Big Hires, Big Money and a D.C. Blitz: A Bold Plan to Dominate Crypto
The New York Times
The Silicon Valley firm Andreessen Horowitz, whose founders played big roles in the development of the internet, aims to own a huge part of the digital currency world — and set the rules for it, too.
WASHINGTON — There was lunch at a French bistro near Congress with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and a meeting with some of President Biden’s top economic aides. Then came a private dinner with a major financial regulator.
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.
At 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.
