Slide titled 'The internet as we know it is flawed', showing two globe icons with flags planted in them. On the left, the globe has the Chinese flag and is surrounded by red speech bubbles with Xs in them and yellow triangular warning symbols. It is captioned 'Digital Authoritarianism'. On the right is a globe with a flag containing the logos of Facebook, Amazon, YouTube, Apple, and Google, surrounded by green circles with dollar signs and blue circles with checkmarks. It is captioned 'Big Tech Oligopoly'. Anyone else remember when Andreessen Horowitz published a slide deck denouncing “Big Tech Oligopoly”? Just me? McHenry subsequently revealed he would also be taking a role as an advisor to the fintech firm Stripe, as well as as vice chairman of the advisory board to Ondo Finance. Ondo Finance is a “tokenized real-world asset” firm that wants to do things like put US treasury bills or stocks on the blockchain, and McHenry will likely be a valuable asset in — in his words — “making sure that Ondo is heard by the right people in Washington” and “helping shepherd them to new relationships.”37 Ondo contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration in late December;38 in early February, Trump’s World Liberty Financial project purchased almost half a million dollars’ worth of ONDO tokens.39

The revolving door has spit out former Representative and longtime crypto industry ally Patrick McHenry (R-NC) into roles at not one but three industry players. He will be joining Andreessen Horowitz as a senior adviser, where he will “help innovators navigate the policy landscape”, touting his time in Congress “remov[ing] bureaucratic barriers for American entrepreneurs”. He wrote that “It’s time to level the playing field and ensure that Little Tech—the next generation of builders—gets a fair shot.”36 (“Little Tech” in this case apparently meaning the largest venture capital firm in the world, which is so very small that it was able to blow $83 million on political contributions to ensure that no fewer than four of its employees were placed in major White House roles, including as the likely upcoming head of the crypto industry’s chosen regulator, the CFTC). Any mention of everyday American and the fairness of their shots was conspicuously absent in McHenry’s statements.