Renowned venture capitalists Fred Wilson and Balaji Srinivasan, chief technology officer of the Coinbase exchange, sat down with Wall Street Journal reporter Paul Vigna to discuss the 2018 Consensus conference. Srinivasan and Wilson explained why Warren Buffett, Nouriel Roubini and other prominent skeptics criticize Bitcoin.
Wilson pointed out the differences between Buffett's approach to investing and the way the cryptocurrency market works. It's these fundamental differences between cryptocurrency and traditional assets that may explain why Buffett has such an aversion to bitcoin that he even calls it rat poison.
"If you think of bitcoin as just some new asset class that you can trade, then you might end up with this conclusion. But if you see it as an innovative technology that provides a bunch of new functionality that didn't exist before, then you can see it as a LAMP stack or something like that. It's a whole new stack that we'll have to build new applications on top of, and tokens are just the fuel that lights up that stack."
The LAMP stack that Wilson refers to is an open-source platform and toolset (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) that was used to build dynamic websites and applications during the Web 2.0 phase of the Internet. Some consider blockchain technology, of which bitcoin was the first incarnation, a key component of the new. decentralized Internet Web 3.0.
While Buffett is looking for cash-generating assets that will grow in value over time, Wilson is making ambitious bets, expecting some of these assets to generate 100-fold returns. The world of cryptocurrencies is more about choosing which networks will win than the companies that are built on those networks.
Srinivasan also noted that bitcoin and blockchain in general have reached the point where people like Buffett often have to answer questions regarding these technologies. This in itself is already a success.
In addition, Srinivasan mentioned that other institutional investors, such as International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, have changed their view of the situation and said more positive things about the future of digital assets.
According to https://bitcoinmagazine.com
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