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Aug 14, 2018 10 tweets 3 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
1/ Should we be that surprised with what's going on right now with #ETH and ICOs generally? This is what happens when you have $10B+ raised via ICOs in the last 12 months, no treasury management, no product (or users), and liquid/publicly traded market caps and "shares" (tokens).
2/ #crypto is great for the digital world, but for now (and some time), teams and their employees need fiat to pay for real, non-digital things like rent, food, services, transportation, etc.
3/ I expect this decline to last for another 3-6 months as a growing pipeline of teams both (A) have their non-fiat runways cut by 60-80%, which, if they raised enough for 2 years, is now only 4-9 months, and (B) need to extend their fiat runways by another 12-24 months to ship.
4/ There are a few potentially interesting implications going forward: (i) stablecoins, (ii) staying private, (iii) post-product TGEs, and (iv) refactoring of funds and projects
5/ (i) It’s possible that stablecoins will be attractive (and necessary) alternatives to ETH and BTC for both raising capital and treasury management. This could also be one of the primary use cases for tokenized assets and securities that are weakly correlated to crypto.
6/ (ii) The extra burden of managing a public token while building, shipping, iterating & delighting users may cause more projects to stay private longer. In the last 10 yrs in the conventional markets, we’ve seen more startups delay going public until ready (@Uber, @Airbnb, etc)
7/ Projects will not only wait longer to publicly sell or distribute their token, but they will also start to alpha & beta test their tokens in live (not testnet) pilot markets with real users (via new tools/means) to iterate to product-market fit before "going public" at scale
8/ (iii) Building on ii above, the better projects will only have public token generation events (TGEs) post-product, and ideally, after that product has achieved a certain level of product-market fit, usage, and adoption. In this regard, reverse ICOs may become more common.
9/ (iv) We will see a refactoring of both existing and new projects and funds. Existing projects will have to hyper focus to find adoption (or pivot or close). New projects will raise less money in private rounds, be more intentional, realistic, focused, and execution oriented
10/ Existing funds will close or shift as much as possible from alts into depressed mainstream assets like BTC and ETH to both take advantage of (and ironically drive) the next macro run up of those ‘lower risk’ assets. New funds will be more specialized in capability & value add

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More from @ianDAOs

Aug 31, 2018
1/ For years, people have been waiting and hoping for crypto's "Netscape" moment. The gateway to the web that brought the internet to the main stream.

IMHO, looking for the Netscape for the #crypto space is not a relevant or applicable analogy. Here's why...
2/ The way people imagine crypto's "Netscape moment" is very literal: as a window, gateway, or browser (just like Netscape) to easily acquire, save, and use crypto and access the decentralized web.
3/ But that sounds a lot like a wallet and exchange, which already exists. And yet, even with these onramps and "browsers" into crypto, we haven't had that "Netscape moment" people are hoping for in terms of mass adoption.
Read 12 tweets
Aug 28, 2018
Proud to be among a growing list of @UCBerkeley @BerkeleyHaas leaders in #blockchain & #crypto. Pls add others! Go Bears!

@dawnsongtweets (Oasis)
@adamludwin (Chain)
@veradittakit (Pantera)
@MaxFangX (B@B, Dekrypt)
@ronenkirsh (B@B, Dekrypt)
@AshleyLannquist (MOBI, WEF)
...?
@adambsterling (UCB Law)
@douggalen (RippleWorks)
@kristykim1015 (Kinetic)
@chartouche (BitPesa)
Read 4 tweets
Aug 27, 2018
1/ In the early 2000s, @ideo pioneered a process for venture development referred to as the "3 Circles" of Desirability, Viability & Feasibility (ideou.com/blogs/inspirat…). #crypto has a long way to go across all, but right now it is really struggling with the first: Desirability.
2/ Desirability is the question of "Do people want it?" and asks, what is the unique value proposition? How do people hear about, learn, try, buy, use, love, and share it? What are its functional but also emotional benefits? How is it 10x better than the current user experience?
3/ Iterating to product-market fit requires testing & ultimately proving at each stage of development that all three are true (it's desirable, feasible & viable) and work together. In the early stages of a venture, this means building evidence that they will be true in the future
Read 13 tweets
Aug 6, 2018
There is a lot of excitement in “money tokens” and “privacy coins”, and while I agree that those are useful and valuable (to a point), my question is: how many different money and privacy coins does the world *actually* want and need? It’s greater than 1, but less than thousands.
2/ By comparison, today there are ~180 fiat currencies recognized by the U.N. representing ~$90 trillion, ~92% of which is digital.
3/ I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts, but I only see a few scenarios where we have more than 180 money tokens...
Read 9 tweets
Aug 3, 2018
1/ I believe the reason we are not seeing any movement in the price of #bitcoin from today's mega announcement from @NYSE @Starbucks @Microsoft @BCG is because #crypto now values delivery (scarce) over talk (abundant) fortune.com/longform/nyse-…
2/ In traditional markets, public announcements are often made only after material results and impact are delivered, whereas in the crypto markets, public announcements have been used as a means to raise money (to start to build, execute, and deliver)
3/ Crypto markets and investors have become so desensitized to public announcements and press releases about the intent to deliver future products and code, that announcements (even ones as significant as this one today) are bucketed into the "huh, that will be cool" category
Read 8 tweets
Aug 1, 2018
1/ Protocols, funds, and large #crypto companies are either thinking about or are in the process of launching their own incubators and startup accelerators. Some will be protocol specific; others will be agnostic. Here's the case for why and when this will/won't make sense.
2/ First off, while this is a new trend, history rhymes, and we may have seen this movie (or at least a similar one) before: the rise, fall, and refactoring of corporate innovation labs and corporate accelerator programs over the last 10 years.
3/ While #crypto is certainly different and its properties as a open platform will enable new types of opportunities, specifically around collaboration, interoperability, and cross-chain asset exchange, there are still many learnings we can draw from corporate labs/accelerators.
Read 34 tweets

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