Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm, has published a list of ideas which they believe have potential in 2016. Bitcoin and blockchain appeared among 16 selected trends, along with virtual reality, online marketplaces, and the Internet of Things.

In February 2011 the fund invested $80 million in Twitter. Other investments include Airbnb, Foursquare, Groupon, Instagram, and Skype.

The new article gives reasons for including the digital currency bitcoin in the list of promising “breakthrough ideas”. Bitcoin is about to boost its institutional acceptance, Andreessen Horowitz predicts. It is stressed that bitcoin was “legalised” only about a year ago, when the tax guidance was published for American institutions in March 2015.

“So the clock has just begun on Bitcoin’s acceptance more broadly. Crash or no crash, we should expect a significant increase in the level of institutional adoption this year. Specifically, a large number of companies will put together groups focused on what Bitcoin means to them — and as early as next year we’ll start to hear people ask 'What’s your Bitcoin strategy?' in much the same way people asked 'What’s your social media strategy?',” the document reads.

The second reason for investing in bitcoin is that it promises new kinds of applications and provides assets for international companies which cannot fulfil requirements of credit card companies. Finally, it is claimed that the first popular bitcoin tools will use bitcoin as infrastructure that is not relying on the price volatility and employing the bitcoin technology for different purposes other than money sending.

Last year Horowitz invested in the bitcoin hardware manufacturer 21 Inc., decentralised bitcoin marketplace OpenBazaar and bitcoin wallet provider Coinbase. Mike Hearn, former developer at Andreessen Horowitz, joined the R3 company managing the consortium of banks to research blockchain.

Sonya Belova