a16z Poll: Voters Will Prefer Candidate That Supports Web3

key takeaways

One in five people in the US own cryptocurrency, the survey found, including 35% of those who are between the ages of 18 and 34
Twenty-two percent reported that congressional, state, or local candidate’s views on the future of the internet will have a “significant impact” on their decision to vote for them in 2022

Nearly four of five voters would be more likely to support a candidate that supports expanding Web3, according to a survey conducted by Andreessen Horowitz.

The venture capital firm, also known as a16z, interviewed 2,191 registered voters in the US online from Dec. 1 to Dec. 3. Founded in 2009, a16z manages about $19 billion in assets, and roughly $3.1 billion of those assets are in the firm’s crypto funds.

Tomicah Tillemann, a partner and global head of policy for the a16z crypto team, and James Rathmell, who works on policy and regulatory strategy for the unit and its portfolio, described the findings as “mind-blowing” in a recent blog post.

“In 2021, the 117th Congress introduced bill after bill around digital assets and decentralized technology, while the leaders of the most important federal agencies spent months understanding the ramifications of stablecoins for the integrity of the US financial system and the global economy,” Tillemann and Rathmell wrote.

“Along the way, Web3 has emerged as a major political force.”

One in five people in the US own cryptocurrency, the survey found, including 35% of those who are between the ages of 18 and 34. Nearly 90% of crypto owners say they bought crypto to have “more direct control over my money,” and 74% say they did research before buying.

After those surveyed heard a description of Web3, which mentioned digital assets, NFTs, ownership tokens and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), 77% of them reported having a favorable view.

If a candidate supported expanding Web3, 79% of the registered voters polled would be more likely to vote for him or her. Additionally, 22% reported that congressional, state, or local candidate’s views on Web3 and the future of the internet will have a “significant impact” on their decision to vote for them in 2022.

“American voters want policymakers to lean in and play an active role in supporting the next generation of the internet,” Tillemann and Rathmell said in the blog post. “We couldn’t agree more.”

Naval Ravikant, an entrepreneur, investor and the co-founder of AngelList, has described Web3 as a world in which the code is open-source and the users and contributors govern and own the network.

“We’ve gone from the read-only web to the writable web to the executable web and the ownable web,” Ravikant said during a Twitter Spaces session hosted by Coinbase last week.

“It’s great to see the web evolve away from a small set of monopolies and duopolies into something that is going to be dynamically owned by contributors.”

He added that Web3 is a much freer version of the internet than what people have encountered in the last decade through using Facebook, for example. Despite its advantages, Ravikant said, many regulators and the “old world of investors” have already tried to resist it.

“It’s not stoppable any more than the internet is; it’s just a question of when and where,” he said of Web3. “Any regulator or any politician that stands in the way of tens of millions of creators getting paid is essentially going to be in the garbage bin of history.”

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