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 […]
Blockchain
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 […]
Blockchain Technology Applications in Fashion: Part 2
In the first article of this series, Application of Blockchain Technology in Fashion Industry, I wrote about the effects of blockchain on the pre-consumer aspects of a fashion product lifecycle. I covered the way supply chain can become transparent using blockchain products tracking on every stage of production. Blockchain can also facilitate the product authentication process […]
Blockchain Technology Applications in Fashion: Part 1
Blockchain has been a buzzword for the past few years, thanks to the rise of cryptocurrencies that are mostly built on blockchain technology. What blockchain does is essentially distributes data storage across multiple points and makes sure that each transaction or entry is being locked and secure. This makes it virtually impossible to hack or […]
A Call For US Leadership in Crypto
I work in New York, a city known for finance, in a country known for innovation. We Americans now find ourselves at a moment of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both knowledge and ignorance. The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds. Despite the […]