| | November 20189The word cryptocurrency and things like Bitcoin have very much confused a lot of people about the transformational watershed shift that is actually happening herenasty death disease from the middle ages. So now we like to say "digital assets" for the positive view of assets of value that are improved from non-digital assets by digitizing them. Forget all of the Bitcoin for terrorists stuff! I am not interested in Bitcoin other than the underlying technology and structure of it with blockchain. I am an entrepreneur, a company builder, a venture capitalist - not a speculator. Don't let Bitcoin, ICOs or any of the rumblings of the crypto marketplace distract you from what is actually happening here and the new era mankind / womankind is embarking into. Most of the readers of this article probably have a bank account filled with a stable currency, amazing credit cards in their pockets that give them access to business lounges in airports and have no need for Bitcoin in their lives. There are billions of people that do not have bank accounts and credit cards and might actually have a use for Bitcoin or some other stable coin; so I don't blow off Bitcoin or other actual cryptocurrencies by a long shot. But I want to pull minds away from that and towards the indisputable good things that the sooner they become reality the better life will be for everyone. 1) Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), 2) smart contracts and 3) tokenization ­ this is what I collectively refer to as a blockchain when I say our VC fund focuses on investing blockchain startups. Blockchain is changing the way we do business or transactions of any kind. Rather than enter into a business contract with someone where you agree that one party will keep the centralized books tracking how many widgets are being sold and then pay you your fair share; we will put the actual numbers onto a blockchain where the ledger is distributed in many places and it will just be impossible to game or tamper with the numbers. No more lies in business, elections, government corruption, etc. Let me quote a friend of mine. "We see a future world where fraud, corruption, and forgery are a thing of the past. We believe in keeping private data private and securing the world's wealth because privacy and possession of property are basic human rights."We experienced wild market swings in 2017 and early 2018 with the emergence of the ICO market sky rocketing and then crashing down (sound familiar)? People said the Internet was dead in 2001 and now the largest 5 companies in the USA are all west coast tech / Internet companies: AppleMarket cap $1 trillion, Alphabet (Google)Market cap $765.35 billion, MicrosoftMarket cap $833.23 billion, AmazonMarket cap $860.39 billion and FacebookMarket cap $444.78 billion.Now get ready for some big changes. All stock market securities will be tokenized / digitized, all shares in companies like Apple, Microsoft, all debt markets and bonds will be traded as digital assets unless you are some hermit without dial-up internet access or a smart phone. The Chinese RMB might be digitized by next year. The stock market will become the cryptocurrency market. Again, don't be thrown off by the word crypto or currency. The New York Stock Exchange will launch the New York Digital Asset Exchange and it will just function more efficiently than the current NYSE and be better for all. Enterprise blockchain is a huge opportunity in the developed world and consumer blockchain is a huge opportunity in the developing world of the unbanked where even affluent consumers lack access to the same investment opportunities and financial services we enjoy in the West. All those we have in the west will become more efficient, lower cost, higher performing and safer from theft, fraud, even your own bank lying to you. Enterprise tech has hardly begun to implement business transactions using smart contracts and the honesty of the blockchain making it impossible to lie, cheat or commit human error. We are far less than 1% into that transformation moving all of this to the blockchain. When someone tells you that their word is their bond and there is no need to put a verbal business agreement in writing we think that person is crazy or just wants to not live up to the negotiated agreement. Within a few years we will go from "get it in writing" and that will become "get it on the blockchain with smart contracts." I voted today (Nov 6) in Silicon Valley and was asked to sign my signature again so it looks more like the one they had on record. As I complied I said with a smile, "Fingerprint, blockchain, done." A bunch of Stanford University volunteers laughed with a knowing smile. The big question people will ask is ­ "Why is this not on the blockchain?" ...especially a US election. What will the 5 biggest companies look like in 2040? I am sure they will all have blockchain at their core and the top 10 will be a mix of US and Chinese companies. VC funds will fund these top 10 biggest companies and sell many others to these top 10 with many being funded in 2019 to 2025. Digital asset hedge funds will make sense by January of 2020. 7BC.VC will of course be at the center of all of this.
< Page 8 | Page 10 >