The Plug and Play Tech Center startup incubator and accelerator recently hosted its Winter EXPO, with 28 startup pitches, a virtual currency panelist discussion and over 100 investors and corporations.
The virtual currency panel, dubbed the “Future of Fintech”, was mainly focused on bitcoin. This was especially relevant, as the audience had just witnessed 11 bitcoin startups pitching their business plans to investors.
Low danger payments and foreign banks
Vinny Lingham of Gyft started the session by talking investors by means of the primary factors why his gift card business started utilizing bitcoin.
“It’s a low-danger strategy of payment,” mentioned Lingham.
He compared bitcoin to credit card transactions, which can be problematic for a quantity of factors. This is particularly true with so many different nations operating with distinct credit card businesses.
“How do you trust a credit card from a foreign bank?” he asked.
David Chen is an Associate Companion at Lightspeed Venture Partners, which lately led an investment of $ 5m in the exchange BTC China. He believes that it is nonetheless early days for virtual currencies like BTC.
“We’re nonetheless in the infrastructure-creating stage,” he stated.
And when asked about the present state of bitcoin in China, given the current central banking news there, he declined to provide any elaboration, saying: ”I think it’s harmful for us to speculate.”
Tip of the iceberg
Chris Larsen is CEO of payment platform Ripple, which he known as a “universal joint” for virtual currencies. He echoed the sentiment that BTC is just the starting of some thing totally new.
“Virtual currencies are genuinely the tip of the iceberg,” he mentioned.
It’s the concepts that these currencies bring to the table that are so exciting for financial technologies in the future. Larsen cited the confirmation of economic transactions without having a central clearing property and a solution to the double-spend dilemma as the two most significant innovations that bitcoin has brought to marketplace.
Jean-Jacques Cabou, a partner at law firm Perkins Coie, said that over the next couple of years the issues of navigating regulatory compliance in virtual currencies “will decrease”. He produced it clear that any virtual currency-connected enterprise need to be very transparent.
“If your bank doesn’t know you are a bitcoin company, that’s a red flag,” said Cabou.
Distributed infrastructure
David Johnston, who angel invests in virtual currency projects by means of BitAngels, said that distributed infrastructure is what he is most interested in.
He cited a paper that he recently wrote about the disruptive qualities that distributed systems could present in the future.
He mentioned that 2014 would consist of funding in “infrastructure level investments: Mastercoin, distributed exchange and distributed commerce”.
The total panel listing at the fintech session of the Plug and Play EXPO was as follows:
Vinny Lingham, co-founder and CEO of Gyft,
David Chen, associate partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners,
Chris Larsen, founder and CEO of Ripple,
Jean-Jacques Cabou, partner at Perkins Cole, LLP
David Johnston, executive director of BitAngels.
The session was moderated by Adam B. Levine of Let’s Speak Bitcoin.
View Bitcoin: The Hot Subject at Plug and Play Winter Expo on CoinDesk.
Bitcoin: The Hot Topic at Plug and Play Winter Expo
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