a16z crypto is the crypto investment arm of Andreessen Horowitz, publishing reports, fund announcements, and essays on crypto, NFTs, and stablecoins.
HN commenters are split: one calls it a thought leaders' read, while another says its State of Crypto data is dismal despite bullish prose.
A lot of people aren't groking what this means, even on tech and startup savvy HN. Naval and Balaji said it well:
Charging for the blue check moves it from a status symbol to a utilitarian one.
It elicits shrieks because it’s more about leveling the playing field than making money.
https://twitter.com/naval/status/1587523978456748033
The blue checks wanted to abolish billionaires, in the name of equality.
The billionaire will end up abolishing the blue checks, in the name of equality.
roughly speaking: blue checks are about status and tech billionaires about startups. It's old money vs new money.
Old money wanted to kill new money.
New money is wiping out the status of old money.
The blue check actually arose as an anti- impersonation tool. Twitter was forced to implement it after complaints.
But people who are impersonated tend to be "important". So it became a status symbol. Especially for writers.
The one form of equality a journalist will always resist is the idea that everyone is now equal to a journalist.
But that's what universal verification does.
Everyone who needs one can pay for a blue check.
Bots get taxed. Twitter makes money.
Establishment journos hardest hit.
Further reading
1) @sriramk on social networks as games: https://a16zcrypto.com/social-network-status-traps-web2-learnings/
2) @eugenewei on status as a service: https://eugenewei.com/blog/2019/2/19/status-as-a-service
https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1587545600064507904
There are legit uses that enterprise companies are using today, but they are few and far between in comparison to day trading/speculation/etc. For example, moving money from different currencies usually requires foreign exchange fees which can be hefty - whereas if you buy some stablecoin in a local currency and then sell that stablecoin in the currency you want to have in your bank account, you pay tiny transaction costs and thats it. This is a real problem for companies who have operations in tons of countries, and have to manage bank accounts and local entities in all of those countries. Imagine reducing your profit by 1-2% just because you want your profits in ireland instead of mexico. Stablecoins make that into <0.5%, which is many millions.
https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/stripe-bridge-acquisition-stablecoins/ has some examples
The linked page has lots of bullish prose, but the data is pretty dismal:
https://a16zcrypto.com/stateofcrypto/
Lots of those charts are very much not up-and-to-the-right. There's almost nothing, if I was a crypto evangelist, that I'd be able to confidently point to as a sign that crypto is healthy and growing. On the contrary, there's lots of compelling signals that the opposite is true.
Most fundamental, no software platform can succeed without developers. They lost a quarter of their active developers in 2022. Interested developers have fallen in 2022. People deploying contacts have held steady at best. Academia has plateaued at best and is about to fall off at worst. Job search interest has plummeted. Mobile wallet users have crashed hard.
Is there any good news for crypto enthusiasts here?
Ok, I guess I misunderstood your comment:
>If all of this gets classified as general partnerships
to literally mean all as opposed to only those DAOs that in fact are General Partnerships.
Either way, it’s nothing new in law nor surprising. I’m not saying their isn’t legal risk or potential liability issues, but it’s certainly not something A16Z isn’t aware of, they have written about the legal issues pertaining to DAOs extensively, just one example: https://a16zcrypto.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/dao-legal-framework-part-1.pdf
Oh, I dunno about lately (though I did stumble upon https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/big-ideas-things-excited-about-crypto-2026/ )
But when I was in the crypto space in 2018, there was a lot of interesting things happening in the smart contract world (like proofs of concepts of issuing NFTs as a digital "deed" to a physical asset like a house).
I don't think any of those novel ideas went anywhere, but it was a fun time to be experimenting.
From Chris Dixon's of a16z post [1] (Coinbase's largest investor) at the launch of a16z crypto:
"We are long-term, patient investors. We’ve been investing in crypto assets for 5+ years. We’ve never sold any of those investments, and don’t plan to any time soon. We structured the a16z crypto fund to be able to hold investments for 10+ years."
Makes this all sound like speculation
[1] https://a16zcrypto.com/2018/06/introducing-a16z-crypto/