Original Author: Jack, BlockBeats! Silicon Valley Turns Right: Peter Thiel, a16z, and the Political Ambitions of Cryptocurrency

The paradise of liberalism is turning right.

Almost overnight, the public opinion in Silicon Valley began to shift towards the Trump camp. After Harris became the Democratic Party's designated presidential candidate, Silicon Valley became even more divided. Openly supporting Trump was once a taboo in Silicon Valley, but now this blue fortress is wavering due to the frustration with Biden and the Democratic government.

In the past two years, the tech giants in Silicon Valley have begun to engage in politics in a more high-profile manner. Just like "software is eating the world," these kingmakers are changing the power structure in Washington through capital and influence.

The Contrarian, and his ultra-Trumpism

At the 2016 Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit, Amazon CEO Bezos, when asked about Peter Thiel's support for Trump, replied, "You have to remember, Peter Thiel is a contrarian, and contrarians are often wrong." He then went on to say that if it were him, he wouldn't ask Peter Thiel to leave the Amazon board.

Even in the star-studded Silicon Valley, Peter Thiel stands alone. His alliance with Zuckerberg is considered one of the most powerful partnerships in Silicon Valley history, and the influence of the "PayPal Mafia" permeates every corner of the tech industry. However, in the summer of 2016, Thiel found himself in a "to-be-or-not-to-be" dilemma. His outspoken support for Trump offended half of Silicon Valley, and over the next four years, his relationship with the Facebook board deteriorated, eventually leading to his departure from the social networking company in May 2022.

But this was not the end for Thiel. After leaving Facebook, he began to pursue a more covert and radical form of power, expanding his influence from Silicon Valley all the way to Washington as an emerging political force. Through a series of efforts, he propelled his disciple J.D. Vance into the center of the political stage, becoming the main force behind the "right turn behind the scenes" in Silicon Valley.

"The Contrarian"

In Silicon Valley, Peter Thiel has a more well-known alias - "The Contrarian." He almost always holds views that are opposite or at least different from everyone else's, and then seizes the opportunity for huge returns in this non-consensus. In addition to founding PayPal, he was also the first external investor in Facebook, the godfather of Bitcoin in Silicon Valley, and one of the earliest investors in companies such as Tesla, SpaceX, and Airbnb, which were often not understood or favored in the early days, but Thiel always appeared before them.

The secret to Peter Thiel's success is not simply "going against the grain." A philosophical thought that runs through his life is that people no longer have genuine viewpoints.

During his time at Stanford, Thiel became angry and frustrated with the many crazy behaviors on campus in pursuit of a diverse culture, so he and his friend David O. Sacks co-authored a 250-page treatise called "The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford." Thiel criticized Stanford's false diversity culture for diverting students' attention from truly important issues and conveying dangerous ideas to society, accusing the campus culture of appearing diverse but in reality, everyone's thoughts are the same.

A young Peter Thiel, image source from New York Magazine

In Thiel's view, this is the fundamental reason for the bubble in American society, so when people believe in something wholeheartedly, they should distance themselves from it as soon as possible. Based on this theory, Thiel sold PayPal on the eve of the bursting of the internet bubble and successfully avoided the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. Now, he tells people that popular tech trends are overvalued, and entrepreneurs are better off thinking in reverse, staying away from trendy terms like big data and cloud computing, because "trendy" often means that many people are already doing the same thing.

When it comes to venture capital, Thiel opposes the "lean startup + idea validation" thinking and instead advocates foreseeing the future through long-term thinking, because then you don't have to keep trying and failing, and the conclusions reached after serious consideration are the trends. He claims that 75% of the value of the technology companies invested by Founder's Fund will come from cash flow generated 10 years later.

In 2016, Peter Thiel once again found a rare contrarian opportunity.

For many years, Peter Thiel has been acting as a bridge between Silicon Valley and the conservative camp. At that time, left-leaning liberals were still the mainstream in Silicon Valley, and the vast majority of tech companies' employees were supporters and donors of the Democratic Party. Thiel found that many Silicon Valley practitioners felt seriously offended by Trump's MAGA slogan, believing that "Make America Great Again" denied Silicon Valley's contribution to promoting American social development. What Thiel saw was precisely this kind of pessimism.

For years, Thiel has favored more pessimistic presidential candidates, and he hates or even disdains the optimism of traditional politicians, believing that they, like Reagan, depict America as a shining city, and "if you are too optimistic, it only means you are out of touch with reality." Thiel believes that the era of great men achieving great things in government is gone, and the current federal institutions are "an old and left-wing regime" bound by rules, stifling innovation.

In contrast, Trump's America is a fragmented landscape. In Thiel's view, MAGA is the most pessimistic campaign slogan in America's hundred-year history, because it acknowledges that America is no longer a great country, which is completely shocking for a presidential candidate. At that time, Washington was eager to avoid this "outsider" in politics, but Peter Thiel chose to donate $1.25 million to him and spoke in support at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Peter Thiel speaking at the 2016 Republican National Convention, image source from Quartz

This move caused a conflict between Thiel and the Democratic board members of Facebook and liberal employees, some executives believed that Thiel's political actions were somewhat overstepping. After the conference, Thiel received an email from board member and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, calling Thiel's decision a "disastrous misjudgment."

However, in Thiel's view, supporting Trump was almost the "least contrarian" choice he had made, after all, it received "recognition from half the country." Subsequently, Thiel became increasingly estranged from Silicon Valley, and in 2018, he moved his home and investment firm to Los Angeles. It turned out that the contrarian's judgment of "Trumpism" was extremely prescient, and his bet on Trump brought him significant political returns, although the returns were different from what he had initially imagined.

Beyond Trumpism

In a media interview last November, Peter Thiel openly expressed his "buyer's remorse" for the former Trump administration and admitted that supporting Trump was a bad bet. Thiel told The Atlantic's reporter that he had fantasized that the Trump administration would conduct a "national reckoning" after being elected and cut regulations, dismantle the administrative state before rebuilding the country, "but it was crazier and more dangerous than I imagined. They (the Trump administration) couldn't make the most basic government agencies work, which was even worse than my low expectations."

Peter Thiel has a soft spot for "outsiders," in his understanding, disruptors and subverters are almost always outsiders, which is also the main reason why Thiel valued Trump. However, shortly after Trump took office, he realized that this administration was not as radical as he had expected.

During the transition period from 2016 to 2017, Peter Thiel had an office in the Trump Tower and submitted a cabinet nomination list with over 50 senior government positions to Trump. The purpose of this list was to "disrupt the administrative state," with many being either extreme libertarians or thorough reactionaries. Even for the Trump administration, this list seemed too radical.

One example is the position of Chief Science Advisor, for which Thiel recommended William Happer, a prominent American climate skeptic who had compared demonizing fossil fuels to Hitler's treatment of Jews. In the end, apart from his disciple Michael Kratsios being appointed as Chief Technology Officer, Thiel's other candidates hardly found work in the Trump administration. Shortly after, Steve Bannon, who had a close relationship with Thiel, was also ousted from the White House.

According to Puck's report, the media and Silicon Valley observers have exaggerated Thiel's relationship with Trump, but the fact is that at the time, Thiel was not in Trump's innermost circle of business leaders. Thiel had a good relationship with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, but in his relationship with Trump himself, he was far less influential than Trump's long-time allies such as Tom Barrack or Robert Wood Johnson IV.

Therefore, during the 2020 re-election campaign, Peter Thiel chose to remain on the sidelines.

However, Thiel did not give up the ideology symbolized by Trump, namely "Trumpism." This idea of anti-establishment and achieving social reconstruction through thorough subversion is what Thiel believes in, and he is willing to find a way forward and reliable successors for this ideology, with or without Trump's involvement.

The good news is that in the years after Trump took office, Thiel's image significantly improved in conservative circles. The death of major Republican donor Sheldon Gary Adelson in early 2021, and the arrest of Tom Barrack later that summer, further left a vacuum for Thiel to expand his influence within the party.

According to the New York Times, throughout 2021 to 2022, Republican politicians clamored to visit Peter Thiel's home or at least have a phone call with him. Republicans saw an obvious way out: Thiel could provide "rescue" to struggling candidates, giving them enough funds to counter the attacks from the Democratic Party.

According to Puck's report, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell repeatedly asked Peter Thiel to come forward and help J.D. Vance and Blake Masters in Ohio and Arizona during the 2022 midterm elections, but was consistently refused by Thiel. This left McConnell very puzzled, as he did not understand why Thiel would invest around $20 million in the primary elections for the two candidates, only to abandon his investment in the final elections.

In the face of McConnell, Thiel has his reasons for taking a tough stance. In early 2022, he and Rebekah Mercer, among others, formed a secretive conservative donor alliance called Rockbridge, aimed at "disrupting and advancing the Republican agenda" and attempting to reshape the American right outside the party machine. As the godfather of venture capital, Peter Thiel certainly wants to win, but his goal is not to gain one more Republican seat, but to seek subversion. He hopes to push the Republican Party further to the right and remove moderate establishment figures. Bankruptcy or redefining the industry, this is Thiel's investment philosophy.

After learning from the lessons of 2016, Peter Thiel's political strategy underwent a significant transformation, and he began to support promising candidates early on, much like treating candidates as startup founders. It was reported that Thiel donated over $20 million in the midterm elections, supporting a total of 16 Republican candidates. As the godfather of Silicon Valley, Thiel replicated the PayPal mafia rules in Washington, taking in disciples, emphasizing loyalty, and with the expectation that the Republicans would win more congressional seats, Thiel began to focus on installing loyalists within the party.

In the 2022 midterm elections, two loyal disciples of Peter Thiel were Masters and Vance. The former was an executive at Thiel's family office and co-authored the Silicon Valley "startup bible" "Zero To One" with Thiel, while the latter was the author of the best-selling book "Hillbilly Elegy" and a former employee of Thiel's Mithril Capital.

In early 2022, The Washington Post Magazine published a detailed report on Vance's journey from a well-known writer to an extreme right-wing politician in an article titled "J.D. Vance's Radicalization." Thiel played an influential role in almost every step of Vance's development, from listening to Thiel's "life-changing" speech during his time at Yale, to working for Thiel's Mithril Capital in 2017, and then founding Narya Capital with Thiel's support three years later.

Special issue of The Washington Post on J.D. Vance

At the last moment of the campaign, with Thiel's help, Vance won the support of Trump and won the election in Ohio with the $1.5 million newly injected by Thiel. By injecting "emergency political funds" into inexperienced right-wing disciples like Vance and Masters, Thiel ensured that they would be absolutely loyal to him, rather than McConnell. In a sense, they are an extension of Thiel's ideology. One example is Facebook, where in 2018, after Thiel's Palantir was officially investigated by Facebook following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Vance's criticism of Facebook to some extent was also Thiel's effort to push Zuckerberg towards the right from the outside.

Unlike Musk's high-profile image on Twitter, Peter Thiel is a behind-the-scenes operator. He was once a top ten chess player in the United States, and now he is adept at using his influence to deploy political pawns to achieve his goals. Many underestimated Thiel's will and tactics. As a descendant of Germans, his thinking carries a distinct German-Prussian color, cold, iron-blooded, and even extreme. Thiel's influence does not only come from money; his relentless revenge against Gawk News for ten years is a serious warning to every enemy. In Silicon Valley, no one dares to say they are not afraid of Peter Thiel. Now, he wants to use this iron-blooded power to change America once again, even if it means losing his lifelong friend.

In 2022, The Washington Post pointed out in a report that Thiel and Musk herald the rise of a new generation of tech billionaires, whose substantial financial resources and unique ideologies are shifting from creating companies to reshaping a new generation of right-wing political leaders in America, and fundamentally changing the Republican Party and Silicon Valley. Two years later, Thiel expressed being "very happy" about Vance becoming the nominee for vice president, just as people said Trump completely changed the Republican Party, Thiel believes he has reshaped Trumpism. Perhaps in his view, the endpoint beyond Trumpism is Thielism.

The Lord of the Rings Addict

Peter Thiel has always loved the fantasy of parallel worlds. He has read a lot of science fiction and fantasy novels since he was a child, but it was only "The Lord of the Rings" that he read at least 10 times (this is a three-volume epic). Thiel is obsessed with the Middle-earth created by Tolkien. You could even say that he lives in his own fantasy world: whether it's Palantir, which he founded in 2003, or Narya Capital, which he helped establish in 2020 for Vance, both names are derived from "The Lord of the Rings."

Former CEO of biotech company Roivant Sciences, Vivek Ramaswamy (who founded an anti-ESG investment company with Thiel's support), once told the media that Peter Thiel firmly believes in the enormous opportunities inherent in creating parallel economies. He believes that serving dissatisfied Americans with today's American businesses will become the backbone of the next generation of large companies, and almost no one is seriously pursuing this opportunity.

In Thiel's eyes, these parallel economies are no different from Tolkien's Middle-earth: Middle-earth is an arena for the ultimate power struggle, with no government, and extraordinary individuals rising one after another to fulfill their destinies. Additionally, there are immortal elves who live in valleys protected by magical powers, far away from humans.

Peter Thiel is like a power contender in Middle-earth, eager to obtain the supreme ruling ring.

After the 9/11 attacks, the United States significantly enhanced security measures, and airport security checks became cumbersome. Thiel believed that this phenomenon of reducing overall societal efficiency due to a single terrorist was absurd. Therefore, he hoped to use PayPal's fraud detection technology to proactively locate criminals online, leading to the founding of the data mining company Palantir. The company's name and logo were inspired by the "Palantír" in the hands of the evil wizard Saruman in "The Lord of the Rings," which could observe and communicate with people and events in any corner of the world.

Image of the Palantír from the movie "The Lord of the Rings," and Palantir's logo

In the early stages, Palantir received support from the CIA investment firm In-Q-Tel, but later lost in competition with major rivals such as Amazon and Google. However, Trump's presidency turned the tide for Palantir, and they began to win a large number of government contracts. Due to investments during the campaign, Thiel was able to lobby for his products in the U.S. military, once again applying the PayPal development model to expand Palantir's client base to governments and intelligence organizations worldwide.

During a recent speech at Cambridge University, several audience members protested, accusing Palantir of playing an evil role as a data contractor for the Israeli military in the current Israel-Palestine conflict, and accusing Peter Thiel of having "blood on his hands." Thiel responded, "I have a theory that we are always entangled in the justice and evil of technology, but most technologies are actually useless. In this sense, useless technology is 'bad.' Today, someone complains about Palantir, at least it shows that Palantir's technology is really useful. In a world where most technology is useless and false, even if you are evil, you are not useless. In a completely incompetent world, you are even 'good'."

Peter Thiel's speech at Cambridge University was interrupted by protests

Thiel has never minded being seen as a villain. When he supported Trump in 2016, he said, "Silicon Valley wants a villain, and the Republican Party wants a hero." Clearly, he feels that this role suits him well. When discussing "The Lord of the Rings", he believes that the essence of elves is immortal humans, and then asks, "Why can't we become elves?" In his pursuit of immortality, Thiel is often referred to as a vampire by the public.

Peter Thiel believes that behind every successful company is a "nearby but unnoticed secret," and he pursues "non-consensus," which is disruption and development. He believes that today's America is stuck in innovation stagnation and blames the root cause on the pursuit of diversity in American society over the past few decades. He said, "We want flying cars, but we got 140 characters."

However, Thiel is not a visionary like Steve Jobs, and he cannot provide a clear direction for the future.

Many who know Peter Thiel would say that he himself does not know what he wants. Setting aside his philosophical thoughts, Thiel is indeed a super contradiction: he is a homosexual, but during his time at Stanford, he founded a right-wing magazine criticizing multiculturalism and feminism; he advocates for company monopolies and autocracy in "Zero to One," but openly opposes the monopolistic behavior of large tech companies; he advocates for technological libertarianism, but believes that democracy and freedom are incompatible.

Peter Thiel is more like an instigator, always finding ways to change the trajectory of a person, a company, or even a society, but he does not take responsibility for the consequences. Before Silicon Valley Bank ran into crisis, Founder's Fund was the first to withdraw. In New Zealand, the filming location of "The Lord of the Rings," Thiel spent millions of dollars to buy a 500-acre estate. In a 2016 interview, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that if a global disaster were to occur, he would seek refuge there with Thiel. Yes, if Peter Thiel really sets the world on fire, you may have nowhere to go, but he has already prepared his way out.

Woke, wealth tax, Lina Khan, and the "Biden authoritarianism" that turned Silicon Valley against him

In September 2021, The Washington Times published an article titled "The Democratic Party's Totalitarian Overreach Threatens Americans' Livelihoods," accusing the Democratic Party's radicals of deliberately suppressing the voices of minorities in public opinion and using science to enforce school policies, weakening parental rights, and ignoring the harm caused to children by masks and gender identity education.

The term "totalitarianism" originated from the Cold War era, where the West described Nazi Germany, fascist states, and the Soviet Union as similar. Totalitarians suppress opposition parties and control citizens' public and private lives through state propaganda and mass media. At the beginning of Biden's presidency, this term only occasionally appeared in conservative media like The Washington Times and some far-right forums, believing that political correctness, content censorship, and big government are the "new totalitarianism" in America.

However, in a recent podcast update, Ben Horowitz, co-founder of A16Z, also began to describe Biden's Democratic Party government as "totalitarians." He believes that in the past four years, there has been a strong leftist force within the Democratic Party that, under Biden's administration, has seized the regulatory vacuum and aggressively imposed hostility on Silicon Valley and the startups it invests in. This has led A16Z, a former supporter of the Democratic Party, to switch sides to Trump in this election.

During the Axios Technology Conference earlier this year, Peter Thiel's friend and founder of Craft Ventures, David Sacks, also said that he has "greater differences with Biden than with Trump," and shortly after, he invited Trump to participate in the well-known podcast "All In Podcast," which he co-hosts.

While Peter Thiel's personal influence is important, Silicon Valley has never lacked kingmakers. Behind the defection of these powerful individuals is the erosion of efficiency in Silicon Valley under the influence of Woke culture, and the significant conflict between Biden's big government policies and the billionaire economy.

"No, Mr. President, they are not your children"

"My son is dead," Elon Musk said in a live interview this week, "he was killed by the Woke-Mind virus (referring to Dead Naming)." In the interview, Musk openly discussed the fact that his eldest son suffered from gender dysphoria during the pandemic, and eventually, in the absence of complete information and out of concern that his son might commit suicide, Musk signed the documents for his son's gender reassignment surgery. Later, Musk blamed this on the gender identity education in American schools.

A year ago, the official White House account posted a voice video, in which Biden said, "These (underage LGBTQ+) are our children, our neighbors, not someone else's children." The next day, Musk replied, "You are the government. They are not your children." The voice in the video comes from the Biden administration's remarks at the "White House Pride Month" event that month, during which transgender model Rose Montoya's topless behavior at the White House sparked a public outcry in major media.

Photo from the "White House Pride Month" event and official tweet

Over the past two years, whether gender identity education should be taught in K-12 schools and whether schools have an obligation to inform parents when students want to change their gender identity has become one of the most controversial topics in American society.

During the 2022 midterm elections, Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia, threatened that parents should not be involved in K-12 public education, saying he "will not allow parents to enter schools, and parents should not tell schools what they should teach." Conservatives have frequently legislated against this. In March, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a parental rights law that prohibits public schools in the state from teaching gender identity content in kindergarten through third grade and allows parents to decide when to teach such topics to their children.

Opinion polls show that the majority of Americans, regardless of political affiliation, support this right. In several federal court lawsuits, Florida student parents accused schools of following a "gender support" plan, allowing students to choose pronouns or different gender identities without parental consent, and helping students deceive parents or refuse to comply with their wishes.

In April of the same year, Biden spoke at the annual teacher event, stating, "They are not someone else's children, when they are in the classroom, they are like your children," and then at the following year's teacher event, he emphasized again, "There is no concept of 'someone else's children,' all the children in our country are our children." Biden's remarks were seen as an attack on the conservative movement and student parents, with right-wing media criticizing this as "replacing the bond between parents and children with loyalty to the 'Woke cause' to control the younger generation."

Since the MeToo movement, "Woke culture" has been widely developing in the United States, reaching its peak during the Black Lives Matter movement. After Biden took office, Woke culture began to radicalize, becoming a hypersensitive topic in social discourse under the promotion of mainstream media such as CNN and social media platforms like Twitter. Subsequently, "cancel culture" has been seen as a tool for far-left individuals to attack other social groups. During the pandemic, CNN and MSNBC's coverage of riots in the black community was mocked by many American netizens, with reporters describing the scene of fires as "mostly peaceful protests."

In Wall Street, Woke culture has also caused dissatisfaction among some traditional leftists. In a recent interview, "activist investor" Bill Ackman expressed disappointment with the changes in the Democratic Party in recent years, stating, "Today, if you say something offensive to someone, you might lose your job directly, you might be 'canceled'… I am a 'Clinton-style Democrat,' I don't want to be associated with today's Democratic Party." That month, New York Magazine published a deep article titled "Bill Ackman's War on Harvard, MIT, and D.E.I," reporting on Bill's "reckoning" with MIT's president and his wife over their use of the D.E.I. cause for personal gain.

Under the influence of the Biden administration, Woke culture has been impacting American businesses and startups in the form of the D.E.I movement (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), and the aversion to D.E.I has gradually become an open secret in Silicon Valley. Many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and executives believe that D.E.I programs prevent companies from making the best decisions in recruitment and business partnerships, ultimately leading to a decline in profitability. Some tech companies have even attempted to abolish D.E.I recruitment programs. Last month, Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang posted on X, replacing D.E.I recruitment plans with the M.E.I concept (Merit, Excellence, and Intelligence), and gaining support from tech giants like Musk.

On the "anti-D.E.I cause," Peter Thiel has been very high-profile, openly stating multiple times that "D.E.I is communism." In a speech at Cambridge University this month, Thiel once again referenced his college work "The Diversity Myth," pointing out that the D.E.I movement shifts people's attention away from important issues such as economic development and technological innovation, leading to a decline in social efficiency.

According to the Washington Post, Thiel has been focusing on changing American culture since 2021 and has been funding the "anti-Woke" cause, including right-wing film festivals and conservative dating apps. Musk has referred to Woke culture as the "Woke-Mind virus" and has attempted to maintain neutrality in public opinion by acquiring Twitter, a move that has received "spiritual support" from Thiel. The gender reassignment of his eldest son deeply affected Musk, and he subsequently began to fiercely criticize California's policies on transgender medical treatment for minors. The AB-1955 bill signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom is seen as the direct trigger for Musk's announcement to move X and SpaceX headquarters out of California.

Big Government Gamble, Tax Baton Swings at Silicon Valley Billionaires

After taking office, the federal government of the United States embarked on a "spending spree," passing a $1.9 trillion economic relief plan in the first year of Biden's term. The Washington Post pointed out in an article titled "Biden bets on bigger government, and the pandemic is helping him" that Biden is becoming an ambitious president, and the federal government is undergoing its largest expansion in half a century.

Due to the economic shutdown and social unrest, millions of Americans lost their jobs, and public resistance to the expansion of big government gradually softened. In late February, the stimulus plan won about 65% public support in a poll. Biden sought to use the current public sentiment as an opportunity for significant expansion and to quickly advance his big government agenda.

After taking office, Biden was described by the media as the vehicle for the second attempt at the Great Society program in American history. In the early 1960s, President Johnson's Great Society program was seen as the last expansion attempt of the federal government, but it ultimately sparked strong opposition under the pressure of the Vietnam War. After Reagan took office in the 1980s, his strong anti-Washington sentiment set the political tone for anti-government expansion for decades to come. However, Biden is betting that the pandemic can help him rewrite history and achieve what other Democratic presidents have been unable to do.

Biden signs the $1.9 trillion stimulus plan, image source from CNBC

The following year, the Biden administration introduced a $2 trillion massive infrastructure plan to support the "Build Back Better" agenda, further expanding the role of national funds in the social economy. In addition to social spending, Biden significantly increased defense spending during his term, raising defense spending to $800 billion in early 2023, a 3.2% increase from the previous fiscal year, making it one of the largest annual defense budgets in peacetime in U.S. history. At the same time, federal employees also received a 5.2% salary increase, the largest salary increase for U.S. government employees in 43 years since the 9.1% raise in 1980.

High spending means high taxes, and the funding for the $2 trillion massive infrastructure plan cannot rely solely on government debt. Biden decided to target American corporations and the wealthy. Corporate taxes are seen as the main source of funding for the White House's infrastructure plan, with the tax rate increasing from 21% to 28%. Federal subsidies for fossil fuel companies were terminated, the global minimum tax was raised from 13% to 21%, and multinational companies were forced to pay U.S. tax rates. This is the first significant increase in federal tax rates since 1993, directly reversing the trend of significant corporate tax cuts promoted by the Trump administration since 2017.

In addition, the wealthy and investors have become targets for increased revenue to fund social priorities in the infrastructure plan. When unveiling the 2023 budget, Biden proposed a new tax plan targeting the wealthy, imposing a 25% minimum income tax on individuals with a net worth of over $1 billion, including the annual returns on "tradable assets" (including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and other securities). The plan, known as the "billionaire minimum income tax," marks the first explicit call for a wealth tax by the Biden administration and is expected to bring in $360 billion in federal revenue over the next 10 years.

According to a report released by ProPublica in 2021, Biden's billionaire tax will result in tech giants like Bezos and Musk paying between $350 billion and $500 billion in taxes. The news that "Musk will pay a $110 billion tax bill" became a hot topic, marking the highest single tax payment by an individual in U.S. history.

After increasing the 2025 fiscal year budget to $7.3 trillion, Biden proposed taxing unrealized gains and plans to tax unrealized gains of trusts, businesses, and other non-corporate entities that have not experienced a confirmed event in the past 90 years. Due to the complexity of asset valuation and liquidity issues, as well as the enormous challenges of specific implementation, this concept measure has almost never been used in the U.S. tax framework, and Biden's proposal, signed into law, will raise the highest marginal rates for long-term gains and dividends to a staggering 44.6%, reaching the highest level in U.S. history.

Under the new regulations, capital gains taxes in the United States will reach historic highs, image source from the U.S. Department of the Treasury

Bill Ackman, when discussing the tax plan, stated that the Democratic Party should not implement a tax policy that "will destroy the American economy." He said, "If someone invests $1 billion in your startup at a valuation, and you own 50% of the company, you would immediately owe $100 million in taxes… All American startups would go bankrupt, and no one would want to start a business in the United States." In the latest podcast episode, the two founding partners of A16Z also expressed the same view.

David Sacks, speaking at a tech conference earlier this year, said that this tax could kill the system of stock options for founders and employees in the startup industry, and called it "an important reason why Silicon Valley seriously considers who to vote for." The investment community believes that this tax policy will greatly distort the investment behavior of American investors, especially when it comes to small-cap stocks and startups. These companies are often the engines of economic growth and innovation, but they rely on investors willing to take risks for future returns. However, when unrealized gains are also subject to taxation, investors will no longer favor growth-oriented companies, as the valuation of these companies often fluctuates more than larger, more mature companies.

The tax on unrealized gains is not only facing opposition from the wealthy class, as a poll shows that more than two-thirds of American citizens (including 76% of independent voters) reject such tax policies, believing that the federal government should not interfere with private property. Some mainstream media outlets also believe that the currently deeply divided Congress is almost unable to muster the votes needed to approve this policy.

Regulatory Gang: Crackdown on Big Tech, Strangling Small Tech

In 2007, Obama and a group of Silicon Valley CEOs held a private dinner in Woodside, California, where then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs secretly showed Obama a prototype of the first iPhone. The former Democratic president joked at the time, "If it were legal, I would buy a boatload of Apple stock. This is going to be really big."

Over the past decade, the Silicon Valley tech industry has had close ties with the Democratic Party, with former Democratic Vice President Gore joining the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins in 2007, and many tech companies including Apple, Google, Airbnb, and Uber hiring many former members of the Obama administration. However, under the Biden administration, the ambiguous relationship between Silicon Valley and the White House has cooled significantly, and the government's attitude towards big tech has become very tough. Many venture capitalists believe that the Democratic Party under the Biden administration has further shifted to the left and has "demonized" successful entrepreneurial billionaires, leading to a more distant relationship with the tech industry, as "no one likes to be repeatedly told they are evil." In May of this year, Redpoint Ventures partner Shaun Maguire publicly accused Biden's career of "double standards."

Disappointingly for Silicon Valley, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) appointed by Biden, Lina Khan, has been actively blocking mergers of large companies. After 2022, the startup industry entered a downturn, high interest rates caused capital to flee high-risk areas, and the poor IPO market environment made mergers one of the few exit opportunities for the venture capital industry. In addition, the hostility of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman appointed by Biden, Gary Gensler, towards cryptocurrency companies has also caused dissatisfaction among many Silicon Valley venture capital forces.

Since taking office, Biden has made cracking down on the monopolistic behavior of large tech companies a major issue, with almost no Silicon Valley giants, from Apple and Amazon to Google, being spared. In July 2021, he signed an executive order on competition and said, "Capitalism without competition isn't capitalism," and directly or indirectly appointed key figures such as Lina Khan, Gary Gensler, and Jonathan Kanter.

In Silicon Valley, Lina Khan has become the only super villain that unites everyone. According to Puck's report, although there are differences in support for factions among executives, anger at Lina Khan is a common topic for everyone. In their view, Lina does not need to aggressively stifle mergers and reduce the competitiveness of American companies.

Lina Khan is a graduate of Yale Law School and is the first South Asian to lead the Federal Trade Commission. At just 35 years old, she is also the youngest chair in FTC history. In 2017, Lina published an article in the Yale Law Journal titled "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," in which she argued that Amazon is a monopoly and explained why she believes that America's regulation of large corporations is failing. The article garnered significant attention in both academia and politics, and directly propelled Lina Khan to the center of America's business antitrust struggle.

After Biden took office, he appointed the young Lina Khan as the chair of the FTC. In September of the following year, the FTC, along with more than a dozen states, sued Amazon, accusing the company of engaging in illegal business practices that allowed it to exercise monopoly power. Months later, the FTC filed a series of lawsuits against Google and Meta, seeking to unwind their ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp in the Meta case. In March of this year, the FTC again launched an attack on big tech, suing Apple for abusing the monopoly power of the iPhone. In a subsequent public statement, Apple stated that the FTC's lawsuit "threatens who we are" and that if successful, it would "set a dangerous precedent, giving the government more say in designing universal technology."

In 2022, after being sued by the FTC, Nvidia abandoned its $40 billion acquisition of chip design company Arm Holdings, which was something SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son had hoped to see. However, this "antitrust pioneer" also lost several battles in the war against giants, including preventing Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and preventing Meta's acquisition of virtual reality startup Within.

In any case, aggressive antitrust policies have become one of the defining features of the Biden administration, and Biden and Lina Khan's larger agenda is to reposition the federal government's stance on corporate competition in a way not seen in decades. It is clear to everyone that if Biden is re-elected, regulatory pressure will undoubtedly continue.

In Mark Andreessen's A16Z and Peter Thiel's Founder's Fund's renewed focus on the cryptocurrency field, the hostility from the SEC has also become a major headache. Between 2020 and 2022, the SEC filed successive lawsuits against Ripple, Coinbase, BlockFi, Kraken, and many other crypto companies for unregistered securities, demanding settlement fees ranging from $30 million to $1 billion. In the case of Binance, this fee reached an astonishing $4.3 billion. After the FTX scandal in November 2022, Gensler saw it as a case of killing the chicken to scare the monkey, bringing multiple charges against SBF, which the media called a "witch trial."

Around 2023, the SEC shifted its regulatory focus to crypto staking services, issuing a Wells Notice to Coinbase in March and filing a lawsuit in June, stating that Coinbase's staking program was unregistered and constituted securities. In the same month, the SEC again sued Ethereum staking protocols Lido and Rocket Pool for the same reason. Since the beginning of this year, the SEC's hostility towards cryptocurrencies has become increasingly apparent, with Wells Notices being sent to Uniswap, ConsenSys, and Robinhood in April and May, described by A16Z founding partner Ben Horowitz as a "nuclear bomb" on the industry.

In addition, the Biden administration seems to be blocking the funding channels between banks and crypto companies through a cross-agency coordination plan known as "Operation Choke Point 2.0."

Between December 2022 and January 2023, crypto-friendly banks such as Signature, Silvergate, Custodia, and Metropolitan Commercial either reduced or shut down their crypto-related businesses, and were rejected by the Federal Reserve from joining its system on the grounds of "safety and soundness." The National Economic Council (NEC) issued a policy statement strongly advising banks not to directly trade in or maintain exposure to cryptocurrency assets.

In March, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed, implicating several banks in bankruptcy liquidation, with major targets being Signature and Silvergate, among others. According to a report by Barron's, about 20% of Signature's deposits came from crypto companies, and after the bank's collapse, crypto companies will have a hard time finding alternative liquidity providers, posing a huge challenge to the industry in terms of deposits and withdrawals. Barney Frank, a former member of the Signature Bank board, publicly stated, that the liquidation of Signature was because regulatory agencies "wanted to send a very strong anti-crypto message."

Shortly thereafter, the SEC issued SAB121, requiring entities engaged in crypto asset custody activities to record asset value fluctuations on their balance sheets. This means that if the price of Bitcoin falls, banks will be responsible for their customers' losses, forcing banks to stay away from crypto custody businesses. In April of this year, the anti-SAB121 bill passed the Senate and the House with bipartisan support, but was ultimately vetoed by Biden.

Last February, after the SEC adjusted regulatory rules regarding investment advisor protection, A16Z accused the new rules in an open letter of preventing RIAs (registered investment advisors) from holding and trading crypto assets for clients. Ben Horowitz recently stated in a podcast that over the past two years, more than 30 companies in which A16Z has invested have received Wells Notices from the SEC. One small credit startup even received a lawsuit from the FDIC after the end of the pandemic, and was unwilling to disclose the reasons to the team and A16Z. "I have never seen this in my career. Startups simply don't have the money to fight the government," Horowitz said in the podcast.

From the $2 trillion infrastructure plan to the establishment of 31 state innovation centers, to antitrust competition laws, every move by Biden seems grand, but it conflicts severely with the interests of his "campaign donors," and even in some "self-serving" government actions, he has formed personal grievances with Silicon Valley giants. At a corporate leadership meeting at the White House in 2022, Biden did not invite Musk and referred to General Motors, which produces 26 electric cars a year, as the "leader in the new energy field," thus forming a personal grievance with Musk. According to Puck's report, in April of this year, Musk, Thiel, Sacks, and other prominent investors held an "anti-Biden" dinner party in Hollywood, where attendees discussed fundraising and methods to oppose the Democratic Party.

The hostile sentiment between Silicon Valley and the Biden administration has been accumulating, and during Biden's Silicon Valley trip this year, the welcome he received was noticeably less enthusiastic. In every aspect, his big government gamble seems to be failing.

From SBF to A16Z, the trend reversal starts with cryptocurrency

Last month, Trump held a fundraising event at the home of his friend David Sacks in the wealthy area of San Francisco, where he pitched himself as the "crypto president", fiercely criticizing the Democratic Party's hostility towards the industry and stating that he would stop Gensler's crackdown on the crypto industry "within an hour of taking office." During the event, Sacks and the Winklevoss brothers discussed their own cryptocurrency investments with Trump, and ultimately, Trump raised $12 million from the event.

Trump is not a fan of cryptocurrency, at least not until 2023. He has always emphasized the threat of Bitcoin to the US dollar, tweeting as president in 2019 that he did not like Bitcoin's "air value," and after leaving office in 2021, he told the media that Bitcoin "could be a scam." However, at a Bitcoin conference over the weekend, he stated that the threat to the US dollar is no longer Bitcoin, but central banks. From "dollar fighter" to "crypto president," Trump's political stance has changed in just two years.

Now, Trump is fully embracing cryptocurrency and is frequently courting this group, not only his campaign team but also half of the Republican Party. At the recent 2024 Bitcoin Nashville conference, several Republican senators gave speeches in support of the crypto industry, in addition to Trump. It is clear that the Republican Party is tying donations and votes from the crypto community to itself by promising a more relaxed regulatory environment.

This strategy has already shown some success. After publicly announcing his pro-crypto policy, Trump immediately received support from A16Z, with its two founding partners stating that the SEC and FTC under Trump's administration will see new faces. Even SBF, with a deep blue background, joined in the fun. Earlier this year, SBF, who was still in prison, publicly stated that he might "switch to the Republican Party." In 2022, he diverted over $80 million in assets from the FTX platform for election donations, becoming the second largest donor to the Democratic Party at the time, and when the election dust settled, one-third of Congress members received funds related to FTX.

Throughout much of its history, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency have been a non-partisan topic, as both the Republican and Democratic parties did not understand or care about this fringe group. However, it is now becoming an increasingly powerful political force that is influencing the stances of both parties in the elections. Many interpret politicians' favorable gestures towards cryptocurrency as a fundraising strategy, with prominent investor Mark Cuban even calling it a "Bitcoin game" that is driving up prices.

But for Trump, gaining campaign funds may only be one side of the coin. He keenly realizes that cryptocurrency is a "wedge issue" between Silicon Valley, the crypto industry, the liberal community, and the Democratic Party, which can help him unite voter bases on multiple fronts and open up new campaign opportunities.

Kingmakers Want a "Bitcoin Government"

"I'm back with Anderson," wrote Ben Horowitz, founding partner of A16Z, in a blog post last December. During the period from 2014 to 2016, A16Z faded from Washington's view and began what Mark Andreessen called a "spiritual walk" in politics. Nearly a decade later, the two decided to end this spiritual journey and return to the world of political fundraising. Horowitz wrote, "We believe that advancing technology is crucial for the future of humanity, so we will participate in politics for the first time by supporting candidates who align with our technological vision and values."

This blog post echoes comments made by Mark Andreessen two months earlier. In October, he published an article titled "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto," criticizing government regulation as a culture of E.S.G. and D.E.I. restrictions that are "anti-technology and anti-life" among the Democratic Party radicals, which sparked strong reactions in Silicon Valley. This manifesto serves as the benchmark for his political judgment, as he will support politicians who align with his vision and oppose those who do not.

In the cryptocurrency field, Mark Andreessen is undoubtedly the absolute influencer. After investing over $7 billion in the cryptocurrency field, A16Z has become the largest "crypto bull" in Silicon Valley. After the launch of Ethereum in 2014, A16Z shifted its focus from traditional investments and launched a dedicated crypto fund, with the funding size soaring from $300 million in the first round to $4.5 billion in the third round, with the first fund's returns increasing more than tenfold, making it the best-performing fund in A16Z's history.

In 2015, Mark Andreessen and his girlfriend met with Mark Zuckerberg, source from Yahoo Finance

However, during the market downturn, A16Z's paper gains of billions of dollars were wiped out, and the fund's value dropped by about 40% in six months. On one hand, companies in the investment portfolio such as Ripple, Coinbase, and Uniswap faced lawsuits, and on the other hand, regulatory hurdles significantly slowed down crypto investments (the third round's cash deployment hit a record low). A16Z also attempted to have discussions with Gensler's SEC, but after more than ten attempts, Gensler still refused to meet with them. The same situation also occurred with Bitcoin mining companies, as Marathon Digital tried multiple times to contact the Biden administration, but their requests were never accepted.

The inability to make progress with regulatory agencies, and even the inability to effectively communicate with the current government, has left cryptocurrency investors and companies like A16Z very frustrated. It is in this situation that Trump appeared with his pro-crypto policy. First, he expressed support for American mining companies at the Bitcoin Miners President's Roundtable, and then he took a broader pro-crypto stance, stating that he would stop the Biden administration's crackdown and create the future of cryptocurrency in the United States.

Less regulation has always been the political goal pursued by the cryptocurrency industry, so Trump's friendly attitude quickly won support, which became even more apparent after Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee. Many are concerned that if Harris wins the election in November, she will continue to push forward Biden's strict financial regulatory agenda, which would be a big problem for Wall Street and cryptocurrency. Backed by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, Harris, known for her tough stance against banks during her tenure as California Attorney General, is considered to be "even more left" than Biden.

Mark Andreessen, who has just ended his "spiritual walk," has become an openly right-wing figure in Silicon Valley, attending various conservative podcasts and befriending opponents of D.E.I. and populism, just like his close friend Peter Thiel. His A16Z also learned an important lesson from SBF, which is that if you want your startup to survive, you must attract all the attention in Washington. Therefore, even before Trump appeared, this top Silicon Valley venture capital firm had already taken action.

Earlier this year, Andreessen and Horowitz quietly held a fundraising event for Republican Congressman Thomas Earl Emmer at A16Z's Menlo Park office, and then held another large fundraising event with top crypto investment firm Paradigm for Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. OpenSecrets data shows that Andreessen and Horowitz rank seventh in the list of donors in this election, and this ranking will continue to rise after the two make new donation commitments.

Of course, Andreessen's "political awakening" is unlikely to stop at personal donations and fundraising activities. Shortly after publishing "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto," he and Horowitz announced the establishment of Fairshake. This super PAC, aimed at the crypto field, is "to make America the home of innovators building the next generation of the internet." Over the past few months, it has frequently appeared in the news of political donations.

According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) documents, Fairshake has raised $200 million, spent over $83 million, and still has $120 million in cash, making Fairshake the third-ranked PAC in the United States, surpassing the MAGA super PAC. Looking at the list of donors, A16Z and its investment portfolio are the main sources of funding for Fairshake, including A16Z's own $47 million, Ripple's $50 million, and Coinbase's $23.5 million. In addition, mainstream crypto platforms such as Circle, Kraken, Tether, and the Winklevoss brothers' Gemini, as well as crypto funds like Jump Crypto, Electric, Multicoin, and Paradigm, have all participated, forming a powerful "crypto alliance."

Although many donors tend to support the Republican Party, Fairshake's strategy is to focus on areas strongly inclined towards a single party and support pro-crypto candidates in the primaries, regardless of their party, so that the primary winners have a better chance of winning the general election. This strategy is similar to the one used by GMI PAC, which was funded by SBF during 2022, and at that time, GMI's strategist Michael Carcaise is currently serving in the same position at Fairshake. According to Public Citizen's statistics, in the six primaries intervened by Fairshake this year, only one candidate failed, with a success rate of over 80%.

Unlike traditional PACs, super PACs are not allowed to donate directly to campaign activities, but by purchasing ads supporting or opposing candidates, Fairshake can expand its influence on election results without restrictions. This has become a nightmare for anti-crypto politicians in many elections this year.

In March of this year, Democratic Party radical star Katie Porter raised over $30 million in her campaign, with a significant chance of winning a Senate seat in California. However, Porter followed Elizabeth Warren's political path and played an important role in Harris's confrontation with banks, so she was identified by Fairshake as a potential "anti-crypto ally" of Warren. During the California primaries, Fairshake invested over $10 million to weaken Porter's young voter base. Sharp comments about Porter were seen on banners hanging over Hollywood and on trucks on the Walk of Fame, promoting her misleading voters to accept bills favorable to big businesses. In the end, about a third of Porter's campaign funds were hedged by Fairshake, leading to her falling behind her Democratic colleague Adam Schiff and failing to enter the general election in the fall.

In judging a candidate's stance on crypto, the pro-crypto bills FIT21 and anti-SAB121 have become the main litmus test. Democratic Congressman Jamaal Bowman of Westchester County, New York, was defeated after voting against SAB121 twice, and Fairshake spent $2.1 million on negative ads. Another example is in Alabama, where Shomari Figures won the primary after receiving an additional $2.4 million in ads from Fairshake, despite raising funds similar to other candidates, as reported by The Crimson White.

Crypto supporters are well aware that the likelihood of toppling "public enemy number one" Warren is slim, but by using examples of defeats like Porter's, the crypto industry can exert pressure on other anti-crypto politicians. Fairshake's message is clear: if you call for crypto regulation, we will not only make you lose funding, but also lose voters.

Cryptocurrency has become a barbarian at the gates of Washington, with Fairshake being seen as one of the biggest money powers in this presidential election cycle, representing a "rapid development of money politics," according to its spokesperson Josh Vlasto, who recently stated that Fairshake has enough resources to influence the composition of campaigns and institutions at all levels. Indeed, this barbarian has already broken through the gates, and in addition to Trump and a group of congressmen, they now also have a crypto-friendly "vice president disciple."

Left or Right? The Decline of the Crypto Oligarchs

After rejecting Trump's donation request in September last year, Peter Thiel's attitude changed after learning that Vance was on the vice presidential candidate list. According to Axios, Thiel, Musk, and Sachs were still lobbying for Vance until the day before Trump announced his vice presidential candidate. This best-selling author has an extraordinary relationship with Silicon Valley, with his venture capital firm Narya Capital receiving support not only from Peter Thiel but also from Mark Andreessen and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Vance's position on the political stage is more like an extension of the ideology of Silicon Valley right-wingers, which was the case before he was nominated as vice president. Vance's cryptocurrency statement in 2021 is clearly an issue of great concern to right-wing tech libertarians. After FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg was embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal, Vance was the first to attack him and pushed for legislation to weaken the FDIC's regulatory power over banks.

Now, from Trump and Vance to Congress, the entire Republican Party seems to be influenced by this "ideological extension." Polling data shows that currently 28% of Republicans hold or have bought cryptocurrency, and 60% of Republicans lean towards clear cryptocurrency regulations in Congress. In May of this year, Congress passed the pro-crypto bill FIT21, which was also led and promoted by the Republicans.

Of course, a high-profile pro-crypto stance is not just about "making money." The marriage of the crypto industry with the Republican Party also has ideological factors.

In November 2023, Trump hosted a lavish dinner for VIP holders of Trump Card at his Mar-a-Lago estate, where anyone who had purchased at least 47 digital cards could buy tickets to attend. Trump Card is a series of NFT digital trading cards issued by CIC Digital, featuring various portraits of Trump such as Superman and a cowboy, with each card priced at $99. The NFT was launched at the end of 2022 during the peak of the market frenzy, so its rise quickly faded.

However, this did not dampen the enthusiasm of Trump's fans, who flew to Florida from afar to meet their idol president. Trump unexpectedly found that what was originally just another brand experiment, the NFT card, effectively gathered a "crypto MAGA" community, where young people are not only familiar with crypto technologies but also have a strong sense of identity with MAGA culture.

At the VIP dinner in May, Trump's friendly attitude towards the American crypto industry received enthusiastic support from a large number of populist supporters. David Bailey, CEO of Bitcoin Magazine, was also very surprised by this. He recently revealed in a podcast that he had been providing professional advice in the crypto field to the Trump team for the past few months, but did not expect such a strong response.

The Trump team immediately seized on this voter sentiment and began its own political transformation. At the end of May, at the Libertarian Party's national convention, the team's judgment was validated. Trump's speech was repeatedly interrupted by boos and ridicule, but when he promised to pardon Ross Ulbricht, the developer of the Bitcoin Silk Road, the mood in the room instantly reversed, leading to continuous cheers and applause. Shortly after the convention ended, Trump completed his political transformation.

Trump at the Libertarian Party's national convention, image source from Reason

In the book "The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism," published in 2016, author David Golumbia points out that supporters of Bitcoin and blockchain identify with a form of "network liberalism" that is largely dependent on far-right political thought. Golumbia has previously explained the origins of this political ideology in several papers: on one hand, the widespread adoption of Bitcoin by libertarian and anti-state political groups after the "PayPal blocks WikiLeaks" incident, and on the other hand, the open propaganda of extreme right-wing groups in the United States against central banks.

This "technological right-wing" phenomenon can be traced back to the early days of the internet in the early 2000s. In 2007, during his presidential campaign, Ron Paul discovered that in addition to the militia groups (Paul's voter base), a large number of internet geeks also strongly identified with his ideology, including free market economics, a return to the gold standard, distrust of central banks, and individual freedom and privacy. Clearly, these ideologies also align closely with the beliefs of cryptocurrency holders (not the cryptocurrency itself).

After the birth of Ethereum and the emergence of the ICO craze, the liberal elements of the cryptocurrency community increased significantly. However, a 2018 survey by Coindesk showed that the proportion of left and right-leaning individuals in the crypto community was 45% and 52% respectively, with the right-wing group still dominating (the left-leaning proportion in the Ethereum community was 55%). After the narrative explosion of DeFi, NFTs, and other developments in 2021, the ideological aspects of the cryptocurrency industry gradually faded due to its international development. However, the cryptocurrency community, especially in the United States, has always had ideological overlaps with the right-wing of the Republican Party.

This potential political inclination was observed by Trump, who leveraged the ideological overlap to perfectly integrate liberalism, populism, and Trumpism into his pro-crypto policies.

In the new Republican platform, liberal ideology is reflected in terms of anti-regulation, with Trump advocating for the protection of citizens' rights to transfer and trade assets freely, and the prohibition of central bank digital currencies (CBDC) representing central bank power. Populism is mainly reflected in emphasizing the innovation and development of the cryptocurrency and mining industries in the United States, promoting the revival of the energy industry, and bringing more crypto job opportunities back to the United States.

This policy has received high recognition from figures like Marc Andreessen, and even the small detail of placing cryptocurrency ahead of AI has been well received by Peter Thiel. In a debate with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman in 2018, Thiel referred to "cryptocurrency as libertarian and AI as communist."

The sudden resurgence of right-wing sentiment has even stirred up a storm of rhetoric within the industry. For example, long-time Trump supporter and Messari CEO Ryan Selkis, in a debate on X, expressed his desire to "send all American immigrants back home." Shortly after the incident, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin called on the crypto industry not to blindly vote for pro-crypto politicians with impure motives and to strive to remain neutral in terms of ideology.

However, this is almost impossible. In addition to the entanglement of political agendas, the influence of Silicon Valley Kingmakers on the ideological aspects of cryptocurrency is also beyond imagination. Over the past year or two in the crypto space, especially in the Ethereum ecosystem, narratives and explorations related to network states, longevity, and decentralized science (DeSci) can almost all be traced back to Peter Thiel, embodying his imagination and pursuit of the future.

Around 2010, Peter Thiel began exploring the concept of seasteading, which involves creating autonomous micro-nations in international waters, as a realistic path to liberalism in the short term. He provided substantial funding to establish the Seasteading Institute and stated that the question of feasibility was irrelevant because it was absolutely necessary. However, due to slow progress after six years of exploration, Thiel eventually cut off funding to the Seasteading Institute in 2015, and the concept evolved into network states, migrating to the crypto space to continue exploration.

Longevity is another research area that Thiel believes has been overlooked for a long time. Extending life and halting the march of death has always been Thiel's grand vision. He believes that most people passively accept aging, but he does not want to do so. He plans to live to at least 120 years old and takes human growth hormone every day for this purpose. He has donated over $6 million to multiple longevity research foundations and signed a "cryonics agreement" with the low-temperature technology company Alcor, which will immediately freeze his body upon death. In addition, in his reflection on the slowing pace of technological development, he believes that the fundamental reason for the corruption of science today, and these ideas have promoted exploration in the cryptocurrency industry in the fields of longevity and DeSci.

Recently, Thiel and Vitalik jointly invested in the political prediction platform Polymarket. Despite facing regulatory pressure, this crypto prediction platform has become a more important political forecasting tool in this year's election than polling data. Within the industry, it is seen as the first truly killer application of the crypto industry. However, in Thiel's eyes, the value logic of Polymarket may be roughly similar to that of Palantir, creating spillover effects by providing more reliable predictions based on public sentiment than polling. When economic interests are added to the equation, people's behavior often becomes more genuine. The online world is now filled with such data, but they are as ignored as the cookies that Google left in the corner in the early 2000s.

Similarly, as the most well-known "media investment company" in Silicon Valley, A16Z also has a strong ideological influence on its crypto investment portfolio. In an article titled "Money, Power, Politics, and the Next Battle for the Internet" published in March of this year, Marc Andreessen, Horowitz, and senior partner Chris Dixon discussed the political issues of cryptocurrency.

From A16Z's perspective, Bitcoin is a political movement, and "Web3" (a concept proposed by A16Z) is a technological movement that has evolved from a political movement. As more resources and time of the younger generation shift to the internet, cryptocurrency will become a solution for internet politics and governance structures. This viewpoint is reflected in their recent investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in the decentralized social network Farcaster.

Cryptocurrency, sandwiched between Silicon Valley and Washington, is inevitably politicized. People invest not only their language and emotions here, but also their economic interests. When a technology can directly influence ideology through economics, or when ideology influences the economy, its impact on society will be unprecedented in terms of depth and breadth.

Perhaps cryptocurrency will replace social media and become the ultimate technological platform for the next generation of political ideologies.

References:

"The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power"

"Peter Thiel helped build big tech. Now he wants to tear it all down."

"Peter Thiel is taking a break from democracy"

"The Republicans Have a Peter Thiel Problem"

"The Black Box of Peter Thiel's Beliefs"

"Some of Silicon Valley's Most Prominent Investors Are Turning Against Biden"

"Why the Biden Administration Is Suing Apple and Investigating Big Grocers"

"Marc Andreessen Eats Washington"

"Bitcoin as Politics: Distributed Right-Wing Extremism"

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