Blockchain Technology
Our blog contains short snippets from our full research coverage. We release new content regularly, so check back often for the latest insights.
Moving Bitcoin Beyond Currency
Everyone knows that key features for bitcoin include the blockchain and public ledger. People know they can utilize these functions to glean market insights or develop whole new applications, but it was mostly theoretical given the huge learning curve to understand how to parse the data. But, some recent news this week might show how that is all changing.The first item was the acquisition of Blockr.io by Coinbase. Blockr.io provides data and analysis on a whole variety of crypto-currency blockchains, from bitcoin to Megacoin. Users can dig through a block, search for specific addresses, or view handy charts. I suspect that Coinbase believes that a better understanding of the blockchain will be paramount moving forward, and as they stated on their website “Blockr.io parses the bitcoin blockchain and presents the data to users in an easy to read way”.Taking this a step further is the company Chain, which is looking to build an easy-to-use API on top of the bitcoin blockchain, making it easier for others to quickly develop new products. I kind of think of them as a sort of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), standardizing the repeatable tasks in the “guts” of the protocol, and enabling others to focus on their specific applications. The big news for them this week is that they raised a $9.5M Series A, bringing their total funding to $13.7M. Negotiating deals like these obviously take time, so I’m sure both of them happening within the same week is somewhat of a coincidence. But, I think they’re indicative of a growing interest towards moving bitcoin beyond being just a currency.Taking a step back, it’s important to remember that the fundamental problem solved by bitcoin is how to create trust in a trustless system (sometimes referred to as the Byzantine Generals’ or Two Generals’ problem). And a better understanding and organization of the blockchain is the first step in developing things like smart contracts and distributed corporations. In other words, the changes brought about by the bitcoin protocol have only just begun. Check out more of my bitcoin market coverage.
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Will Bitcoin businesses be international brands or local experts?
A big question as any new industry develops is how will things break down geographically. Will large international brands dominate the space, or will local knowledge be important enough to give regional players an advantage? And as I cover the bitcoin space, I think this is one of the greatest unanswered questions in the bitcoin startup ecosystem.Taking a quick step back, why might an industry tend towards larger or smaller players?Some examples of why industries with larger players developNetwork Effects: You use Microsoft Office because everyone else uses itBrand Recognition: Coca Cola is everywhere even though they tailor to local tastesTechnical Knowhow: British Petroleum (BP) really knows how to get at oilSome examples of why industries with smaller players developDiffering Regulations: Healthcare laws vary widely country to countrySpecialized Needs: Religious/ethnic minorities may require special food/servicesBrand Differentiation: Wine labels are for specific operations from specific regions The reason I’m thinking about this is that I recently came across a new bitcoin payments startup that is strongly focused on the Spanish market. Cripto-Pay, based out of Madrid, was founded in 2013 and employs 7 people. They offer an e-Commerce and Point-of-Sale (POS) solution that enables merchants to accept bitcoin as a form of payment. While they are still very early stage, they seem to know what they are doing.Representing the large player in this discussion could be BitPay. That company has been around longer, is better funded, and has locked up a variety of large customers, such as Tiger Direct, Gyft, and Shopify. Their international bona fides is found on their website, which claims that they can localize into over 40 languages.Assuming they want to grow their operations globally, will BitPay be able to muscle their way into the Spanish market? Will Cripto-Pay have enough of a head start to make an acquisition offer from BitPay the only viable way they could enter that market? Will Cripto-Pay be doing well enough as “the big fish in a small pond” to reject such as offer?One way to potentially answer these questions for an industry is to look at how companies in the most mature segment of that industry take shape. In the case of bitcoin, the earliest participants are mining companies, both those hardware companies building mining rigs and software companies offering mining pool services. The industry started out highly fragmented, but has seen recent mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the hardware space and dominant mining pools in the software space.Another key question will be how the consumer interacts with the solution. Assuming we’re talking about bitcoin payments, if it’s fully integrated behind the scenes, having a branded solution won’t matter to the consumer. On the other hand, if I have to log into my pre-existing account to make a payment (like how PayPal made me log in even though I was on another website) then you may be able to create some customer pull and network effects.Then, there are the current and future regulations to consider. The rise of bitcoin has lead to a host of regulatory efforts at various national and municipal levels. It remains unclear, to say the least, how these efforts will play out. Further complicating this area is the current lack of international coordination, similar to what occurs in traditional finance with the Basel Accords. The crux of the issue here is whether or not regulations will be similar enough to allow large external players to easily reach local compliance. All in all, my belief is that bitcoin companies will start highly fragmented and then consolidate over time. The fragmentation phase will be driven by an inconsistent development of regional regulations and the importance of local relationships to get bitcoin penetration. The consolidation phase will be driven by a normalization of regulatory frameworks and customer-pull/network-effects from brands that have a lot of trust (trust in both the literal and figurative sense) and/or can capture economies of scale. This is generally good news for VC or Angel investors in the bitcoin space, since even if the horse you bet on doesn’t end up as a top player within a category, they could still grab enough customers or really understand a specific geography to generate significant M&A interest.
Read MoreHow digital currencies could fundamentally alter monetary policy
News about bitcoin and other crypto-currencies is everywhere. But, as halfway decent MBA-student would say, you gotta worry about substitute solutions. In the case of crypto currencies like bitcoin, one such potential substitute would be a digital currency that is fully controlled by a central bank.
Are Bitcoin incentives stronger than we thought?
Since its inception, the best known vulnerability of the bitcoin protocol has been the “51% attack”. This attack occurs when one party controls more than half of all processing power on the protocol, effectively giving them control over the entire blockchain. At this point, the majority holder could rewrite previous blocks, allowing them to double-spend bitcoins. Even though this scenario was considered unlikely (due to the downside risk it posed to bitcoin pricing), it’s exactly what happened.
Is bitcoin actually centralized?
I was recently at a digital currency conference, and one of the speakers brought up an interesting idea: bitcoin is more centralized than we think. As anyone who follows the bitcoin startup landscape knows, a few large players dominate bitcoin mining hashrate:
Drank the Bitcoin Kool-Aid, barfed, drank it again — here’s my take on Bitcoin’s intrinsic value
As a analyst following Bitcoin full-time for several months, I have been keeping up with developments in the cryptocurrency, attending Bitcoin meetups in Silicon Valley, and talking to Bitcoin startup founders. One key question that keeps coming up is — what is the intrinsic value of Bitcoin? Bitcoin proponents have made several arguments for it and I soon became an evangelist. The detachment of Silicon Valley from the rest of the world probably contributed to my conversion. But deep down, I have always had a nagging feeling that something was ‘off’. I could not find an argument that convinced me one-hundred-percent that Bitcoin had intrinsic value — until today.