Summer School: Blockchain

francine hardaway
Aug 28, 2017 · 3 min read

I have not been involved in anything as exciting as the blockchain and cryptocurrency since I got involved with the internet in the early 90s. I first heard about Bitcoin in 2013, and I opened a Coinbase wallet and announced that I would accept payment in Bitcoin. Of course none materialized, since it was early and I was in Phoenix.

But I couldn’t stop hearing about BTC from my most “out there” online friends (looking at you Thor Muller,) and on January 2014 made my first investment. I have no memory of why I chose that sum of money, which even back then did not even buy an entire Bitcoin.

I kind of forgot about it, until that summer when I was in London, and I met a man named Simon Dixon, who “took his company public,” now known as an ICO on a bitcoin exchange. He raised a lot of money for his startup that way. Along the way I learned about the underlying technology, the block chain. I learned more about that at YxYY, an unconference full of fascinating people.

I then bought no Bitcoin until last June, when I bought Bitcoin again:

It had gotten away from me, and by June I decided I should do recurring transactions, and I’ve been accumulating as it goes up.

I decided to teach myself more, so I’ve been doing that all summer.

I also bought 1000 ETH in March 2014 at $50.86 per ETH. Then I also opened another wallet on Kraken, because I was afraid Coinbase might get hacked. I was reading that these wallets get hacked (they do). Kraken had a good reputation, although Coinbase, the early mover in the market, is now more secure.

Fast forward to now, when ETH is $344 and Bitcoin is $4359. Over the summer, I sold $3000 worth of cryptocurrency to help my son get re-started after his divorce and buy couple of new radiators for my son and daughter.

This morning I looked in my portfolio and I still owned about $11,000 of Bitcoin and ETH and a few other alt coins.

I’m not telling you to do this kind of wild speculation. And in my case I didn’t even do enough of it to get rich, just enough to motivate me to get to know the space. This makes me one of (still) a relatively few ordinary people who even can talk intelligently about block chain technology. I even read a couple of books, and I read some blogs daily. I keep up.

I am, however, telling you that for the past three and a half years, I have witnessed a huge change in money and value. I’ve now bought into a couple of ICOs, and I have a portfolio that includes in addition to BTC and ETH, Litecoin, Rypple, TEZOS and BAT. I think I’ve got a ringside seat to what will make very big inroads into the future of fundraising for startups.

ICOs make it possible for startups with good ideas to raise significant amounts of money in a matter of hours. Brave, founded by former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, who was ousted for contributing to a repeal of gay marriage, raised $35 million in a matter of seconds for Brave, and now he has access to about $72 million. Follow the link for more amazement.

Now not every startup founder wants to create a browser that can pay content providers in micropayments, and not every founder also invented JavaScript. But for a founder with a good idea, an ICO can be a great alternative to some of the hoops founders have to jump through in a traditional fund raise.

Stealthmode Blog

Francine Hardaway’s Blog About Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Life

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francine hardaway

Written by

Co-founder, Stealthmode Partners, helping entrepreneurs succeed

Stealthmode Blog

Francine Hardaway’s Blog About Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Life

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