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Cryptocurrency Exchange BitcoinFundi Now Allows to Trade Dash

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Zimbabwe-based cryptocurrency exchange BitcoinFundi has started to trade other cryptocurrencies beyond Bitcoin.

In its bid to attract more customers, the exchange has started allowing its users to trade Dash, becoming the second exchange in Africa listing Dash/USD trading pairs.

The exchange has also added Litecoin trading pair to its list of accepted virtual currencies. Users of the exchange can now convert their dollars into Litecoin or Dash based on their preference.

The addition of other virtual currencies aside from Bitcoin could make Africa as an important region for the cryptocurrency market.

Future of cryptocurrencies in Africa

The large number of unbanked and underbanked individuals in Africa could lead to the mainstream adoption of virtual currencies in the region in the near future.

However, to make this a possibility, people in the region should have convenient access to these currencies. The cryptocurrency exchanges like BitcoinFundi will play a vital role in providing said access.

The future of Dash in the region is also very promising. Aside from BitcoinFundi, cryptocurrency exchange AltCoinTrader has also started trading the virtual currency.

The cryptocurrency also experienced a substantial increase in its value in the past few months, thus, bolstering its appeal to users and investors alike.

The support shown by exchanges to the cryptocurrency is needed to ensure its continuous adoption in the region. If this trend continues, there is a possibility that Dash can rival Bitcoin in the long run.

Africans favor exchanges over platforms

Based on observations, African digital currency users and investors seem to favor exchanges over platforms like LocalBitcoins in their transactions.

This development could be the result of the several scams that occurred at LocalBitcoins in the past. The use of exchanges is also recommended over platforms, particularly when currency trading.

Bitcoin Cash Just Mined its First Block, Making Blockchain Split Official

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A controversial bitcoin spinoff called Bitcoin Cash has officially broken off from the main network, forging ahead with its own blockchain.

Nodes running Bitcoin Cash diverged from the network earlier this morning, but hit a quick roadblock given the absence of a larger-than-1-megabyte block to actually trigger the split.

The block in question was mined by 478,559, according to a Bitcoin Cash block explorer hosted by data provider BlockDozer. This came nearly six hours after after block 478,558 – which started the separation – was struck.

Network data shows that the Bitcoin Cash block contained 6,985 transactions, with a block size of 1.915 MB – nearly double the block size cap on the original chain.

According to CoinMarketCap, the price of Bitcoin Cash is trading at roughly $219 on digital currency exchange Kraken. The exchange’s top marketplace, for the BTC/BCH trading pair, is reporting more than $3m in volume since launch.

Bitcoin Cash 101: What Users Need to Know Before Tomorrow’s Fork

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Bitcoin is headed toward a fork tomorrow.

Whether that happens for sure remains to be seen, but if it does, and you hold bitcoin, there are a few things you will want to keep in mind.

First, starting August 1 at about 12:20 UTC, mining pool ViaBTC will give miners who are a part of its pool the option to direct their computing power to a new, controversial software client known as Bitcoin ABC.

Should enough miners take up on that option, the result will be a permanent divergence in the bitcoin blockchain and the creation of a new cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin Cash, or BCC.

Proposed by developer Amaury Séchet, Bitcoin ABC is an alternative protocol that will boost bitcoin’s transaction capacity. The client increases bitcoin’s block size parameter to 8 MB and removes the long-debated code optimization Segregated Witness, due to activate on the main bitcoin blockchain later in August.

Of the more than 20 bitcoin mining pools, ViaBTC is the only pool to publicly support Bitcoin ABC, so far.

Although most bitcoin developers, entrepreneurs and users seem uninterested in moving over to Bitcoin ABC, the new protocol is not without eager supporters, which makes it hard to tell what exactly will happen.

We don’t know, for instance, how much mining power will go to the new blockchain, whether the fork will result in something long lasting or if the new cryptocurrency will fall into decline due to lack of support.

Before those questions are answered, here are a few essentials to keep keep in mind.

What is a fork?

A hard fork is a permanent divergence in the blockchain.

Essentially, a new software client is presented, in this case, Bitcoin ABC. Some nodes will upgrade to the new client, but others will not. Because bitcoin is decentralized, it will be up to each individual user to decide on their own which software to run.

Once the first block is mined with the new rules, other miners may decide to move their computing power over to the new chain and build on that initial block. If enough miners begin to move over, this is where a possible “split” could happen.

Although, the original bitcoin chain will likely have the majority hash power and grow at a faster rate, the overall result will be two blockchains. Both chains will share the same origin and history up to the point where they diverge. And from there on, two separate networks will exist.

Depending on the amount of computing power behind it, Bitcoin ABC could grow to become a serious contender in the cryptocurrency space. Or, if the miners supporting it switch back to the dominant chain, Bitcoin ABC may become nothing more than a distant memory in the ongoing saga of bitcoin.

Because the networks are separate, though, it will make no difference how much mining power gets diverted to the smaller chain. Bitcoin ABC will continue to exist, even if it has only a fraction of the computing power of the larger bitcoin chain.

Two sets of coins

When the bitcoin blockchain splits, the result will be two sets of tokens: bitcoin (BTC) on the original bitcoin blockchain, and bitcoin cash (BCC) on the new blockchain.

Anyone who holds bitcoins before the split will effectively hold coins on both chains after the split. In this case, anyone holding bitcoin tokens (BTC) on the original chain will end up with the same amount of bitcoin cash (BCC) on the other.

Your bitcoin will be safe, but if you want to make sure you will also have access to your bitcoin cash, you should check with your exchange to see what their policy is. The safest plan is to make sure you have control of your private keys before the split.

Whether it’s worth it to do so will be up to each user. But if you think bitcoin cash will have no value, think again. Bitcoin cash futures are currently trading at $275 on ViaBTC’s exchange.

As long as you have control of your private keys before August 1, 12:20 UTC, you will most likely have access to the bitcoin cash you are entitled to after the split. If you leave your bitcoin in an online exchange, however, that exchange will be in control of your bitcoin.

To control your keys, one option is to move your coins to hardware wallet, such as Trezor or Ledger, that keeps your keys on a secure USB device. Or you can download a mobile wallet software, such Airbitz or Mycelium.

But be careful. Some mobile wallets, including Electrum and GreenAddress, have said they will not support bitcoin cash.

Monitoring the fork

But how will you be able to tell if bitcoin has forked, or not?

Btcforkmonitor is one site tracking potential bitcoin forks. If it detects a fork, a red notification promises to pop up at the top of the website.

Developers of the site are running both Bitcoin ABC and Bitcoin Core nodes to compare the two clients and see how many blocks are on one chain versus the other.

Still, since btcforkmonitor is an independent website, and the information it presents may or may not be accurate. So, unless you want to run your own 150 GB Bitcoin ABC full node, it might be a good idea to check with other sources, such as other people running full nodes, and follow their updates on social media.

Voorhees Decision Will Not Affect Shapeshift.io Support for Bitcoin Cash

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Erik Voorhees, ShapeShift CEO, has announced that he plans to divest all his Bitcoin Cash tokens as soon as he gets hold of the new cryptocurrency during the scheduled Bitcoin platform split on Aug. 1.

Following Voorhees Tweet, some were quick to confirm whether the decision affects how his company will treat Bitcoin Cash, to which the company responded:

It only occurred to me now to ask. Will you be dumping your  Cash on @ShapeShift_io? Would love to see BCC added to @Prism_Exchange

We have not made a decision regarding BCC. We will announce any decisions on this matter in our social channels

Meanwhile, the claim by Voorhees that there is an overwhelming support for SegWit2x scaling plan for Bitcoin can be said as not entirely accurate.

In fact, the real score is that there is increasing support for the original SegWit plan, but this cannot be said about its second version.

Holding him accountable for his previous statement and commitment to support hard fork, a Twitter user reminded him of his previous stance on the issue.

I will be dumping BCC as fast as I can. SegWit2x has overwhelming support and I stand by my commitment to it.  

Many exchanges and cryptocurrency pundits are torn about the issue, and it is expected that the new cryptocurrency will experience some growing pains after its launch.

The presence of a growing number of exchanges which are expressing their support for the digital currency, however, is a positive start. Whether you’re on with the supporting side or not, it will be interesting to see how the new token will perform following its launch on Aug. 1.

There will be users or investors who are supporting the new token, as well as those who will stick to the leading digital currency Bitcoin.

I will have to assume you went full into Bitcoin Cash if you make statements to undermine the HF part of SegWit2x.

No, I’m full into Bitcoin. No BTU, Classic, bcash, 2x, or whatever might be the HF flavour of the month.

There are also many industry players who still believe that the Bitcoin Cash tokens are “free” money, but that is not exactly case. The tokens, however, will be issued without additional cost to exchanges that support it.

Bitcoin to surge nearly 80% to $5,000, ethereum to double, Standpoint’s Moas predicts

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After testing out digital currencies earlier this month, independent stock research analyst Ronnie Moas on Sunday published the first two parts of his 122-page report on bitcoin and other digital currencies.

“In my view, the genie is out of the bottle, and cryptocurrencies will continue to rise and take market share away from stocks, other precious metals, bonds and currencies,” Moas, founder of Standpoint Research, said in the report.

“I think investors should take a shot on this and hold for a few years. If you lose a few bucks, at least you took a shot,” he said. “In life, you miss every shot that you do not take. It will probably be more upsetting to watch it (from the sidelines) go up another 1,000%.”

Moas gave bitcoin a $5,000 price target for 2018, reflecting nearly 80 percent upside from Monday’s price of about $2,800. He also expects rival digital currency ethereum to more than double in value from just under $200 to reach $400 in the next year, and another digital currency, litecoin, to double from about $40 to $80.

In the next week or two, Moas said he plans to issue the third part of the 122-page report about how a fourth and much smaller digital currency could rise a few hundred percent in the near future.

The stock analyst said he’s bought 10 of the top 20 digital currencies by market capitalization in order to be diversified, marking the first time in 20 years he’s put money into his own recommendations.

“In my view, 10-15 years from now, the charts on a few of the top 20 names will look like the Amazon, Apple, Tesla, Facebook, Netflix and Google charts look today,” Moas said in the report.

Top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization

Moas’ report comes just before a possible split in bitcoin Tuesday, if some developers go ahead with a scheduled upgrade known as Bitcoin Cash. Direct owners of bitcoin will then hold two versions of the digital currency.

“The market is telling you right now that we will get through this event tomorrow,” Moas told CNBC in a phone interview Monday, noting bitcoin traded close to its all-time high.

The digital currency hit a record $3,025 in mid-June, fell to $1,837 in mid-July, before recovering about $1,000 to trade near $2,800 on Monday, according to CoinDesk.

Bitcoin (2010 -2017)

Back on July 5, Moas told CNBC he bought some bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin and expects bitcoin could reach $5,000 “in a few months.” He subsequently published an article on Reddit outlining his views on digital currencies.

Since then, institutional attention on bitcoin has only increased.

Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee became the first major Wall Street strategist to publish a report about bitcoin on July 7. Less than a week later, Switzerland’s financial market regulator authorized the first Swiss bank to manage bitcoinfor clients, while the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission last Monday approved the first bitcoin options platform.

Last Tuesday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also issued a report and investors bulletin on initial coin offerings, or sales of new digital coins.

“I have little doubt that 1% of the money in cash, bonds, stocks and gold will end up in cryptocurrencies,” Moas wrote in his report.

Since the $80 billion cryptocurrency market right now is a 25th of 1 percent of the $200 trillion in gold, cash, stocks and bonds, Moas pointed out digital currencies will need to increase by 25 times in order to reach 1 percent of the overall capital market.

If cryptocurrencies become part of asset allocation models and take 2 to 4 percent of capital markets, then the digital currencies will likely increase 100 times in value, Moas said

To be sure, Moas also laid out a host of risks for investing in digital currencies, including inherent high volatility, large-scale hacks on cryptocurrency firms and potential regulation, especially in China, that could cause prices to “collapse.”

In addition, Moas pointed out the lack of customer support for online digital currency products.

“There is no telephone support,” he said in the report. “You must go to the FAQs section and spend a long time looking for the answer to whatever question you may have — and then you may not be happy with the answer. Your only other option is to send an email to customer support which could take anywhere from one-to-seven days to get a reply.”

Coinbase, a popular website for buying and selling digital currencies in the U.S., has repeatedly reported website loading delays or outages in the last few months due to high customer traffic.

All that said, the stock analyst said he believes the time to buy digital currencies is now. He described in his report how investors can buy bitcoin, and why financial institutions are interested in the blockchain technology behind bitcoin and other digital currencies.

“I watched from the sidelines for a few years and it felt recently as if the train is leaving the station,” Moas said. “I think we are still in the first quarter of a four quarter game and that even though I missed out on significant gains (2014 – 2016), it is not too late to get in.”

Bitcoin Cash Futures Plunge as UAHF Approaches

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We are now less than 24 hours away from the start of the latest Bitcoin Civil War. On August 1, shortly after 12:20 pm UTC, segwit opponents will launch a user-activated hard fork (UAHF) to create Bitcoin Cash.

The creators of Bitcoin Cash believe support for segregated witness was a mistake – and a diversion from Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision for Bitcoin – and they aim to help bitcoin scale by immediately increasing the block size from 1 MB to 8 MB.

Since Bitcoin Cash is forking the Bitcoin blockchain, most bitcoin holders will receive an equal number of bitcoin cash. As long as you control the private keys of your bitcoin wallet – or have your coins on an exchange which has pledged support for bitcoin cash – you will be able to claim your bitcoin cash. If your coins are on an exchange which opposes bitcoin cash – such as Coinbase – there is a good chance you will not receive them.

According to the Bitcoin Cash website, the following exchanges have announced they will credit bitcoin cash to traders holding bitcoin:

Bitcoin Cash Futures Plunge on ViaBTC

Although the UAHF has not yet been deployed, ViaBTC enabled traders to trade bitcoin cash futures (under symbol: BCC) by temporarily freezing their BTC balances on the platform.

Despite this move, ViaBTC says they are neutral and only added BCC support because they believed there would be a market for it. And indeed there was; 24-hour bitcoin cash volume surpassed $2 million on July 27, although it has since tapered to about $850 million. HitBTC later added BCC futures as well, although volume is extremely low.

Since its listing, the bitcoin cash price has plunged on ViaBTC. From July 24-25, the value of bitcoin cash futures hovered around $500. By the 26th, it had fallen to $400. Since then, it has continued to skid, falling below $300 on July 31. In the past day alone, the bitcoin cash price has declined 24% against bitcoin, bringing its present value to about $278 according to CoinMarketCap.

It’s important to remember that these are just futures. The actual bitcoin cash coins do not exist yet, so we shouldn’t extrapolate too much from the week that bitcoin cash futures were trading on ViaBTC. Right now, we have more questions than answers about the actual hard fork:

  • Will investors rush to sell their airdropped bitcoin cash for a quick payday, or will they take a more cautious route in case bitcoin cash gains traction?
  • Where will bitcoin cash debut in the market cap rankings? If the current price of its futures is any indication, it could vault to 4th place with a market cap of around $4.5 billion.
  • How will bitcoin cash affect the bitcoin price – and how much has it already? It is likely that bitcoin cash will pull at least some of its value from the bitcoin market cap, but how drastic and immediate will the transfer be? If the bitcoin cash price opens at $300, for instance, will the bitcoin price decline in response?

These are exciting – and anxious – times for bitcoin. Bitcoin cash already has a fairly solid wallet and exchange support, but the real test will be whether the miners get behind it. In any case, it will be extremely intriguing to watch the trajectory of the bitcoin cash over the coming weeks.

SBI Reveals Joint Blockchain Remittance Venture With South Korean Startup

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City of Seoul Korea

South Korean bitcoin exchange Coinplug has announced a new joint remittance venture with the fintech subsidiary of Japan-based investment group SBI.

The joint venture, dubbed SBI Cosmoney, is expected to launch its remittance service last this year, the two firms said. Coinplug is working with SBI FinTech Solutions Co., which is part of the wider SBI business group that has invested in a number of blockchain startups.

That the two firms would launch a dedicated blockchain effort is perhaps unsurprising, given that SBI participated in Coinplug’s $5 million funding round in October 2015.

In a statement, Coinplug CEO Ryan Uhr said that the goal of the partnership was to “create an overseas remittance service that connects Korea to the world”. Founded in 2013, Coinplug offers a bitcoin exchange, electronic wallet, and online point-of-sales service for Korean users.

According to the announcement, the new venture will be supported in part by a separate remittance venture, SBI Remit, which has been in operation since 2010. The experience of that venture, SBI said, will be of great help to the new venture.”

Coinplug has worked on other blockchain-based remittance projects in the past.

In late 2015, CoinDesk reported that the startup was developing a prototype focused on international payments with KB Koomkin, one of the country’s largest financial institutions.

Trust But Verify: First Ethereum Decompiler Launched With JP Morgan Project

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Comae Technologies recently announced at the DEF CON hacker conference in Las Vegas held on July 27 the launching of Porosity, the first ever decompiler for Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) integrated with JP Morgan’s Quorum.

Porosity is designed to revert smart contracts into the source code. The decompiler is tasked to generate human-readable Solidity syntax smart contracts from any EVM bytecode.

Helping reinforce and verify smart contacts

According to the Porosity developer and Comae founder Matt Suiche, the initial problem that he was trying to solve by writing a decompiler is to be able to have the actual source code, without having access to the actual source code by reverse engineering.

Now, the new decompiler lets the developers revert difficult to understand EVM bytecode back to its original state. The reversed code can be scanned to check for susceptibility to new attacks or to ensure adherence to changing best practices.

Furthermore, Porosity helps further the “trust but verify” Blockchain thinking.

Optimizing

Suiche also announced that Porosity will be integrated with JP Morgan‘s open-source Quorum which is an enterprise-focused version of Ethereum. This will be available on JP Morgan’s GitHub.

Commae reveals that Porosity and Quorum are being packaged and tested together as a way to integrate Blockchain technology into traditional enterprise security workflows.

The package includes scanning of private contracts sent to user’s node from other network participants, incorporating into security & patching processes for private networks with formalized governance model, and automate scanning and analyze risk across semi-public Quorum networks.

Decompiler: peace of mind for investors

ITBS LLC CEO Alex Rass said that decompiler can bring peace of mind to Blockchain investors because vulnerabilities are frequently discovered long after a smart contract is implemented. He also said that decompilers are common among most “major” programming languages, in part because they help provide investors assurance that what they invested in is what is being used.

Bitcoin Investment Vehicle Fined $120k by Nasdaq Exchange

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The provider of a publicly traded bitcoin exchange-traded note (ETN) has been fined over $120,000 by Nasdaq Stockholm for infractions of exchange rules and financial regulations.

The stock exchange’s Disciplinary Committee announced today that it had levied the fine because the company, XBT Provider, violated provisions in its Internal Rule Book and certain regulations of the Financial Instruments Trading Act.

As the result of its finding, the committee handed down a penalty of 1 million Swedish krona – an amount worth approximately $122,000 at press time.

Among those violations, according to the statement, were “failing to ensure that the risk function reports to the board” and “failing to implement an audit of the company’s internet and IT security.” The release also pointed to infractions related to annual reporting requirements.

The fine comes more than two years after regulators in Sweden first approved the ETN, which affords investors exposure to bitcoin without requiring them to actually purchase the cryptocurrency.

In a statement, XBT Provider’s board of directors said that it accepted the decision, highlighting that “the substantial majority of the infractions … occurred within 2015 and the first six months of 2016.” During that period, XBT Provider was owned by the company behind bitcoin mining firm KnCMiner.

“Since acquisition by the Global Advisors group an entirely new management team has been put in place, a major and comprehensive remediation project has been completed and the issuer’s assets under management has grown ten-fold,” the board said. “Additionally, no personnel from the period prior to Global Advisor’s acquisition remain engaged by the issuer.”

The news comes soon after the ETN’s issuer revealed a major partnership in the UK.

Last month, XBT Provider announced that it was working with Hargreaves Lansdown, a decades-old asset manager, allowing their customers to purchase shares in the ETN.

Elad Gil and Silicon Valley’s bright future in cryptocurrency, genetics and health tech

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Elad Gil is running around the Color Genomics office when I come to meet him for a little sit-down. The place is full for a Friday afternoon. There’s a worker taking calls on the couch in the front and plenty of others pacing about in the background.

The office is tucked away in an unassuming industrial area of Burlingame, California, in a building that reminds me of some 60’s-style government structure. Color is easy to spot. First suite on the first floor and the only one with, well, bright color.

Gil offers me a water and we sit down in a little conference room. Jokingly, he says maybe he can do something funny for the featured image for my article like pretend to hold up the color wheel logo. “Katie would never let me do that,” he says, referring to his chief marketing officer and ex-Twitter employee Katie Jacobs Stanton. He’s nerdy funny. I like that.

Gil came to Silicon Valley with impressive academic credentials, including a degree in mathematics, another in molecular biology and a PhD in biology from MIT. It was 2001, and he had hoped to make a dent in the universe. But the timing was off. The country was already headed toward an economic downturn, then 9-11 happened.

He was at a telecom company that quickly grew to 150 people and shortly after shrank to a tenth of the size in five rounds of layoffs. Gil was cut in the third round.

That was a turning point for him.

“All these people helped,” he said. “Like big brand-name VC’s were referring me to companies just to help. They were like, ‘Everything’s collapsing. You’re some random person who showed up with a PhD in biology. You have no job prospects’.”

He went on to hold prominent positions at Google and Twitter and now as a co-founder in Color Genomics. He’s also an investor in several well-known startups including Airbnb, Square, Stripe and Pinterest and is in a position, which he’s known to readily use, to give back to Silicon Valley in much the same way.

But, a dark cloud has been hanging over the Valley lately. News of several incidents of sexual harassment and sex discrimination of female founders have toppled VC’s once seen as demigods and caused some to lose hope in the dream.

SB: I’ve heard people say Silicon Valley is over. They’ve kind of almost lost faith in their heroes, and then there’s all these other little pop-up satellite Silicon Valley-esque cities starting to come up. Do you think Silicon Valley is over?

EG: Oh God, no. I think its best days are ahead of it…Do you know the last time they said that Silicon Valley was over?

SB: When?

EG: There’s two times. One was in the early 90’s where they were like ‘It’s over. There’s nothing left to be done.’

SB: At the height of the semiconductors.

EG: Yeah, because all the semiconductor stuff was really sort of like 70’s and 80’s. And then in early 90’s – ’91, ’92, ’93 – there’s the internet. And I was talking to somebody who was really prominent in the internet wave, and he was like ‘I moved out here in like ’93 and everybody thought it was over.’

Literally, that was the thing. They were like ‘The best times are behind us. All the stuff that could be done has been done. It’s over.’ And then a small group of people were like ‘Let’s do stuff on the internet.’ Others were like ‘That’s insanity.’ Like the internet’s a stupid toy thing that connects five universities. Who cares? Then of course, Netscape happened, and then there’s a wave of innovations, and then in the bubble that I moved into with my perfect bad timing, the collapse I moved into. In that period, everybody’s like ‘Oh, there’s nothing interesting on the internet, and we have to go back to hard tech.’ And Kleiner Perkins got into clean tech, and all these people were talking about nano tech, and it was like Silicon Valley is over, and there’s nothing to do. We need to find new industries. That’s literally what happened.

Then all the social waves happened, and the mobile waves happened… Just like there’s a business cycle, there’s a venture cycle, and innovation cycle. You end up with these gaps, and I think we’re just going through a period where there’s less obvious things.

Interjection: We started talking about cryptocurrencies, ice cream, health tech and what’s next in Silicon Valley. I’ve cut a bunch of this short for brevity.

EG: I basically think the last six months have been cryptocurrency’s Netscape moment, and I think we’re still trying to figure out what’s Google, and what’s PayPal, and Yahoo, and what to keep in with this first wave.

SB: [Cryptocurrency] scares people, especially when it’s very new.

EG: Totally. You remember the first internet. People were like ‘Oh, nobody’s going to buy anything on that. They’re not going to put a credit into a website. That’s madness.’ Now we’ve got Instacart, Amazon..

Can I say something, and then argue that I never said it when you have a tape? Can I do that purposefully?

SB: Okay. What do you want to argue?

EG: I never said I like chocolate ice cream. I like chocolate chip, or something like that.

SB: And I’ll be like ‘No, on the record. This is where he said it.’ …

Okay, so kind of wrapping this up. Where do you see Color fitting in in all of this?

EG: Yeah. I think Color was sort of part of a very early first wave of the visual data area…So really our focus is on how do you unlock information that’s sort of locked up for people, make it something they can actually use to help manage their own health.

SB: People might say it makes it a lot harder if you have to go through your physician first to get this information. I think that’s kind of the allure of these at-home health tests a lot of the time.

EG: I think it depends on how much friction you can take out of the physician process, but also the flip of it is, if physicians are telling people that they should consider it, that’s actually a really powerful way, as well, for people to participate. So I think there are sort of two sides of the same coin.

As an Ashkanazi Jew, I remember going to my doctor and like ‘Hey, should I be taking these genetic tests for cystic fibrosis and Tay-sachs and all this other stuff as a carrier?’ And he was like, ‘Oh yeah. You’re Jewish. Sure. You should do it.’

SB: Sure. Gotta be proactive.

EG: But I had to bring it up, right? It’s something that’s often recommended for Ashkenazi Jews to do. So, we’re basically trying to create an online version of that, where you’re still working with the physician but there’s different ways for you to work with him.

SB: Where do you think people can innovate further in the health tech space right now? What would you like to see?

EG: Yeah. Um, that’s a great question. I think ultimately, there’s so much data available ambiently through peoples’ bodies…This company Cardiogram that I mentioned. I’m a small investor there, from a disclosure perspective. That’s a good example of where you’re just ambiently recording and then telling people that they may have had a heart attack. I think that those are some themes that are really intriguing.

I think the top part in health care is that the people who are often benefiting the most from things, aren’t necessarily the people making the buying decisions. There are some things at a low enough price-point, so that really changes the adoption rates of different tested products. That’s one obstacle, in terms of larger scale adoptions.

SB: Okay. I think we’ll end it on that.