A block chain is a series of blocks. Each block is a series of computations done by computers all over the world using serious cryptography in a way that's very hard to undo.
Startups are constantly raising money, sometimes before they have even hired a lawyer.
Within my social circle, there is a large group of people who will take bitcoin as legal tender; like, you can go to them and settle debts in Bitcoin, and they will happily take it.
Cryptocurrencies will create a fifth protocol layer powering the next generation of the Internet.
I think long-term, Bitcoin is a currency of the Internet. So, even if humans don't use it, routers will use it. Web browsers will use it. Web servers will use it.
For us, just serving the market in the US and the UK, we can barely make the math work on an interesting business. My sense is that our clones and copycats are very manual. If they make it work, then congratulations to them!
ICOs are obviously a new and interesting form of funding for blockchain-based protocols, but it's not clear that all of them comply with U.S. securities laws or that all of them are companies that have good native use cases for new coins.
One philosophy I have at AngelList is I would rather have someone working on the wrong thing and do it their way and be motivated, than working on the right thing and do it my way and not be motivated.
Our mission is to help founders and anyone or anything that helps founders helps us with our mission.
It's probably easier and cheaper to counterfeit hundred-dollar bills than it is to counterfeit Bitcoin.
There's so much innovation going on, and there are lots of people funding that innovation, but there's very little innovation on that infrastructure for innovation itself, so we like to do that ourselves to help companies create more tech companies.
It's important not to think about Bitcoin as a replacement for cash or gold or something that works alongside that; it's to think of it as programmable money. And we just cannot even imagine what that will be used for.
Rules that may be easy for Wall Street are a death sentence for startups. They are easy to break accidentally and the penalty for noncompliance is severe.
People come in. They are too gung ho. They invest too much money in things they don't know. They lose it and then they clam up and stop investing. Then they miss the actual boom. That's the nature of the market.
Nation states that are used to imposing capital controls will face a quandary: ban cryptocurrencies and live in the technology dustbin; enable them, and this virus - this religion, this protocol - will enable the free flow of money and language, along with packets, around the globe.
VC firms that don't have a brand are going to struggle. Because there is a lot of money out there, you need to have a point of view, a brand, to really add value. You can't just talk about it, and say well, we are smart people.
Any competent programmer has an API to cash, payments, escrow, wills, notaries, lotteries, dividends, micropayments, subscriptions, crowdfunding, and more.
We are seeing a lot of cases where the startups are writing the term sheet, dictating the terms, selling common stock instead of preferred stock, where they don't give the investor veto rights or board seat or privileges, and they are really asking the investor -- why should I take your money when there is other money available.
We're going to try and prove to the market that you can do a legal coin offering. If the SEC doesn't crack down, this party will be amazing - the biggest party in town for a long time. If they do crack down, a lot of people are going to feel a lot of pain.
If you use a bad password, your Bitcoin will get stolen.
