I'm disheartened by the power wielded by so few in the American King Making Machine called the Silicon Valley.
Why? Isn't that the way everywhere else works? I'm not losing any sleep over it.
A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC
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Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC
#62A16Z’s unapologetic bet on cryptocurrency and blockchain companies is big for the industry. As crypto heats up again and blockchain 3.0 projects emerge (Cosmos, Polkadot, Ethereum Proof of Stake) VC will help legitimize the industry.
Can you provide a single problem where the right solution space is blockchain? Ive thought about this a good amount, and cannot come up with a single use case where current established centralized technology is not a better solution.
Censorship free apps and content
Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC
#63A16Z’s unapologetic bet on cryptocurrency and blockchain companies is big for the industry. As crypto heats up again and blockchain 3.0 projects emerge (Cosmos, Polkadot, Ethereum Proof of Stake) VC will help legitimize the industry.
Can you provide a single problem where the right solution space is blockchain? Ive thought about this a good amount, and cannot come up with a single use case where current established centralized technology is not a better solution.
Real estate, particularly with regards to ownership and property title.
Ownership of a property is a difficult concept to prove, and there is an enormous industry of title insurance which exists to dig through the records and insure a purchase against unknown claims against the property.
A public ledger would make property title/ownership simple and knowable.
Overall I think blockchain technology is incredibly over-hyped, but does have some suitable applications, particularly where public records are involved.
Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you provide a single problem where the right solution space is blockchain? Ive thought about this a good amount, and cannot come up with a single use case where current established centralized technology is not a better solution.
One problem that I think blockchains could be well suited for is the storage of police evidence. Not physical evidence of course, but anything that could be turned into data. There was a scene in the show Billions where U.S. prosecutors tampered with evidence in the from of notes taken while interviewing persons of interest. Since blockchains are at their core a tamper-proof append-only data store, if those notes had…
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Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC
#65tl;dr - A16Z is reclassifying themselves as an "investment advisor", which will allow them to make riskier bets (crypto, real estate, etc). They'll still invest in startups like any other VC firm.
Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you provide a single problem where the right solution space is blockchain? Ive thought about this a good amount, and cannot come up with a single use case where current established centralized technology is not a better solution.
Game items like weapons and shields in an RPG game. Imagine if there is a global database of such items and different game developers build different games around it. So you could use your items in different games. What centralized entity would you trust to run and maintain this database? What if this centralied goes bankrupt and shuts down the servers? If you are a small game developer, you are screwed. Even if it's…
> to use for this purpose without fearing that it will get shut down, or the rules would be changed.
Looking at the hard forks in existing cryptocurrencies I wouldn't trust the rules to not change
Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC
#67> venture capitalists have long traded a lack of Wall Street-style oversight for the promise that they invest mainly in new shares of private companies. It was a tradeoff firms gladly made—until the age of crypto, a type of high-risk investment the SEC says requires more oversight. So be it, says Andreessen Horowitz. By renouncing its venture capital status, it’ll be able to go deeper on riskier bets: If the firm wants to put $1 billion into cryptocurrency or tokens, or buy unlimited shares in public companies or from other investors, it can.
Pitchforks and funding purism aside (forget about blockchain debates), crypto assets are here to stay. They're the new publicly traded vehicles and function as a way for new startups to raise capital from new truly global 'capital markets' along with being a valuation metric. a16z figured this out. They knew what happened with facebook in SecondMarket [1] and also knew the largest upside in shareprices (aka IPOs/exits) are dictated by a public market marketplace, not with private startups.
Factor what Fidelity with $6T AUM has already released in rolling out global crypto services [2].
Separate crypto, as a capital raising vehicle and trading vehicle, from 'blockchain' and then it all begins to make sense. Real scientific and technical due diligence will help too [3].
[1] http://fortune.com/2012/05/18/facebooks-pre-ipo-pricing-hist...
[2] https://www.coindesk.com/coindesk-most-influential-blockchai...
[3] https://medium.com/@492727ZED/vectorspace-ai-due-diligence-d...
Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Illegal stuff?
This is where I've landed too. 1. Making money by trading fun bucks. 2. Anything where you need a currency but all the way better options aren't viable (crime).
For (2) one of the real values is being able to carry (practically) unlimited cash with you. Right now, USD in cash is capped at $100 notes to make it inconvenient to move large quantities.
With crypto, you fly anywhere in the world with a private key in your luggage. That key could have $100 or $1,000,000,000.
Thinking of international drug smuggling, one serious problem is moving all of the cash out of the country. Crypto solves that easily.
Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you provide a single problem where the right solution space is blockchain? Ive thought about this a good amount, and cannot come up with a single use case where current established centralized technology is not a better solution.
Unseizable money.
It may not be easily seizable, and with the right security practices it may be nearly impossible to seize directly.
But governments could announce certain coins are not spendable and enforce that on companies or people subject to their jurisdiction. Prosecuting anyone who accepted one of those coins with a crime.
Re: A16Z is re-registering as a financial advisor, renouncing its status as a VC
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you provide a single problem where the right solution space is blockchain? Ive thought about this a good amount, and cannot come up with a single use case where current established centralized technology is not a better solution.
Real estate, particularly with regards to ownership and property title. Ownership of a property is a difficult concept to prove, and there is an enormous industry of title insurance which exists to dig through the records and insure a purchase against unknown claims against the property. A public ledger would make property title/ownership simple and knowable. Overall I think blockchain technology is incredibly over-h…
I've heard this argument, and I don't see how it works. It relies on trusting the information put onto a blockchain.