- Investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz expressed their happiness over Trump’s win on their podcast.
- The VCs previously criticized the impact of the Biden administration’s crypto regulations on some startups.
- Andreessen and Horowitz each donated $2.5 million to a pro-Trump PAC.
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, the founders of the famed venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, are the latest of Donald Trump’s billionaire backers to celebrate his return to the White House.
In a recent episode of their podcast, “The Ben and Marc Show,” Andreessen said that Trump’s victory was a relief from the “repression” he and other startup founders in the crypto space had felt under President Joe Biden’s administration.
“It felt like a boot off the throat,” Andreessen said. “Every morning I wake up happier than the day before.”
Under Biden, regulators cracked down on what SEC Chairman Gary Gensler called the “wild west” of the crypto industry. In particular, regulators took action against some startups and other companies over allegations that the firms offered unregistered securities when they rolled out some crypto products.
The stricter crypto regulations were ultimately one of the main factors in Andreessen and Horowitz’s endorsement of Trump earlier this year.
Despite decades of supporting Democratic presidential candidates, including Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, Andreessen said in a previous episode of their podcast that tech billionaires were increasingly being criticized for donating their wealth instead of paying more taxes.
Biden’s plan for taxing unrealized capital gains was the “final straw” in deciding to endorse Trump, Andreessen said in July.
“This makes startups completely implausible, because why on Earth is anybody going to go do this instead of going to work for Google and getting paid a lot of money every year in cash?” he said at the time.
The two investors each donated $2.5 million to the pro-Trump “Right for America” super PAC. However, after Biden dropped out and Vice President Kamala Harris entered the race, Horowitz said he was planning a “significant” donation to her campaign.
In their most recent podcast, Andreessen said that the incoming Trump administration meant that founders were now able to work on “legitimate things” that had previously been blocked.
“I’ve talked to so many crypto founders who are just like, ‘We can build these products now,'” Horowitz added.
Andreessen and Horowitz did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from Business Insider.
On Sunday, Andreessen Horowitz published a blog post titled “A positive path forward” aimed at crypto founders in the firm’s portfolio.
“The good news is that there is now a pathway for constructive engagement with regulatory agencies and legislation that can bring regulatory clarity,” the blog post said. “You should now all feel empowered to explore all of the groundbreaking products and services that blockchains enable, including tokens.”
“While we’ll likely have greater flexibility to experiment, we can’t forget that the fundamental regulatory principles applicable to blockchain systems remain unchanged,” it continued. “This means that ‘where there is trust, there is regulation’ still applies.”
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