Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon: Why America Needs CLARITY

**Chris Dixon** (0:00)
Stablecoins are tokenized stocks or dollars on blockchains. Rivals the size of the Visa network, trillions of dollars transacted. If you have a dollar of that stablecoin, there is a dollar sitting in the bank, and that's why the Clarity Act, working its way through the Senate, is so important.

**Robert Hackett** (0:13)
One of the biggest opponents to the bill is Senator Elizabeth Warren.

**Marc Andreessen** (0:16)
And why, why are we working on this?

**Robert Hackett** (0:20)
She says that North Korea and terrorists and ransomware hackers, they're gonna run wild if this bill passes.

**Marc Andreessen** (0:26)
The national security people I talk to typically don't agree with that. Because there's a trail.

**Robert Hackett** (0:30)
Another debate that has been opened with respect to the Clarity Bill. Developers should be held more liable for the software that they write.

**Marc Andreessen** (0:38)
If you saddle people who build products, they get used by many people for many reasons. It's a kill shot to the industry, which is clearly the goal.

**Robert Hackett** (0:44)
Volumes are now rivaling the Visa Network, which is insane. Lots of gigantic financial institutions have rushed in. BlackRock, JP Morgan, Visa itself, MasterCard. What happens if Clarity does not pass?
Welcome to the a16z crypto show. I'm Robert Hackett, and I'm here with Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, who, if you watch the show, need no introduction.

**Marc Andreessen** (1:09)
Great to be here.

**Robert Hackett** (1:12)
Today, we're talking about regulation. Congress is currently hashing through some legislation. Once in a generation market structure legislation that could determine where the future of the financial system and internet get built.
It passed in the House last year with bipartisan support, and it has been making its way through the Senate ever since. Now, there's been lots of fights and obstacles over it, which we'll get into.
But before we do, I want to zoom out and go big picture and talk about why regulatory clarity matters, what the status quo costs us, and what's at stake for the country and for anybody who may end up using this technology. So, Marc, I'd like to start with you. Back in January 2014, you wrote an op-ed for The New York Times called Why Bitcoin Matters. Things were a little bit different then. This was a pretty contrarian position to stake out. The crypto industry, which if you could even call it that, back then, looked very, very different. How things changed from then to now.

**Marc Andreessen** (2:21)
Yeah, sure. So 2014 was so long ago that The New York Times actually ran a positive piece on crypto. From you. From me, with my name on it. So yes, this was in the distant past. This is for the kids watching this. This is when dinosaurs were on the earth 13 years ago. Might as well have been in the 1500s. But yeah, I'm actually really proud of that piece. So if you read that piece today, I think it holds up really well. I think it holds up in a few respects. So one is, and I should say this, it's actually fairly amazing. The Bitcoin Web Paper, this piece is even five years into the macro trend. And it was still the kind of thing where it was still big news to even believe that this technology mattered at all. So I think it was, I think I was prescient, not that Bitcoin is going to matter, but I think I was prescient in kind of forecasting that we were still in the beginning of the adoption curve. There were still a lot of people that were going to have to learn about this, want to learn about this and be part of it. And so I think that holds up. I spent a lot of time in the piece and around that time trying to really educate people on the nature of this technology with Bitcoin, with the blockchain, because that was new and for people who don't have computer science degrees or math degrees, like that is kind of a bug. For people who do have computer science degrees, it's kind of weird idea. So for people who don't have computer science degrees, it's a genuinely new idea. I think the importance of that has held up really well. I think the thing that in retrospect needs to be changed about the piece is, every time I said Bitcoin, just swap in crypto, which is like at that time, Bitcoin was crypto. It was essentially the only game in town. Chris, you can correct me on the timing if you want, but I believe at that point, there was the proposal for what were called colored coins.