As the platform and protocol become more ingrained in society, get built into products and services, and basically become more of the mesh of society, just like the Internet, companies and people will need to own Bitcoin to play on its rails.
You just can't bifurcate bitcoin currency from the technology. Bitcoin will always need a monetary base.
While I have never been more excited about SecondMarket, I have chosen to move on from day-to-day management of the private company/fund business so that I can focus 100% of my energy on our digital currency business.
Once Wall Street starts putting money into Bitcoin - we're talking about hundreds of millions, billions of dollars moving in - it's going to have a pretty dramatic effect on the price.
We are very excited about the use of blockchain, whether it's Bitcoin or not, but we are as enthusiastic as ever about Bitcoin as a global currency and, really more importantly, Bitcoin as a global financial rail.
The history of Bitcoin trading is a bubble, a correction, consolidation, and another increase. It's happened four times, and it will happen again.
Just like the Internet disrupted the publishing industry, we're going to see Bitcoin micropayments creating some very interesting opportunities for pay-as-you-go, pay-based-on-time online businesses and, frankly, some risks as well to the traditional business model as to how things get sold online.
Regulators are going to have to come up with a way to treat Bitcoin that is balanced and thoughtful but also recognize that this is a global phenomenon.
People have been scared off Bitcoin by the fact that you needed to put your money in an unregulated overseas platform that has been cut off by banks and scrutinized by the Fed. We are looking to remove the pain points and create a way to invest that is faster and more secure.
As people want to move money around the world, they're going to be moving in and out of bitcoin quickly, but they're still going to own it for some period of time... and the size of that working capital requirement will grow as the global economy grows.
Bitcoin is one of the most viral concepts I've ever encountered.
To be a more efficient, faster, and cheaper way to send money around the world, you have to be able to get in and out of Bitcoin. You need to have a liquid exchange on either end of the corridor.
Our mission is to accelerate the development of a better financial system; it's not just development of a better Bitcoin financial system, and so we want to back the best teams, who have the biggest ideas, unique solutions to big problems.
That's a term that I really like - 'permissionless innovation' - because anybody who has an idea and has a solution can tap into or can leverage the Bitcoin blockchain.
Essentially, if you decide to sell a widget using BitPay, and you sell the widget for $100, in Bitcoin you get $100. And so it doesn't matter what the price does the next minute or the next hour.
