If you have never seen a perfect long-term trend set up for a new set of markets, I give you yesterday’s Union Square Ventures investment in Coinbase.
On one end of the trend…Union Square has a good track record of investing in things that are too early to understand for most, but become mainstream. They invest many millions of dollars in platforms and ideas that have traction, but many hurdles on their way to mainstream.
On the other end of the trend is Warren Buffeet. Warren can be late. He can buy troubled companies or great companies late in their growth cycle like $IBM. At the same time that Fred Wilson is confirming ‘game on’ with the Bitcoin trend and all that Bitcoin means (trust, currency, security, technology), Warren can ignore and hoard railroads and banks. As a recent example, I am sure Warren had never heard of Twitter in 2007, scoffed at in in 2010, and signed up for Twitter last week. For those calling a top on Twitter because of Warren Buffett, prepared to be wrong. The trend is just now maturing.
In yesterday’s WSJ, Warren was quoted on Bitcoin:
Still, the budding currency is far off from going mainstream. Investor Warren Buffett professed Saturday to knowing nothing about Bitcoin when asked about it during Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting.
“I’ll put it this way, of our $49 billion we haven’t moved any of it to Bitcoin,” he said.
Fred is taking a lot of risk. That’s his job. But, as a risk taker myself, I like to see this type of setup. Not too early for Fred, but way too early for Warren Buffett.
That’s meat.
Game on.
steal away
Howard… here it starts home land starting to shut down bitcoin… maybe Fred can use the talent he invested in for something else…
http://www.businessinsider.com/dwolla-mt-gox-2013-5
The thing is, Fred Wilson did not invest in *Bitcoin*. He invested in Coinbase, a company that has some technology that deals with Bitcoin. That’s a *huge* difference! Fred / USV invested in the *people* and their IP. Even if Bitcoin itself is bullshit, there’s no reason Coinbase can’t be a viable business.
I would hope that people investing in the bitcoin ecosystem would simultaneously be thinking of ways to put price controls on the currency. Investors could try to create the change they want. Without any sort of regulation at all, I don’t see how or why the currency would stop being volatile.
the who system needs hedging abilities for the volatility to drop. they have the suppply thing in control for now with no central bank which is causing volatility with demand surges and limited supply.