Technology

Posted on November 5, 2018 by staff

VC: Crypto naysayers similar to dot com doubters

Technology

A top VC investor has likened the rise of cryptocurrency to that of the internet in the 1990s and says it has “huge potential”.

Benedict Evans of Andreessen Horowitz tweeted that the limited number of use-cases and abundance of scams should not lead to rash judgments of crypto’s world-changing potential.

“Crypto today has a lot in common with both the internet in 1993 and the internet in 1999,” tweeted Evans.

“[Its] huge potential with few use-cases invented yet – combined with froth, scams and delusion – makes it easier to dismiss as both useless and a scam.”

Evans referenced the dot com bubble, where excessive speculation into dot com companies ultimately saw many of them collapse before the overall market recovered and the tech underpinning them become dominant.

Many experts believe that blockchain, which digital currencies such as Bitcoin are built upon, could have the greatest impact on society.

“Dismissing crypto as a useless scam is much like looking at [dot com companies] Usenet, Cuecat and Boo.com and dismissing the internet. It mistakes applications for the enabling layer,” continued Evans.

“Looking at crypto and only seeing the scams is like looking at the internet in 1999 and only seeing the bubble.

“Looking at crypto and seeing no use-cases is like looking at the internet in 1993, when the web was three per cent of traffic.”