Why a Leading Venture Capitalist Is Betting on a Decentralized Internet
Chris Dixon, blockchain’s most vocal VC, on dismantling the “Disneyland internet”
Chris Dixon, arguably the most prominent venture capitalist focusing on blockchain, is friggin’ tall. Prior to sitting down with him inside the spa-like Silicon Valley offices of Andreessen Horowitz in August, I had talked to him a handful of times over the years, but always on the phone, so I didn’t exactly know about his height.
As far as either of us can remember, Dixon and I initially talked in the mid-2000s, when he was running his first company, SiteAdvisor — a web security startup that was bought by McAfee in 2006. Next, Dixon cofounded Hunch, a wisdom-of-the-crowds recommendation site that eBay scooped up in 2011 for $80 million. Dixon joined VC superpower Andreessen Horowitz in 2013, around the time he made his first blockchain investment, in Ripple. He’s since led the firm into crypto investments that include Coinbase, OpenBazaar, and Mediachain. In June, Andreessen Horowitz unveiled a $300 million crypto fund and brought in blockchain guru and former federal prosecutor Katie Haun to run it.
After Dixon and Margit Wennmachers, the firm’s communications chief, greet me warmly in a hallway at Andreessen Horowitz, in Menlo Park, we…
