Will ICOs kill Venture Capital and How to Avoid Investing like a Noob (Panel)

It was 2011 when Marc Andreessen famously declared in the WSJ that “Software is eating the world.” Fast forward to the present day and it might be fair to ask, has this software disruption turned its hungry gaze toward venture capital itself?

To date, more than $5 billion has been been invested via ICOs — initial coin offerings in which blockchain-based projects distribute to investors cryptographic tokens representing some combination of ownership and access to the underlying network or assets. In many cases, these token sales replaced outright or at the very least augmented traditional “venture fundraising rounds.” And while a fraction of these ICO investments were made by traditional venture capital firms, the overwhelming majority of funds came from either individual investors (in many cases those recycling earlier gains on Bitcoin and Ethereum) or from new, dedicated crypto-investment funds.

It’s fair to say that 2017 was a year unlike any other in the history in terms of how early-stage technology projects were financed. We invited a panel of several of the smartest and longest-tenured crypto-investors to this year’s Upfront Summit to help unpack the implications of this trend and to tackle some of the thorniest questions facing this sector:

• Is this the new normal and is this the end of venture capital as we know it?
• What first-time crypto investors need to know?
• What are the biggest ICO mistakes entrepreneurs make?
• How should LPs think about their exposure to crypto-assets?
• How will regulators address ICOs, token trading, taxation, and other yet unanswered crypto questions?

We were thrilled to have Adam Draper (Boost VC), Alyse Killeen (StillMark), Bart Stephens (Blockchain Capital), and Matthew Goetz (BlockTower Capital), weigh in on the above, with Axios’ Dan Primack moderating. The result was a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion that confirmed how truly transformative the rise of crypto has been, while also reinforcing how much we as an industry have yet to figure out. Enjoy the video!