Announcing our investment in CryptoKitties – the wildly popular, blockchain-based pet
We are very pleased to announce our investment in Axiom Zen, the maker of CryptoKitties. We participated in the $12M Series A alongside our friends at USV and a16z. And, we are excited to be working with the CryptoKitties team to create the leading crypto collectible platform. If you’ve missed the CryptoKitty mania, it’s a […]
Optimizing the trade-offs between centralized and decentralized platforms
Decentralization maximalists argue that you cannot trust a centralized organization and thus, everything should be decentralized. And thanks to the advances in blockchain technology, that’s now technically possible. These proponents of decentralized platforms can offer up numerous reasons why the decentralized world is superior; the chief two reasons are avoiding censorship and eliminating the rake […]
The Four Waves of Crypto Disruption
With both Bitcoin and Ether surging to record highs this week, everyone – entrepreneurs, investors, consumers, businesses and governments – have been caught up in the flurry surrounding cryptocurrencies. Many are trying to understand what’s happening now and where all this is headed. It’s always hard to predict how a new computing platform will play […]
Data is the New Oil
In recent years “Data is the new oil” has become a frequently used phrase in tech and investor circles to describe the incredible rise in the importance of data for today’s economy. Some of the world’s most valuable tech companies are built on tremendous data network effects and access to unique data: Google, Facebook, Amazon, […]
The Redistribution of Network Effects in Cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies have strong network effects, built around the concept of mining. The more miners participate, the cheaper mining gets and the more quickly transactions are validated. (On a side note, this has actually not be true as of late for Bitcoin as it ran into scaling issues which is driving up mining costs). In fact, […]