I spent a bunch of time at Consensus and Token Summit this week. If it wasn’t clear before, we are headed into a crypto currency bubble. Now a bubble isn’t in and of itself a bad thing. In fact almost every wave of technology has brought with it a financial bubble phase (eg care for Railway Mania in Britain). During this phase a lot of financial capital flows into a sector which finances real innovation and accelerates the buildout of physical infrastructure. The same will be true for the cry...

Even as recently as Web Summit at the beginning of November I was asked about a Bubble as part of a panel. It has since occurred to me that the problem with using that word to denote possibly overextended valuations is that is suggests a sudden correction in the form of a “popping” or “bursting” of a bubble. That’s pretty much what we experienced at the end of the actual Internet Bubble when many companies disappeared entirely and others were down 90% or more. So I want to propose a new word:...

A couple of years ago I wrote about our need for an “opposing view reader” that would intentionally show us commentary from people with opinions different from our own. As far as I can tell relatively little progress has been made on this front. Twitter, for instance, will generally recommend to me that I follow people who are like the people I am already following. So I was happy to see that there is at least some academic research on this topic. The Technology Review mentions a paper titled...

There is no doubt in my mind that venture valuations have become incredibly stretched. I have been thinking about why that is and what will come of it. First off, here are the factors contributing to the stretching of valuations. It starts with the genuine potential for building hugely valuable businesses, which is based on four key factors: 1. The immense possibility for scale on the Internet – global businesses with millions of customers can be created in relatively short time periods. 2. T...