In the past few months Marc Andreessen has come out as one of bitcoin’s most mainstream champions, a heavyweight who has thrown his bulk around making a case that not only is the digital currency still relevant after the collapse of its most prominent exchange, Mt. Gox, it’s an inevitable future.

At the CoinSummit conference, happening today and tomorrow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Andreessen Horowitz venture capitalist was there to reassure the community that smart investors are still interested in bitcoin.

“In 1994 it would have been a good idea to take the Internet seriously,” Andreessen said in a fireside chat with Andreessen Horowitz partner Balaji Srinivasan and Forbes scribe Kashmir Hill. “Our goal is to do that.”

Despite the collapse of Mt. Gox, the showing at Tuesday’s conference kick-off makes it clear that Silicon Valley investors are putting their money on bitcoin. Spotted at the conference were investors from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Ribbit Capital, as well as the bitcoin-focused VC firm Pantera Capital Management, among others.

“You’ve got virtually every VC in the Valley here,” said Scott Robinson, who manages a bitcoin startup accelerator at Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale. “That’s indicative of better talent moving into the space.”

Bitcoin, a decentralized peer-to-peer payment system that uses cryptography to control the flow of currency, was first introduced in 2009 but has really only begun to attract a mainstream audience in the last year or so.

Andreessen, who is still best known for co-founding the once dominant web browser Netscape in 1994, said that as a “fringe” innovation, the instability that has plagued bitcoin’s value and image should be expected. And, he said, rarely do new technologies come from the mainstream.

“It would be historically unusual if that weren’t happening,” he said.

Andreessen and Srinivasan downplayed the currency’s association with illegal activity and said they expect many opportunities to monetize bitcoin in the future — especially in companies that utilize bitcoin as a vehicle to make other technologies more efficient.

Andreessen Horowitz has $25 million in Coinbase, a leading bitcoin wallet and payment processor for merchants, as well as millions in other unannounced bitcoin-related startups.

They are actively seeking to invest more. Srinivasan said they’d like to see a RedHat of Bitcoin, referencing the seminal 1990s “open-source” software. They’d also like to fund companies that could act as consultants of sorts that could help rally consumer trust and support for third-party digital currency services.

Asked to comment on Warren Buffett’s recent comments that bitcoin is a “mirage,” Andreessen issued an outright dismissal.

“The historical track record of old white men crapping on your technology who don’t understand your technology is pretty much 100 percent,” he said.

Andreessen said it’s only a matter of time before bitcoin hits the mainstream — and loses some of its staunchest supporters.

“My prediction is that the Libertarians will turn on bitcoin in two years,” he said. “It will be part of the mainstreaming.”