Adam Draper

Coinbase is 'the' brand in the Bitcoin space. Their founder Brian Armstrong was amongst the first good entrepreneurs to emerge in this space. While others championed ideological or underground/illicit interests, Brian saw an opportunity to change the world for the better and build a big business out of it.

I find it difficult to turn down an entrepreneur who's both passionate and knowledgeable about their space.

What bitcoin does better than the current financial system is it's a better stored value globally. There are a lot of countries that really don't trust their banks or their currency, and bitcoin is an alternative.

I describe Bitcoin as 'the Skype of money.'

Most people hoard their money - just keep it in the bank. Bitcoin will really take off when people start spending it, creating a velocity of money.

If money was being invented now, it wouldn't be designed to look like cash or credit cards. It would look more like Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has so much potential, and that's why the believers are trying to facilitate its use as a currency, so people use to buy things and spread it around more.

The next phase of the journey is to move from speculation to actual use cases - people getting into Bitcoin because they want to use it.

People wanted Bitcoin to live so much, they basically willed it back into existence. That showed me how passionate this community was about it.

No one has ever raised capital because their pitch deck was pretty. A lot of people have raised capital because they were over-prepared, knew where their business was going, and were able to articulate that through a pitch alongside a pitch deck.

When we announced that we were going to support Bitcoin companies, we became a great lightning rod for activity and fun.

A startup is literally just a series of unfortunate events where you failed, failed, failed, and failed until you succeed.