Announcing our investment in Blockstack, The New Decentralized Internet
This is an exciting time for cryptocurrencies. As we recently wrote in Cryptocurrency’s Second Act, the rise of Ethereum revealed that cryptocurrency is not a winner-takes-all market. It has evolved from a sole player with a limited use case into an ecosystem with at least two cryptocurrencies at scale, and many others trying to get […]
Cryptocurrency’s second act: the rise of Ethereum and what’s in store for 2017
Back in 2009, Bitcoin became the first decentralized cryptocurrency. The prevailing thinking then was that the cryptocurrency market was going to be a winner-takes-all race due to the strong network effects around mining. And, most thought that Bitcoin would emerge as the winner in this race. What happened? Bitcoin, and the underlying blockchain technology, never […]
The most successful Bitcoin / Blockchain company won’t look like any we have today
The Blockchain is such an innovative and fundamentally transformative technology, but Bitcoin and Blockchain apps have not yet scaled as much as I would have liked. This slow traction is likely due to two things. First, Bitcoin startups that focus on commerce/payment solutions in North America are competing with existing products with strong network effects. […]
Our 2014 in review
Just like last year, 2014 has been busy and eventful here at Version One. We added 8 new companies to our portfolio: Clio, a cloud-based practice management platform for the legal industry; Dwellable, a mobile-first vacation rentals marketplace; HandUp, a donation platform that lets you give directly to a person in-need; Mattermark, an analytics platform […]
Four predictions for 2015
The end of every year brings a proliferation of prediction lists. As we end an incredibly active 2014 in the tech/investment world, I am adding my own thoughts on what might be coming in 2015. A killer app for Bitcoin emerges We’ve seen Bitcoin adoption by major retailers like Overstock.com and Dell, but there’s still […]