I'd like to see the evidence of him as well, I was very suspicious of him during 21 as he was simply acting as middleman for traditional VC money (Horowitz?) to buy up Bitcoin via a very lofty mining operation. With a raised eyebrow I continued to remain cautiously optimistic, but then when they exited 21inc with a pointless thing like VC email after being a significant miner in the Bitmain days and then eventually got bought out by COiNbase I felt this was the same SV guys having its way again burning money to hide their gains.
To this day I still cannot understand why they didn't just buy bitcoin over the counter over time, would it have shifted the price so much that it would spook the Market and spike? I mean Draper has been pumping millions into it since at least 2013 and his DCA holding's ROI up until 2017 would have probably beat anything on Horowitz's portfolio. But the truth is Horowitz has been in the Bitcoin space for sometime as well, I want to say 2014.
Hell, when Jack Dorsey went all into Bitcoin and essentially pivoted Square towards that end, not long after selling Caviar and going to Africa and stating that he would move there to build Bitcoin usecases, it didn't do anything noticeable and he is still CEO of both Twitter and Square/CASH.
I guess I just don't get the machinations of these tech billionaires who think they can fool people into thinking they're not into a certain tech, and use absurd ways to prove otherwise.
VCs aren't allowed to invest in currencies.
1: https://klasing-associates.com/fincen-update-bitcoin-cryptoc...
2: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/25/irs...
These people all got status through one lucky project at the right time. After that, their popularity became self-reinforcing.
It's about as far from meritocracy as can be.
Why Calacanis still has that embarrassing “reasons people are not rich” tweet pinned is beyond me.
Also, blocking anonymous trolls online is wonderful for your sanity. I wish HN had the ability.
I do not deny that VCs have a bias (an agenda, even) that leads them to predict a future which furthers their own wealth. But corporate media holds considerable cultural power, and to assume members of the corporate media only tell the truth and never act to protect or extend that cultural power is naive (or mendacious).
Whatever we may say about capitalists insulating themselves from failure, at some point they still have to put some skin in the game. Your average corporate journalist is arguably more insulated from the consequences of their failure than a typical VC.
Edit: I seem to have mistaken this person for Anand formerly of Anandtech. An unforced error on my part. My point about vanity still