When you drill down, blockchains are really a shared version of reality everyone agrees on. So whether it's a fully immersive VR experience, augmented reality, or even Bitcoin or Ethereum in the physical world as a shared ledger for our 'real world,' we'll increasingly trust blockchains as our basis for reality.
The Internet will continue to be valuable so long as it is the most efficient mechanism for transferring data. Bitcoin's value is the same: It will remain as long as it is the most efficient mechanism for transferring ownership.
The fundamentals of the token model are valuable and powerful. They allow communities to govern themselves, their economics, and rally a community in powerful ways that will allow open systems to flourish in a way that was previously impossible.
We are on our way to blockchains as the fabric of society - the system for what we own (assets), who we are (identity), how we make decisions (governance), and more in an increasingly digital world. It's going to be a wild ride.
At the end of the day, what's going to make bitcoin successful is more people making more interesting things, just like the beginning of the Internet.
If you are going to store your e-wallet on your own server, don't keep your e-wallet on your desktop, and make sure you use encryption. If you lose your computer, your bitcoins are lost forever.
When Coinbase was starting, we thought we were seeing the birth of something that was really important - what I would almost describe as the future fabric of society - the system for who we are - our identities, what we own, our assets.
There's been a myth perpetuated where people think, 'I need to go into consulting, banking, finance, law, or medicine to make a consistently reasonable amount of money.' People are now realizing that's not the case.
The best engineered organisms can outpace others, even if they start smaller or later.
AIs are only as good as the data they are trained on.
As with early internet startups, some token models don't make sense. For every 1 huge hit, there will be 3 minor successes and 100 failures, so we shouldn't be surprised when some fail.
When the Bitcoin white paper emerged in 2008, it was completely revolutionary. The amount of concepts that had to come together in just the right way - computer science, cryptography, and economic incentives - was astonishing.
