It seems that everyday there is a new altcoin or a new blockchain capital market company. As the market is evolving at a rapid pace, I thought it could be useful to share my landscape in order to gather feedback and also to flag all my typos/errors…PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU HAVE ANY COMMENTS. Also, I am very happy to have a chat or share notes, just email me at ebrunet40@gmail.com

“If you bought £650 of Bitcoin in 2010 it would be worth £27 million today.” Great. I may have missed the only opportunity to become a High Net Worth Individual (HNWI). Awesome.

Bitcoin Google Trends from Feb 2011 to May 2017

There has never been a time when people talked more about Bitcoin or about crypto currency in general. A recent example of this sudden interest was when some high school friends asked me on Facebook if they should buy some Bitcoins — doesn’t it remind you of the Bitcoin spike in 2013?

In the latest newsletter of Social Capital, the questions “Is this really the critical next step we’ve been waiting for? Do regular people even understand the problem that the blockchain ecosystem is trying to solve?” were asked. I think it is just too early to tell. Could you have foreseen in 1973 that SMTP (aka email) would still be used in 2017 and that it would be one of the most important messaging protocols? I am pretty sure not.

Blockchain may not be the solution to all problems and it is very much still a technology looking to solve a problem. However, it does provide a solution to an increasingly centralised internet in which few private companies control/manage/share users’ data as well as make decisions on what users should see or not (I still don’t understand why my Twitter Moment looks more like the front page of the Sun rather than Wired. Could Blockchain help?).

However, I was stoked when a former high school friend asked me about ICOs “Are you long Augur?”. If you don’t know what an ICO or Token is, I would recommend you to read Thoughts on Tokens By Balaji S. Srinivasan and Naval Ravikant. Tokens solve the chicken-and-egg network adoption problem that most open source technologies face by adding a speculative ingredient called Tokens. Also, read Fat protocols by Joel Monégro and Fred Ehrsam.

As a VC / private investor, I find tokens super interesting. Tokens are open to all, with a revenue based on community momentum and have a proper liquid market. However, the lack of regulation, investor rights (Where is my founder vesting?) and code security implications seem to limit for the moment a broad adoption.

Like most people I read about Polychain, a crypto hedge fund started by Olaf Carlson-Wee (former Coinbase). However, I was surprised to find a long list of market participants in this new asset class. I created this landscape (see below) to provide a better understanding of the list of participants and their place in the ecosystem. I am sure I forgot names, missed a point etc… PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU HAVE ANY COMMENTS / FEEDBACK.