New Series: Blogging On The Business Within The Bitcoin Blockchain

In the back of my head, I’ve been wanting to write a series on the blockchain. Every Sunday, I write a weekly column on mobile for TechCrunch. I’ll continue to do this, and mobile is so big and so mainstream (and moving so fast), that this cadence helps me stay on top of it all. Or, at least try to. For Bitcoin, the motivation is both personal and a bit different. I’ll write the series here, on my blog (Haywire), and I won’t be on any schedule, so that will be nice. I’d mentioned to friends in NYC this week that I wanted to do this, and with many of them also invested in the BTC ecosystem and close to the financial services world, the response was very positive, more than I thought it would be.

At a high-level, the goal of doing this is mostly selfish — I’m fortunate to be exposed to some very sharp BTC founders and engineers, and have been monitoring the space actively for over a year now. That said, there are true limitations on what a non-technical person like me can come to understand about the intricacies of the network. I won’t go into that territory. Rather, I will try to look at the business implications and opportunities presented by the blockchain. This is something I can both understand and will be of use (I believe) to the tech community more broadly. I’ll explain why.

Almost over a year ago now, when I started my fund. I made my first investment in what is now Hired. For investment #2, I was interested in Bitcoin, but not for reasons you’d assume. At that time, I started buying individual Bitcoins, and one of the Haystack LPs even suggested that I take a portion of the total fund and invest it directly in BTC. I elected not to do that (potentially reckless), but the LP was right…I would’ve returned the fund and more in a few months and then been playing with house money. Additionally, I thought of BTC as a currency, and I asked for an intro to a specific company based on those grounds and I should’ve been more prepared and aggressive about investing in them, but I was blind to the opportunity. My mistake. With history in the rearview mirror, it turns out I was on the right track, I was just facing the wrong direction. Underneath the currency of Bitcoin was something more powerful, and I had to make this mistake in order to understand it.

After my mistake and short-sightedness, I began reading about BTC and investing in companies in the space, in part as a way to expose myself to such interesting people and technologies. I’ve read so much on Bitcoin, but it isn’t clearly mapped in my head, so that means I need to write about it. I need to write to bring some order to the disorganized chaos that is the BTC world that swirls around my head. Because I have access to some interesting companies in the ecosystem as a small investor, like Gyft, Gliph, Vaurum Labs, and most recently, BlockScore, I’m going to try to combine my ability to put some of this in plain(er) language with their collective insights into the blockchain.

What I’ve noticed is that there are quite a few people who are technical by background and in the business of being on top of technology trends who don’t yet fully grasp the transformative power of what this protocol and blockchain can do. While nothing is certain in this world, the most basic way to think about the protocol and corresponding blockchain is that it presents yet another way for computers to communicate with the Internet, with the caveat that newer systems (if built correctly) on the blockchain could survive (and thrive) without a central authority, which in turn opens the window to an entire Pandora’s box of possibilities. It is precisely these possibilities, from the POV of a founder, investor, business, and startup, that I will seek to decipher and then share with you all in the simplest way I can. Thanks in advance for your ideas and guidance. Again, I want to underscore that this effort is mainly for me to finally internalize this complex new opportunity. There will be mistakes and corrections needed, so if you felt compelled to share those as we go along, I’d be most grateful.