There’s a fascinating — and unintentionally hilarious — report in the FT (and therefore behind a paywall). The TL;DR summary is that a big venture capital firm which invested in companies that became the dominant tech giants is now investing in ‘crypto’ ventures in the belief that they will undermine the giants that they originally helped to grow!

Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley venture capital group, is betting on crypto to break up the excessive concentration of Big Tech power that the firm played a prominent role in creating, according to one of its leading partners.

Chris Dixon, founder of Andreessen’s crypto arm, said the internet had led to power being held by a handful of companies including Facebook and Twitter, which the venture capital group backed at an early stage.

“I don’t think that any of us expected this level of concentration,” he told the Financial Times’s Tech Tonic podcast. “I don’t think this is a good outcome, both societally and from a business point of view, because our business is investing in entrepreneurs . . . the idea of having the internet controlled by five companies is very bad for entrepreneurs and bad for VCs.”

His comments come as the firm is seeking to hone a new investment strategy built around cryptocurrencies and digital tokens to replace the traditional equity investments made by VC firms and create a new, community-led model for investing in high-growth start-ups.

Proponents of the Web3 movement claim decentralisation will shift the balance of power away from centralised platforms and towards users.

However, critics warn firms such as Andreessen will use the new technology to create a new generation of internet gatekeepers.

Which of course they will.

This is why it’s hard for satirists to keep up with outfits like Andreessen Horowitz.