Per Wikipedia, a Ponzi scheme …. is a form of fraud which lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors by using funds obtained from more recent investors This is how the U.S. government now operates. It loses massive amounts of money every year (i.e. runs at a deficit) and finances it with new debt. When […]
Blockchain
Icarus, Daedalus, and the Distributed Ledger
Any entrepreneur looking to enter the blockchain space must ask if their project is delivering a legitimate, tangible productivity improvement.
The 10 Stupidest Things Nouriel Roubini Said In His Testimony To The US Senate Committee on Banking
I assume Nouriel Roubini is a smart guy. So is Warren Buffet. It doesn’t mean I’d want them to do heart surgery on me, because it’s not their thing. My guess is, they’d have no interest in performing heart surgery because they know it’s not their thing. So, just because someone’s smart, doesn’t mean they understand crypto. […]
From College to Crypto: My Advice For Entrepreneurs Wanting to Start a Business
I still remember it like it was yesterday. I was 19, a broke college student at the University of Washington. My parents were having a difficult time financially and I made the choice to drop out. I found a full-time job as a bank teller making minimum wage – yet, I still didn’t make enough […]
The Coming Epic Battle Between Crypto & FAMGA (aka Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, & Amazon)
Crypto is a new computing paradigm, poised to create more disruption and wealth creation in the next 20 years, than the internet has in the last 20. The question I face as a VC is who is going to capture that massive wealth creation? The wealth creation can either go largely to the five incumbents […]
Can Blockchain Improve the Gaming Industry?
Many of those my age will remember Magic: The Gathering. Part of the joy of physical card collecting was unwrapping a card that you had no idea how many other people had access to in the world. It’s possible that those cards might not ever be manufactured after a limited run, and therefore your card […]
If You Like Decentralization, You Should Love Hard Forks
If decentralization is to realize it’s potential, various problems need to be addressed. Scalability issues get the most attention and have the most people working to solve it. So my assumption is that scalability is getting solved. The bigger issues with decentralization are Token Economics and Governance & Consensus. While people are working on those problems, it’s […]
This LA Startup Just Raised $1.25M to Deploy Sophisticated Resolution to Smart Contract Disputes
In 2018, it was estimated that around $1B in value was lost in smart contracts. Thankfully Sagewise is the smart contract safety net that is helping to prevent big losses through its highly adaptive SDK. Its SDK provides the tools and infrastructure to handle smart contract disputes at any stage in development and execution, which […]
The Crypto Bloodbath isn’t a Bloodbath, it’s a …….
This is the 60th crypto related post I’ve written since I saw the crypto light on June 29th, 2017. My most read piece remains “7 Thoughts On Blockchain, Cryptocurrency & Decentralization After Three Months Down The Rabbit Hole”.The 5th thought in the piece, which tried to give context to the remarkable run-up in crypto prices […]
Making Blockchain Technology Increasingly Relevant to a Wide Audience
Blockchain technology has truly grown up and moved out of its Bitcoin parent’s house. Its potential reach across non-financial sectors is mindblowing: Imagine the possibilities of unified healthcare records for patients and doctors, or the benefits of a validated voting system during elections. These applications of blockchain technology are already in use and in development by […]
12 Interesting Crypto Thoughts From The Dissenting SEC Commissioner
As Asia (Korea, Japan, Hong Kong…) and Europe (Switzerland, Malta, Gibraltar..) work to create friendly regulatory environments for Crypto, driving innovation and investment, U.S. regulators struggle to approve the most simple of Crypto investment vehicles. The latest regulatory fail is the SEC’s decision on July 26th to deny the Winkelvoss’ bitcoin trust the ability to […]