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Chris Dixon

Founder & Managing Partner, a16z crypto · 3 appearances on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

investorfounderauthor@cdixon ↗LinkedIn ↗cdixon.org ↗Wikipedia ↗

Chris Dixon founded and leads a16z crypto, managing multibillion-dollar dedicated funds and backing notable companies such as Coinbase and Oculus. Prior to joining Andreessen Horowitz in 2012, he co-founded startups SiteAdvisor and Hunch, and authored the 2024 book Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet.

99statements → 40claims → 21claims resolved → 33%fully supported → 3.64/5average certainty → 2.4/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 13said about them ↓

7 supported 5 partly supported 9 contradicted 19 not checkable as stated how the 40 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

9 predictions · 31 assertions · 17 opinions · 32 insights · 9 disclosures · 1 what if · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 40 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 21 are resolved, and 19 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Chris argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Dixon: Global NFT sales reached $8.6 billion in 2023
“There were 8.6 billion in NFT sales last year.”
Chris Dixon Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 32:11 Chris Dixon - Empty Rooms: Web3 After the Fall (EP.380)

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Dixon: Web3 payouts will pass Web2 payouts in next couple years
“I believe we'll see in the next couple of years, web three payouts past web two payouts.”
Chris Dixon Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 20:28 Chris Dixon – Frameworks and Investing at Scale (EP.258, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.05)

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
33% certainty 3
54% certainty 4
0% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Chris Dixon on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

Everything Chris Dixon said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion
Dixon: Buying domains was probably the 1990s' best investment strategy
“Buying domains was probably the best, single best investment strategy in the nineties.”
Chris Dixon Jan 11, 2021 ▶ 52:04 Chris Dixon – The Future of Blockchain at a16z (Capital Allocators, EP.172)
Disclosure
Dixon: a16z exercises crypto governance through token voting, not boards
“In the crypto world, we do governance, but we don't do it through boards. We do it through the token. So we own a bunch of tokens, and they have votes.”
Chris Dixon Jan 11, 2021 ▶ 54:04 Chris Dixon – The Future of Blockchain at a16z (Capital Allocators, EP.172)
Disclosure
Dixon: a16z delegates token voting power to maintain protocol decentralization
“We also do this thing we call delegating. We want to make sure that the networks are sufficiently decentralized. And so in some cases, because we were the early venture capital investors, we own a bunch of the tokens. We want to make sure we aren't sort of doe…”
Chris Dixon Jan 11, 2021 ▶ 54:43 Chris Dixon – The Future of Blockchain at a16z (Capital Allocators, EP.172)
Insight
Dixon: Corporate career progression is a local-optimum trap for aspiring founders
“In people's careers, I think you get caught on kind of a local optimum. Imagine the career landscape is a hilly landscape, and there's the highest hills where you kind of want to get to. It's very easy to sort of be walking up a hill and feel like you're succe…”
Chris Dixon Jan 11, 2021 ▶ 1:03:24 Chris Dixon – The Future of Blockchain at a16z (Capital Allocators, EP.172)
Assertion Partly supported
Dixon: Over 90% of all software running worldwide is open source
“And today I think it really under appreciated under discussed aspect of the technology world is that the vast majority of software that runs in the world is open source software, which was a movement that was dismissed much like blockchains are today, 20 years…”
Chris Dixon Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 19:51 Chris Dixon - Empty Rooms: Web3 After the Fall (EP.380)
Insight
Dixon: Software composability acts as compounding interest in tech
“Because composability, this Lego brick feature of open source software is, to me, the compounding interest of software.”
Chris Dixon Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 21:48 Chris Dixon - Empty Rooms: Web3 After the Fall (EP.380)
Assertion Partly supported
Dixon: Ethereum generated $2B in application fees over the last year
“And so in the last 12 months, there's a ballpark of two billion dollars was paid by applications to run software on the Ethereum blockchain.”
Chris Dixon Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 23:18 Chris Dixon - Empty Rooms: Web3 After the Fall (EP.380)
Insight
Dixon: Prices and innovation operate on two largely decoupled charts
“My mental model is there's prices and then there's innovation. They're really two different charts that are somewhat unrelated. And the innovation chart in my mind is mainly driven by platform shifts and major new technologies.”
Chris Dixon Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 27:47 Chris Dixon - Empty Rooms: Web3 After the Fall (EP.380)
Assertion Supported
Dixon: Monthly stablecoin transaction volume reached roughly $600 billion
“Stable coins last month were something on the order of six hundred billion in transactions.”
Chris Dixon Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 31:51 Chris Dixon - Empty Rooms: Web3 After the Fall (EP.380)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dixon: Tether on Tron functions like Venmo in parts of Asia
“I was just talking to someone who runs one of the larger stablecoin infrastructure companies, and he said that the average dollar value is under a hundred dollars. There's a lot of data, much of it is peer to peer, and there's a lot of anecdotes and data that …”
Chris Dixon Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 36:14 Chris Dixon - Empty Rooms: Web3 After the Fall (EP.380)
Assertion Supported
Dixon: DeFi Protocols Handled 2022 Market Turmoil Without Breaking
“And I think the other important thing to note is that during the volatility and downturns, when you had the failure of FTX and BlockFi and Celsius, all of these blockchain services worked perfectly. I should say the good ones, like Compound, Aave, Uniswap, Mak…”
Chris Dixon Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 43:40 Chris Dixon - Empty Rooms: Web3 After the Fall (EP.380)
Insight
Dixon: Blockchains Solve Institutional Coordination as Neutral Political Solutions
“In some ways, you can think of a blockchain as a political solution. It's a way to recruit great engineers, because they want to work on it, and there's a financial model to incentivize them, and it's neutral. So all these different 10 institutions that maybe …”
Chris Dixon Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 45:18 Chris Dixon - Empty Rooms: Web3 After the Fall (EP.380)
Assertion Supported
Dixon: 50 million Americans own crypto
“Fifty million Americans own crypto.”
Chris Dixon Apr 15, 2024 ▶ 47:52 Chris Dixon - Empty Rooms: Web3 After the Fall (EP.380)
Assertion Contradicted
Dixon: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram pay zero ad revenue to creators
“Twitter and Facebook have zero dollar revenue share. Instagram is zero dollars. So Instagram makes all their money on advertising. They pay zero out to the creators.”
Chris Dixon Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 13:09 Chris Dixon – Frameworks and Investing at Scale (EP.258, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.05)
Disclosure
Dixon: a16z Crypto just raised a $4.5 billion fund
“We just raised a four and a half billion dollar new fund.”
Chris Dixon Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 18:17 Chris Dixon – Frameworks and Investing at Scale (EP.258, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.05)
Assertion Contradicted
Dixon: OpenSea paid out around $5B to creators last year
“We're investors in OpenSea, which is an NFT platform. We put a report out recently where we calculated how much OpenSea had paid out to creative people. And it was something on the order of five billion dollars last year with a B”
Chris Dixon Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 20:11 Chris Dixon – Frameworks and Investing at Scale (EP.258, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.05)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dixon: 99% of daily software interacted with is open source
“99% of the software that your listeners are interacting with on a daily basis is open source software.”
Chris Dixon Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 23:05 Chris Dixon – Frameworks and Investing at Scale (EP.258, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.05)
Insight
Dixon: Power in tech is almost always driven by network effects
“Power in tech is network effects, almost always. Occasionally you have scale effects, brand effects, but generally it's network effects.”
Chris Dixon Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 24:32 Chris Dixon – Frameworks and Investing at Scale (EP.258, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.05)
Assertion Partly supported
Dixon: Almost all major mobile apps were created between 2009 and 2011
“Almost all of the big mobile apps were created between 2009 and 11.”
Chris Dixon Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 27:07 Chris Dixon – Frameworks and Investing at Scale (EP.258, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.05)
Opinion
Dixon: Blockchains are close to abstraction maturity but not there yet
“I think we're close to that in blockchains and crypto, but we're not quite there yet. So we're making a lot of investments in the infrastructure layer to get to that point.”
Chris Dixon Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 27:39 Chris Dixon – Frameworks and Investing at Scale (EP.258, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.05)
Opinion
Dixon: Ethereum Layer 2 networks are ready for prime time
“We're seeing production ready scaled other networks, including what are called layer two networks on top of Ethereum that are really ready for prime time. And that dramatically lowers the transaction costs and therefore opens up a lot of new design possibiliti…”
Chris Dixon Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 30:54 Chris Dixon – Frameworks and Investing at Scale (EP.258, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.05)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dixon: a16z Crypto operates as an 80-person team with 50 operating specialists
“From an operational point of view, we're a completely independent team. We have 80 people on the crypto team. 13 are on the investment team. Then there's some set of back office and support, and then 50 or so on our operating teams.”
Chris Dixon Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 39:54 Chris Dixon – Frameworks and Investing at Scale (EP.258, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.05)
Insight
Dixon: Web3 hiring values open source contributions over formal credentials
“In our world, a lot of people may not have formal educations. They may not have the same pedigree, brand name resumes. We've hired a lot of people who have not gone to college. What we want to see is they've demonstrated excellence. That excellence can be thro…”
Chris Dixon Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 41:54 Chris Dixon – Frameworks and Investing at Scale (EP.258, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.05)
Insight
Dixon: Backing well-rounded founders leads to mediocre returns
“One of our core frameworks is invest in strengths, not lack of weaknesses. So what that means is look for people with some kind of superpower, but that doesn't mean they have to be well-rounded. The truth is a lot of great people and a lot of great companies h…”
Chris Dixon Jun 27, 2022 ▶ 43:10 Chris Dixon – Frameworks and Investing at Scale (EP.258, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.05)

Show 24statements(27 left)

The other half of the tape: Chris Dixon's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 12 times in 11 episodes on Capital Allocators. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Ted Seides 7Sonal Chokshi 1Scott Kupor 1Leigh Drogen 1Joelle Kayden 1Ali Hamed 1

Statements about Chris Dixon, by other people (1)

Opinion
Drogen: Dixon and Wilson build winning crypto tech rather than predict it
“There are a couple of people out there like Chris Dixon at Andreessen Horowitz, Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures that they're making these things. But anybody else, I don't think any of us knows which one is going to win long term.”
Leigh Drogen Jun 2, 2022 ▶ 29:42 Leigh Drogen – Quantamental Approach to Crypto at Starkiller Capital (Manager Meeting, EP.32)

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
00438620182019202020212022episodesmentions
03620182019202020212022episodes it came up in
000.831.5620182019202020212022episodesmentions per episode
2022 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
2021 7 mentions in 6 episodes 1 per episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (3)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Chris Dixon - Empty Rooms: Web3 After the Fall (EP.380) Apr 15, 2024 45m
Chris Dixon – Frameworks and Investing at Scale (EP.258, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.05) Jun 27, 2022 41m
Chris Dixon – The Future of Blockchain at a16z (Capital Allocators, EP.172) Jan 11, 2021 53m
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