interfacing with the real world. If you want to use any of this for any practical purpose, e.g. buy a banana, at some point, part of the transaction is going to be off-chain. I've never heard of a way of synchronizing this without defeating the whole value proposition of the crypto stuff.

rideontime3• 3 years ago

You may want to read the linked article, as it's not actually criticizing crypto itself, but rather a specific VC's attempt to spin the current state of crypto.

JumpCrisscross4• 3 years ago

Crypto tech, including stablecoins and NFTs, will eat the economic world

I support people spending their lives and money validating this claim. But they shouldn’t lie. This article cites specific lies that Andreessen told to sell crypto. At the very least, that should result in fines and sanctions.

jfb• 3 years ago

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It is much more likely that crypto will end up where most VC backed scams end up; with a stubborn and shrinking remnant of diehard fans who never realized how they were being used, and the VCs with the yachts.

astrodust• 3 years ago

It's been a long, long time since 2009 and it still hasn't.

Crypto is like the Segway, launched with breathless fanfare, yet in the end it won't revolutionize a thing.

jfghi• 3 years ago

Similarly, the existing tech was better.

zzbzq• 3 years ago

why though

luckydata• 3 years ago

Crypto IS a nothingburger.

rchaud3• 3 years ago

If electricity usage is anything to go by, crypto's already taken a bite of the economic world.

marginalia_nu• 3 years ago

You see these "x will happen" claims a lot in the hypesphere. Both crypto shills and ai-bros seem to love the construct.

Makes things sound more definitive, and since they're just statements detached from actual reasoning, they're difficult to contradict with anything other than "no" or "why though", which sounds like a much worse argument than it is, and is certainly less punchy than the original claim.

pocket_cheese• 3 years ago

Payments and stablecoins have many usecases. Like international payments, irrevocable payments, and auditing. However NFTs are just a deed to an address space on the blockchain. I don't see anything useful that can be implemented with this.

Timber-6539• 3 years ago

If crypto had any real world value, we'd be seeing new innovation come out post the infamous FTX meltdown. Instead it went into a coma and currently looks like just another racket in waiting for when/if QE makes a comeback.

camel_gopher• 3 years ago

“When the numbers aren’t in your favor, bang on the table really hard”

rideontime3• 3 years ago

I can't help wondering if Marc is embarrassed to have his name on this.

JumpCrisscross4• 3 years ago

can't help wondering if Marc is embarrassed to have his name on this

Assuming 1% annual management fees, Andreessen Horowitz has made over $120mm on its crypto funds [1]. It prints at least $75mm a year irrespective of performance.

Marc is fine.

[1] ($350mm x 5y + $515mm x 3y + $2.2bn x 2y + $4.5bn) x 1%

rideontime3• 3 years ago

I guess "embarrassed" is the wrong word. Ashamed?

rvz2• 3 years ago

Why should VCs like Marc care? Because when there is an opportunity to make money out of regulatory loop holes they don't care about articles from individuals, squeaking after the fact.

The worst that will happen is a slap on the wrist, give the regulators parts of the money and that is it.

For decades, there is always a regulatory loop hole that is exploited by opportunists and the regulators will fix it up later. Either way, the rich players get away with it before the rules are in place or pay a small fine after netting massive returns.

This is no different to the lies and the grifts already happening in AI. Both crypto and AI will have their regulatory loop holes patched up and will increasingly get harder to get away with it.

1bent• 3 years ago

Footnote 7's "crypto pushers rebranding as AI influencers" is something I've noticed, not as much in specific names, as the overall tone of the sales pitch.

p4bl0• 3 years ago

Yeah, something like fifteen to ten years ago, these same people were SEO experts.

Narrative over Numbers: Andreessen Horowitz's State of Crypto Report

Related Stories