Bitcoin believer Marc Andreessen said that his bet on the cryptocurrency is for the long term.

"I compare it to the Internet," he said on CNBC. "The Internet was a new way to transmit data. Bitcoin's a new way to transmit money. It's going to take a long time. The good news it's a big opportunity. Money is a very big deal, and so if you can build a new way to deal with money, it's very important and valuable. It just takes time."

In an interview on "Fast Money," tech pioneer and venture capitalist Andreessen said that from his vantage point, bitcoin has a long, robust life ahead of it.

"We're in the very early stages," he said.

Andreessen made headlines for taking issue with Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, who said that bitcoin was a "mirage."

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Andreessen, co-founder of $4 billion venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, alluded to the human capital behind bitcoin as a reason to be bullish.

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"The other thing that's happening is the number of startups in Silicon Valley that are ramping up right now to build all kinds of applications around bitcoin is staggering," he said. "And so, we're seeing a really interesting flow of early-stage companies that have all kinds of ideas for everything—bitcoin contracts and bitcoin keys and bitcoin title and bitcoin assurance and derivatives and on and on and on, all these different kinds of applications of financial services rebuilt with bitcoin.

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"And that process is just starting. And so, that's a five to 10-year process just by itself. And so our plan is to invest in the long run."

—By CNBC's Bruno J. Navarro