FirstMark Director: Bitcoin Needs Entrepreneurs Who Understand Money
Despite the record levels of venture capital pouring into the bitcoin ecosystem, there is still one determining factor that is holding back overall ecosystem development - the inexperience of the technology's entrepreneurs. At least, that's the opinion of FirstMark Capital managing director Lawrence Lenihan, who, despite overseeing his firm's first bitcoin investment in Coinapult this October and being a self-described "bitcoin bull", argues that many current bitcoin entrepreneurs fail to understand how the traditional financial system works. Lenihan, whose firm has backed marquee startups....
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"Fiat" is a dirty word in the Bitcoin world, and perhaps that's not the best thing, insinuated Coinapult backer Lawrence Lenihan in a recent interview with CoinDesk. Worse, many people are offended by the idea of traditional venture capital firms getting involved in anyway, because, they say, the entrepreneurs are then not loyal to their communities but instead to the hand that feeds. While there is legitimacy to both sides of this argument, the fact is, you need money to do anything in business, and when you're pioneering as many cryptocurrency startups are, you need a lot of money....
Coinapult has raised $775,000 in funding from a group of notable investors and investment firms, including Barry Silbert's Bitcoin Opportunity Corp, angel investor Roger Ver and technology-focused VC firm FirstMark Capital. The Panama-based bitcoin wallet service provider raised the capital through two rounds of funding, and aims to use the money for additional marketing and product improvements. Speaking to CoinDesk, Coinapult CFO and COO Justin Blincoe indicated that the biggest benefit for his company will be the expertise of its now-solidified investor group, which he characterized as....
Xapo CEO and founder Wences Casares explains the history of money in a Big Think video about Bitcoin. His explanation of the history of money is below. “Bitcoin is a new digital currency that is perhaps the best form of money that we have ever seen. It’s important because most of us don’t understand money very well and perhaps the concept that is harder for us to understand is that money is and has always been a ledger. …the best way to understand money is to understand the history of money.
Coinapult's new service, Locks, frees your bitcoins from price volatility by linking them to tangible assets, such as gold. Customers who lock $1,000 worth of bitcoins today will be able to cash out $1,000 worth of bitcoins today, tomorrow, next year, whenever they like - regardless of the price of bitcoin. Coinapult is FirstMark's only Bitcoin company so far, having already backed Pinterest, Luminosity, Shopify and Riot Games. Funds raised came from two separate rounds. In addition to FirstMark, Roger Ver, Erik Voorhees and Barry Silbert's Bitcoin Opportunity Corporation contributed to a....
The more people understand the blockchain, the more we will see a proliferation of useful cases for it. Just like any technology, those who invent it have not necessarily thought of all of its applications, which is why I believe that the best use cases are yet to come from a growing number of entrepreneurs and subject-matter experts that have deep expertise in a particular field or domain. But, the first step is to have a fundamental understanding of how blockchain technology is different from what we are currently doing today. Almost everything in life is about taking evolutionary steps.....