Chris Dixon and Packy McCormick on the future of crypto
There’s more to crypto than currency and financial applications
By Chris Dixon: general partner, a16z, and Packy McCormick: founder, Not Boring Capital
Because of the success of bitcoin, the pioneering cryptocurrency launched in 2008, many people associate blockchains primarily with money and finance. But the applications of blockchains are much broader. Modern blockchains are fully programmable, like a PC or a smartphone. What makes them unique, however, is that they let programmers write code that can make strong commitments about how that code will behave in the future. Bitcoin’s code guarantees that there can only ever be 21m bitcoins, that network participants cannot spend the same coin twice, plus a host of other commitments that established trust in the currency.
The year ahead will show that blockchains can support a lot more applications beyond money and finance. In 2022 decentralised services will chip away at big tech companies’ stranglehold on the internet. A cluster of new “web3” technologies, such as tokens, will dramatically improve the digital economics of creators, technologists and small businesses.
