Steve Wozniak has been announced as Co-founder of EQUI Global, a blockchain-powered venture capital fund. He lines up alongside Founder Doug Barrowman and Co-founder Baroness Michelle Mone.

“I get ideas pitched to me every single day in fact dozens and I always say no. Since I co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, this is about the second time in 20 years that I actually said yes,” says Wozniak. “I want to be a part of this. It has to be something I really believe in and I really believe in EQUI.”

He will head up technology investments. “We’ve already got over 20 businesses that we are looking at and we haven’t even officially launched yet. It’s going to be very exciting. Ultimately, our mission is to seek, support and fund the blockchain and tech stars of tomorrow,” he comments.

Back in August, we reported that Wozniak had started working with Equi.“Our approach is not like a new currency, or something phony where an event will make it go up in value. It’s a share of stock, in a company,” he said.

“We have one person in our group who has listed out a whole apartment building for Bitcoin (Mone)… We might be starting up in Malta around the time of their blockchain conference. Some countries are very positive about [blockchain] the same way they were about electric vehicles.”

Bitcoin rules

Wozniak also discussed his fascination with Bitcoin. “I like to keep up with things… Bitcoin caught my attention. It had so many unusual aspects for any technology I had ever heard of,” he said. “Nobody is really known to be the creator. It doesn’t have any centralised [component]. It’s based on mathematics. There’s a certain number of Bitcoin that can ever exist… Mathematics to me is like nature. It’s much better than human beings… I trust those things of nature more than what man makes up. Man makes up currencies, controls them, issues new US dollars every year; Bitcoin is immune to that.”

He initially struggled to get his head around blockchain technology. “It’s not something you understand in a day. You think about it, read more about it and how it works, and then you see how people actually start to use it, through the mining process and also the verification and, aha! It all adds up!”

He added: “It’s so independent. It’s kind of like the internet when it was brand new… I was amazed at the technology behind it. People start up companies that do other things in life. I’ve encountered people working in real estate avenues, types of Uber systems, everything we’ve got in our life, especially involving transactions – retail sales, car sales, manufacturing of goods… working on Bitcoin applications… and they all have value. Every single one you hear about, to me, has value…. A few people can see the value, which reminds me very much of the early internet days.”