I wrote my first post on Bitcoin on March 4, 2013. I was on a train ride up to the city when I tethered my phone to my computer and posted to my blog. I felt today would be a good day to surface the content of that post again.
Title: Boost VC Welcomes Bitcoin.
I am excited about Bitcoin. It’s exciting to watch a global digital currency get traction.
If you wish to learn more about Bitcoin, there is a great video, or read up here.
The primary advantages of Bitcoin are:
Speed and price. You can transfer money anywhere in the world within minutes with negligible fees.
No central authority. Bitcoin is not dependent on any company or government to maintain its value.
You can start accepting Bitcoins instantaneously, without setting up merchant accounts, buying credit card processing hardware, etc.
Bitcoins are less traceable than many types of monetary transactions (though not anonymous).
Bitcoins cannot be counterfeited and transactions cannot be reversed.
No transaction blocking or account freezing. We have seen governments freeze bank accounts of dissidents and payment processors refuse to process certain types of transactions (wikileaks, online gambling in the US, etc). With Bitcoin this is impossible.
A known amount of inflation. Bitcoin is seen as a store of value because the total number of Bitcoins that will ever be created is known in advance and it is impossible to create more than that.
(cited from the Bitcoin stack exchange - http://bit.ly/TNWNhx)
The first time I heard about Bitcoin was actually from Brian Armstrong founder of Coinbase, a company that was pitching me their idea six months ago. Coinbase brings Bitcoin to the masses by being a digital wallet. Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, explained to me that this new form of currency was in the “Wild West” era, and in the next couple years there will be a renaissance that would happen with Bitcoin formalizing it into a digital standard of currency. He sold me. I bought into his pitch and invested into his company.
As Brian explained the concept to me, it began to remind me of another trend that happened 15 years ago. Bitcoin, right now, reminds me of the times of Napster. Through Peer to Peer technology, Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker made the process of attaining music, simple and free. They made the MP3 shareable, and they also made a certain 7th grade boy named Adam love his computer. For the first time I understood the power that the internet had, and I started to dive in and learn more. I feel this is happening with currency right now.
Unfortunately, Napster never made its way out of the “Wild West” phase, I remember misspelling song names and artists names in order to find the latest Backstreet Boys album, because the real name had been banned (Or should I say StreetBack Boys). The company that took the MP3 out of the “Wild West” was Apple with iTunes, yet another thing we can all thank Steve Jobs for. Apple purchased the company SoundJam MP, founded by Jeff Robbins and Bill Kincaid, and was soon developed into iTunes. They made it so easy to download music that we are all willing to pay .99c for a song. But the sharable MP3 did not only benefit Apple, it has allowed many other great companies thrive, Pandora, Spotify, Songza, Rdio… The list goes on.
I firmly believe that we are at the beginning of a trend much like the time of Napster and the MP3, but instead of music being updated, it is currency. There is a thriving hacker community behind Bitcoin, there are purchases being made with it (some of them legitimate), and there is $300m worth of Bitcoin. Not only that, through Coinbase and other companies it is becoming readily available to the common internet user rather than just hackers. I believe that this movement will spur not only the iTunes of Bitcoin, but an entire economy of ideas.
At Boost VC we are so excited about Bitcoin that we are going to push for Bitcoin to become a standard, we wish to assist in the developing this economy of ideas. Between five and seven slots of Boost’s June class are being reserved for companies relating to Bitcoin. It’s an exciting movement, and we hope to be a part of it. I also believe that Bitcoin may be the future currency that the world pays with. If you believe in the future of Bitcoin, apply to BoostVC (www.boost.vc). We are accepting applications until June 1, for our class that starts June 24th. We are the Incubator/Accelerator for Bitcoin.
——-
Congratulations to all who have been a part of this movement. It happens slowly, and then suddenly. A $300m market cap is now $380B. So many amazing founders have crossed Boost VC’s path, and this post was the beginning of that. Thanks to Ripio, Wyre, Etherscan, Polychain, Aragon, Unstoppable, Volabit, Witnet, Unocoin, Keep, Protocol Labs, Wyre, Coinbase, Abra, Bitrefill, Blinktrade, Casa, Amun, Blockcypher, Coinhako, Bitquick, Fairmint, Flote, CoinUT, Decentraland, JSGenisis, Lawnmower, Guesser, Mycrypto, NiftyGateway, Pods, Veem, ShakePay, SuredBits, Scout, Rehive and so many more founders for trusting Boost VC.
I’ve loved the last 10 years of my career in Crypto… but we are just getting started.