A 10-Year Problem

: Launching Relayzero

Over the past 3-4 years, like many I have fallen hard down the bitcoin and cryptocurrency rabbit hole. Since cold emailing and on-boarding my first cryptocurrency customer for SynapseFI’s banking APIs in early 2015 (Shout out to Michael+ Yanni at Wyre, global payments in a single impressive API.), I have spent a lot of time predominately data collecting and infiltrating the various crypto-posses.

If crypto had a real rapper, Kendric Lamar et. al would be our posse.

In the spring of 2015, I helped draft a white paper for “USt” which unbeknownst to me at the time was essentially Tether (We abandoned it for all of the reasons you can image but here a few screenshots to get you started). In 2016, I wrote a few pieces for the prior iteration of Shitcoin.com which was more satirical in nature rather than it’s much improved technical-review-over-lots-of-wine format. Here are few classics pieces of mine from archive.org (bitcoin halving — “Dropped Ball or Ball Drop : Bitcoin New Year’s Eve,” Steem’s rise to #3 in market cap — “Pump + dump this Steem…y pile of,” and live updates of the ETH + ETC fork — “Hard Fork Convention 2016”). Those were fun wine-filled nights of learning about bitcoin, ethereum and others alts while living with Andreas. Have you seen his new bling?

Yes, that’s a gold chain for “shitcoin.com.” Yes, I “ideated” this meme. Brekk can thank me later. No, I will not reveal our jeweler source given they are in the depths of the Mission and require hand signals.

Later that year, I even started a cryptocurrency investment club with some other friends which we shutdown fall 2017 after…never mind.

I believe this is actually a modified OG bitcoiner rule. The first rule is clearly never talk about your bitcoins.

As my crypto-friend group grew and I helped them solve fun problems, I really felt like I was missing out on the opportunity of the lifetime by not focusing solely on cryptocurrency related problems. Like many others, I was also lucky enough to receive in-bounds from founders and their recruiters wanting to talk to me about joining their team. Many of these were and still are really great projects. I even thought about joining a few because I really loved the team. But, none of these felt right for me. Something else was missing.

I believe what was missing was a 10-year problem.

10-Year Problem : Bitcoin

When you look at the history of technologies leaps, many took ~10 years of building and evolving to find their place in world as a viable solution to a problem most did not even see. With the bitcoin white paper approaching it’s 10th year in October, I am going to use this example alone as my proof of truth (That’s sarcasm.).

Just trust me on the 10-Year Problem Rule because everything on the internet is by default true.

But, seriously. With the number of cycles of bitcoin bull market and mass market media attention then long troughs of everyone forgetting about bitcoin, I find it hard to believe that many will forget bitcoin after 2017. Meanwhile, during these 10-years, bitcoin has grown in strength (Read: hashing power, nodes, and users) and market adoption (I mean actual use. I’m not sure your uncle’s portfolio is fits the bill). While I am probably willing to argue that bitcoin likely solved a 100-year problem, the point of a 10-year problem is that it requires a shift in thinking and a path not previously known.

Relayzero : Open for Business

Today, I am announcing I am leaving SynapseFI to the launch Relayzero to focus on finding and fixing a 10-year problem in cryptocurrencies. If cryptocurrencies are money, securities, and/or commodities, then what does the future of finance look like? What does credit look like? What about identity and credit scores? How do alternative versions of cryptocurrencies interact? Are stable coins viable? How the f* do you deliver private keys to a consumer (or hedge fund for that matter) and not risk them losing all of their funds? Or, should you even try delivering private keys to users? How do you scale this thang? These are the problems cryptocurrency core developers and the related service providers are trying to solve today. These are the problems I want to help solve tomorrow. These 10-year problems are why I founded Relayzero.

What is Relayzero? Relayzero is an embodiment of who I have become over the past few years. I am seed investing and advising both founders and banks on cryptocurrency related projects. The name “Relayzero” is a nod to bitcoin’s SHA256 mining algorithm. As the SHA256 mining algorithm difficulty is adjusted, a specific number of zeros must precede the remainder of the hash to mine the block and obtain the mining reward. This is part of bitcoin’s 10-year problem and solution, contributing to the revolution of a Proof of Work and the Blockchain.

While I am am not ready to discuss my pet 10-year problem project (hint: it involves [air quotes] cryptocurrencies), Relayzero is open for business to help solve yours. Email me at lawson[at]relayzero.com if you need help.