Bitcoin & Math Based Currencies: Road to $100 BN

#sxsw #BitcoinNow

High hopes are building for Bitcoins, and those are only buoyed by the endless speculations by the entrepreneurs, investors, regulators and others about its potential. From 2009 to 2013 the market cap of Bitcoin went from up 100x from $10M to $1bn. What will drive the next 100x increase, and what will prevent it? Will it be Bitcoin that breaks through or another math based currency? We will discuss regulatory issues, network effects, how to build consumer trust, the transition from an ecosystem dominated by speculators to one dominated by merchants and customers, what are some of the likely candidate usecases that will drive mass market adoption, and what will be the necessary preconditions for the next 100x growth.

Presenters

Constance Choi

General Counsel

Payward Inc

Constance Choi is the General Counsel at Payward, Inc., a company that combines years of experience in the virtual goods and currency markets with a highly skilled engineering team and a host of carefully cultivated banking and finance relationships. Prior to Payward, Constance was an attorney with prominent law firms Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati.

Jeremy Liew

Mgmt Dir

Lightspeed Venture Partners

Jeremy Liew is a Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, joining the firm in 2006. He invests primarily in the Internet and mobile sectors with a particular interest in massive-scale social media, commerce, gaming, financial services, and methods for increasing monetization. He was named to Forbes’ Midas List in 2011 and 2012.

Jeremy’s current investments include Snapchat, Whisper, LivingSocial, Bonobos, Kixeye, PetFlow, Slice, The Honest Company and Zest Finance. He was also responsible for several Lightspeed investments which have had successful exits including Playdom (acquired by Disney), Flixster (acquired by Warner Brothers), Kongregate (acquired by GameStop) and Serious Business (acquired by Zynga).

Previously, Jeremy was with AOL, first as SVP of corporate development and chief of staff to the CEO, and then as general manager of Netscape. Jeremy joined AOL from InterActiveCorp (originally USA Networks), where he was VP of strategic planning. While there, he was responsible for acquisitions, divestitures and investments in TV Networks, consumer Internet companies and online travel companies.

He started working in the consumer Internet industry as an early employee of CitySearch in 1996, where he held a variety of sales management, operational and business development roles. He was also a management consultant at McKinsey & Company.

Jeremy is currently a Co-Chair of the board of Trustees of Presidio Knolls School, a startup, progressive Mandarin-immersion school in San Francisco. It took its first intake of Elementary School students in Fall 2012.

Jeremy holds a BA/BSc from the Australian National University in Linguistics and Pure Mathematics and an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

He is a frequent contributor to the Lightspeed blog. If you are interested in seeing how he thinks about potential investments, you can get a sense by reading his posts breaking down the pitches on season four of Shark Tank.

Tony Gallippi

CEO

BitPay Inc

Anthony Gallippi, co-founder and CEO, saw a need for bitcoin payment processing and founded BitPay in 2011. As a start-up, Mr. Gallippi is involved in all of the day-to-day operations including new business development, marketing, and customer service. Mr. Gallippi has 15 years of experience in sales and marketing working in the Robotics industry. Bitcoin is a new financial technology, invented in 2009 as the first peer-to-peer digital currency. Using bitcoin, it is possible to send money like an email - to anyone, anytime, anywhere- without going through a bank or government or corporation. Before founding BitPay, Tony was District Sales Manager at Aerotech and Regional Sales Manager at Industrial Devices Corporation. Mr. Gallippi has a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.