Last week I spent some time in Germany’s capital Berlin. I like the city, it has both great old architectural gems such as the Brandenburger Tor, the Reichstag and the Gedächtniskirche, but also brand new buildings such as the ones around Potsdamer Platz or the new German parliament.

The city has undergone a complete transformation since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and it’s now often hard to know whether you are in the former East Berlin or in West Berlin. Of course there are still a lot of former communist buildings, for example along the Karl Marx Allee, but even most apartment buildings in the East have been completely renovated by now. The city feels like one city again.

I am a fan of very high end cuisine, the kind of restaurants that you don’t find in Vancouver. Berlin has a couple of “over-the-top” restaurants and so one night we decided to try out Lorenz Adlon Esszimmer at Unter den Linden. The restaurant has 2 Michelin stars, which guarantees you the very best food and service. Problem was that you normally can’t book a table on the day of your dinner, but with a bit of luck and some phone calls I managed the get a table at the window, looking out over the Brandenburger Tor!

Grace and I arrived at exactly 7 pm and it turned out we were the first guests. The Esszimmer (which is German for dining room) is a relatively small restaurant. There are just 7 tables, set in a beautiful classical setting with a fireplace and windows with great views.

We were welcomed by the head waiter and the sommelier and were given the choice of several Champagnes. To start we opted for a glass of rose Champagne. They then gave us the menu, which had the choice of either a 6-course or an 8-course tasting menu. Because we had no important plans for the next morning we decided to go for the 8-course one with 8 paired glasses of wine (at least for me, Grace stayed with Champagne).

Before the 8 courses we first had 3 rounds of amuses, which gave us an indication of what was to come. Beautifully designed small dishes with amazing combinations of ingredients and aromas.

While we were having our amuses the restaurant slowly filled up. Most tables were just 2 people, but one table was set for 4 persons. There was also one table for a single person. Most of the guests were in their 50s and 60s, and all were well very well dressed. That’s what I like about this kind of restaurants, having dinner here is a special occasion, even for people who eat more in restaurants than at home.

The 4-person table turned out to be 2 older gentlemen and 2 young good looking Thai women. A bit of a strange combination of course, but who am I to judge. They spoke English and some German among themselves, and I didn’t think much of it until I realized that the accent of the men was Dutch. I took a closer look at them and then realized that I actually knew one of the men. He was a well-known former CEO of a large public company and I actually had had a business meeting with him once. (Given that the Thai girl was not his wife I won’t mention his name here.)

He looked at me as well, but I think he could not place me. He certainly did not realize I was Dutch, because after a few glasses of wine the 2 businessmen switched to Dutch. They talked quite loud and I could understand everything they said. Unfortunately the topics they discussed in Dutch mainly involved their accomplishments with young women. I am not easily embarrassed, but some of the things they said I really did not want to hear. I am sure they would have never discussed these topics in either German or English in this setting. For a moment I considered walking by their table and making a remark in Dutch to show them they were not the only ones speaking that language, but in the end I just let it go. The details sure make for a nice story over beers with friends in the future (most Dutch people know his company).

The dinner itself was fantastic and the wine pairings were excellent. The creations were like art on dinner plates and they tasted even better. Top chefs are really highly skilled artists! Some of the dishes reminded me a bit of Ultraviolet in Shanghai (which is still my #1 restaurant in the world). The wines were mainly European ones and there were some real gems in there. What I like is that they give you decent sized glasses and every now and then refill your glass if you really like the wine. Not every top restaurant does that, but in this price range (about EUR 700,- for 2 people) I like it if they are not stingy.
The only downside was that it was almost too much for me, and Grace stopped eating her full portions after 4 courses already. You actually should not eat more than a soup and a salad at lunch when you know you’ll be having a meal like this.

I had a fantastic evening at Lorenz Adler’s Esszimmer. The combination of the food, the wines, and the view was just perfect. Observing the Dutch business people actually added to the fun, although it was difficult to ignore their loud talking sometimes. If I would live in Berlin I would probably go here at least once a year on a special occasion. I highly recommend this restaurant if you’re a foodie and don’t mind spending a lot of money for an amazing meal in a great setting. Just make your reservations well in advance!

There are many well-know tech predictions that turned out to be completely wrong, and over the past week I came across a couple of new ones that (I think) totally miss their mark.

First a few of the old ones to have a good laugh:
– “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
– “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.” Western Union internal memo, 1876.
– “There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television or radio service inside the United States.” T.A.M. Craven, Federal Communications Commission commissioner, 1961

What they have in common is that these statements were made by people that work in the industries they make predictions about. They all fail to see that industries constantly change and that these changes also apply to their own industry. They are probably surrounded by people who don’t see these changes either, or who don’t want to see them because they can cost them their jobs.

My job consists of spotting trends and disruptive change before others and by placing bets (=making investments) based on that. I am certainly not always right and I am often too early, but I feel I have a better helicopter view of certain industries than some of the CEOs running the leading companies in those industries. Often when I read their interviews I wonder if they really live in the same world as I do. This week I read 3 articles that I totally disagreed with and that may eventually be added to the list of disastrous tech predictions.

Hilton
First one article about the hotel industry: Hilton CEO Christopher Nassetta said “I strongly do not believe that they (AirBnB) are a major threat to the core value proposition we have.” He is confident that AirBnB is not stealing his hotel guests. Right, maybe not many yet, but given that AirBnB has far more rooms than Hilton, that will likely change soon.

I have stayed in AirBnB’s over the past years instead of staying in luxury hotels. And given that AirBnB is now focusing on the business market as well, Hilton could be in for a surprise. Mr. Nassetta stated that Airbnb cannot match the amenities that Hilton hotel rooms come with, so business travelers won’t stay there. If that’s really the main differentiator (it’s not, AirBnB has better choice, is often much cheaper, and has better facilities such as kitchens and laundry) that’s easy to solve. In China the first AirBnB clones with personal concierges and chefs have launched already, I am sure the US will see this soon as well. The hotel industry won’t change overnight, but it’s a process that is unstoppable. Good luck competing Hilton!

MoneyGram
Second, the remittance industry. MoneyGram, a huge global remittance company, doesn’t see Bitcoin as a threat. Peter Ohser, the executive vice president of business development feels digital currency doesn’t pose any threat or solve pressing problems. What? Does he not talk to his customers? Does he not follow what’s happening in the real world outside of MoneyGram and Western Union?

He believes existing payment behaviors are too entrenched, and that bitcoin is unlikely to offer enough utility, because people trust paper more than data and that behavior is not going to change (my emphasis). Especially that last sentence makes clear that he is out of sync with the real world. It reminds me of Kodak, that did not believe 15 years ago that people would stop using photo cameras with film. Well, I don’t think my kids even know what paper photos look like. Disruption happens fast Mr. Ohser. Good luck competing MoneyGram!

General Motors
Third, the car industry. I started my career at Daimler-Benz (now just called Daimler). I loved the company and did not believe it would ever lose its place as one of the top companies in the world. So far they haven’t and I still like the brand, but given how slow they are with implementing new technologies I wonder if they won’t lose their place to Google, Apple or companies like Tesla. I was in a Mercedes showroom last month, and although I loved the models I would not consider buying one of their cars anymore until they would have a pure electric car with a range like Tesla’s.

Bob Lutz, former vice chairman of GM, wrote a column for Road and Track with the title ‘Is Tesla Doomed‘? It is clear that he does not see what differentiates Tesla from the traditional car companies and he gives Elon Musk some fatherly advice: Cut costs and build a small car with a hybrid drivetrain. I had to laugh at that. Because of its current investments in the Gigafactory and in the Model 3, Tesla will eventually print money. But if they would cut back costs now they would never be able to get there. The idea for a hybrid drivetrain is ridiculous, Tesla sets itself apart with its electric-only engines with a great driving range.

Next to that, Mr. Lutz compares Tesla’s showroom strategy to that of BMW in the 1970s, but totally misses that you can’t buy Tesla cars in a showroom and drive away (you order them and wait 2-3 months, or longer, so there are no inventories).

In a few hours Tesla will publish its Q3 results and they will likely show bigger losses. Not sure how the stock price will react (I believe investors expect it and it’s reflected in the current price), but I believe these losses are necessary for huge profits a few years from now. My biggest concern is that they can’t scale up production, but maybe that is something where the traditional players can help Tesla: as their future car parts suppliers! Then Tesla can focus on its software, R&D and design, just like Apple does (they don’t produce their own products either). I am long Tesla and fully believe in Elon Musk. Good luck competing General Motors!

I stopped following the Bitcoin price on a daily basis a couple of months ago, mainly because not much was happening to the price. I still read the analyses on the Internet and in Bitcoin chat groups on WeChat and Telegram, but I was waiting for a a big event to happen before Bitcoin would get into a major uptrend again.

That uptrend started just over a month ago, and since then the price has gone up by about 35%. Not a lot compared to the price increase 2 years ago, but very different from the boring horizontal price trend that Bitcoin has shown for most of the past year. There were 2 other rallies in February and in June/July, but this month’s price increase seems much more stable. No big up and downs, just a steady growth of 1-2% per day at much higher average volumes than we have seen since the Mt. Gox crash in early 2014.

But what caused this price increase? There was a chain of separate events over the past weeks that explains why Bitcoin is becoming more prominent again. I list the reasons below, with the most important one at the bottom.

– MMM Global Republic of Bitcoin: This is a ponzi scheme from Russia that is suddenly becoming very popular, especially in South Africa and Indonesia, but also in China. It promises people returns of 100% per month, which should be a clear sign that it’s a scam… The interesting thing is that people don’t transfer money in fiat currency anymore, but that they switched to Bitcoin. So a lot of people are starting to use Bitcoin now for the first time. I don’t think this has a big effect, but it could lead to a lot more people finding out about Bitcoin. Of course when the whole scheme eventually falls apart they will blame Bitcoin, even though the cryptocurrency has nothing to do with it.

– The European Union announced that Bitcoin is VAT-exempt, meaning that you can legally buy and sell it without having to pay tax on it, just like any other currency. This kind of news shows that governments are getting a lot closer to accepting Bitcoin as money and it gives people more confidence in the future -and the future value- of Bitcoin.

– Banks are working on private blockchains for their transfers and transactions and 25 of the world’s top banks (incl. JP Morgan, HSBC and Citi) have formed a blockchain consortium. This may seems like negative news for Bitcoin, because banks likely won’t use the Bitcoin blockchain, but I think the market sees it as a big net positive for 2 reasons. First, it’s better that they use a private blockchain than no blockchain at all, because they will learn how blockchains work and what they can be used for. And second, eventually banks will realize that public Bitcoin blockchain is far superior to any other private blockchain because it’s much more decentralized and secure. Private blockchains are a necessary step for banks to get into Bitcoin.

– Several money transfer companies that use the Bitcoin blockchain to instantly send money from one country to another have launched over the past months. I think this is the next big thing for Bitcoin, even though most people using these services won’t realize at first that their fiat currency to fiat currency transaction actually takes place over the Bitcoin blockchain. Companies to watch in this space are Abra, Coins.ph, Bitpesa and ZipZap, but many more will likely appear over the next 12 months. Banks will likely also get into this space as well, although they may not use the Bitcoin blockchain at first. If you have shares in Moneygram or Western Union it’s probably time to start selling them.

– NASDAQ is launching a private shares exchanges using the blockchain. This is a clear validation of Bitcoin technology and might eventually lead to NASDAQ using the blockchain for all its transactions. That will take a while, but this announcement came a lot quicker than I had imagined.

– The most important reason for the increase, however, is China. I was just watching all transactions happening on the major exchanges in the world, and about 80% of all Bitcoin transfers took place in China. This reminds me a bit of what happened exactly 2 years ago, during Bitcoin’s first mega rally. China led that rally until the government stepped in with a warning. Bitcoin was never banned, however, and the biggest Bitcoin exchanges in the world are still in China. It seems that more people in China have (re)discovered Bitcoin and are using it either as investment or as a tool to get their assets out of the country. The recent devaluation of the Renminbi was a sea change for China’s monetary policy. It was followed by a increased capital controls, including a crack down on underground banks and money transfer agents, making it even more difficult for money to leave the country. It seems therefore likely that Chinese are now increasingly using Bitcoin to transfer money out of the country, and I believe this is what is mostly driving prices up at the moment.

I stopped speculating about the Bitcoin price a long time ago, but looking at the volumes this seems like a very healthy uptrend that may continue for a while. On the other hand, if China suddenly decides to crack down on Bitcoin (hard to do, but still possible) prices may suddenly crash back to the lower 200s. I don’t really see that happening though, so I would not bet against Bitcoin right now.

For years I have been investing in (and on) p2p lending platforms such as LendingClub, Prosper and Dianrong, and I have been writing about it on this blog (e.g. see this post from 2012). Although people were skeptical at first a lot of my friends now invest part of their savings there, simply because returns are so much better than what you can get at banks or in other debt investments.

To give you an idea, at LendingClub I have made consistently over 8% net (=after write-offs) for years. I also invest in funds that do leveraged investments in platforms, where you make 3-4% per quarter (13-16% per year). These are fairly liquid investments, so your money is not tied up for years like in most of my other investments.

In China, where I am on the board of one of the leading marketplace lenders Dianrong.com, returns can be even higher. That’s mainly because there are no other sources of capital for most borrowers. Maybe I am biased, but I feel p2p lending is much more common in China than in N-America and Europe, especially because it’s so easy to lend money through mobile apps.

I think there are a couple of reasons why marketplace lending has taken off so fast globally and why it is better than traditional bank lending. Samir Desai, founder and CEO of Funding Circle, a UK based marketplace lender gave a talk at the Lendit conference in London this week in which he focused on this. I embed a video of his speech (via avc.com) and summarize his main points below.

Why are marketplace lenders better than traditional banks:

-P2P marketplace platforms don’t need to have money on their balance sheets to lend it to consumers. It’s direct p2p lending, so the platform has no inventory. In that way platforms are truly aligned with investors, for example they can’t invest in loans themselves, so there is no incentive not to put the best loans on the platform. Next to that it leads to platform being faster and cheaper.

– Platforms are completely transparant. On most platforms data about all originated loans is available in detail. Try that with traditional banks!

– Platforms only do loan origination and many platforms focus on a certain type of loans (e.g. student loans, or loans to specific categories of people). By doing this over and over and over again, they get better and better and better at it. That leads to even higher returns for investors.

– Platforms generally give the same investment opportunities to small and large lenders. It may be easier to lend as a big player because the platforms service you better, but if you are a savvy small investors you have access to the exact same loans at most platforms.

– Platforms have no systemic risk, because the maturity of the investments is the same as the maturity of the loans. This is very different from banks where short term deposits may be used for long term loans. In case of a bank run the whole bank may fall apart because of this mismatch, as was the case with Northern Rock in 2007-2008. On a p2p platform a bankrun is impossible because there is no maturity transformation.

Conclusion: P2P or marketplace lending is far superior to bank lending, is more secure, and has higher returns because of efficiency. We will therefore see a lot more growth in this kind of lending over the next couple of years. Being a shareholder in these platforms or putting money on these platforms as a lender will continue to give investors outsized returns.

I am a big believer that the near future will be full of self-driving cars. So Tesla’s announcement this week that it would roll out its first self-driving features in a software update to its cars was super exciting.

My business partner’s wife drives a Tesla Model S P85D (the one with the insane mode, going from 0-100 km/h in just 3.1 seconds) and her car received its autopilot update on Friday morning. Because of my Facebook posts about autonomous driving they dropped by my house today to show me the autopilot’s features. Of course I made some videos and I uploaded one here on Youtube.

Once you drive over 30 km/h you can turn on autopilot (by pushing the cruise control handle twice). At that moment the car keeps on driving the same speed (like in cruise control mode), but it also starts steering for you. On the highway that works very well and the car keeps its lane and adapts its speed to other cars in the same lane.

Also passing other cars is easy, you just turn on the your signal light, then the Tesla will check if there are no cars close to you and move over to the next lane.

It start getting tricky if you get to an area with construction though. At that moment the car gets confused, gives a warning and you have to immediately take over manual control. The current version of the Autopilot software is far from ready to drive through a construction area, and that’s kind of scary.

On secondary roads it’s even worse, because many streets don’t have outside lines or the middle lines are too faded. We had quite some problems using the autopilot features on two-lane roads and one time we even started to drive into the lane with oncoming traffic! Also the autopilot doesn’t recognize stop signs (they are everywhere in Canada) and traffic lights yet…

To be fair, the software is only in beta version and you should actually keep your hands on the steering wheel at all times. If you do that you can turn on autopilot on non-highways as well, but what’s the use of autopilot software if you still have to pay attention to the road?

My conclusion after a short test drive is that this is a major step forward in the direction of autonomous vehicles, but that this software is not ready for non-highway use yet. Maybe it’s useful in traffic jams downtown, but for now I would only use it on highways. For long distance drives it’s great though. Just put your destination in the GPS, start driving and once on the highway let the car take over the controls. Keep a thumb on the steering wheel and look up regularly (e.g. to see if there is construction ahead!), but you can then start doing other things as well.

I am a bit worried that we’ll see some accidents caused by Tesla drivers using autopilot software soon. Although Tesla makes clear that you are still responsible for your car, some people may not realize its current limitations and rely too much on the car not making mistakes. The autopilot will get constantly better because the cars send feedback about road conditions to Tesla, so if you’ll wait a few weeks it will likely be much safer already.

My current cars feel suddenly very old fashioned, my next car will likely be a Tesla.

This year’s Vancouver Marathon was not the best marathon I ever ran. A week before I could still hardly walk because of an injury, so I could not participate in the 10K Vancouver Sun Run. But I still decided to do the full 42.2 km marathon the weekend after that. The result was an even worse injury (but I finished, which is the only thing that counts), however, there was more.

I think our housekeeper washed my Vibram running shoes before the race, because while at the start I felt they were suddenly too small. During the race my big toe was very painful, but I continued anyway. I will spare you the details, but about 3 weeks later I lost my complete toenail because of this. I never realized how important even a toenail can be, I could not even swim for a few weeks because of that (too much pain).

But the strangest thing was that after the marathon my lower abdomen was hurting and it looked like I had suddenly grown a big tumor during the run. Kind of scary, so I went to see a doctor a few days later. He told me that it was a hernia, something that 10% of the people develop during their life, which was a bit of a relief. This marathon had been too much for my body it seems.

I did some research and managed to get an appointment with the best hernia doctor in Vancouver, Dr. Scudamore. He told me that it was an inguinal hernia. A surgery was not immediately necessary, but that not doing it could lead to potential complications such as strangulation (cutting off the blood supply to part of the body). Because the full recovery of such a surgery would be 6 weeks I decided to postpone the operation until after the summer (I wanted to go swimming and sailing in summer), and so last night I went in for my operation.

I have always been very healthy and never had an operation before. The only time I spent some time in a hospital was when Scott and Elaine were born in Shanghai. So I looked forward to it actually, I like to learn new things and this is the best way to observe how a surgery works.

While being tied to my bed in the operation room I asked the anesthesiologist a lot of questions and looked at all the monitors and other instruments surrounding me. I was put on an IV, which I had never experienced before. I was hungry and dehydrated (I had not eaten for 20 hours when I entered the hospital), but the IV makes you feel better soon. The view from the operation room was great, on the top floor of the building with windows all around and views over the city. Too bad I could not take a selfie!

Dr. Scudamore walked into the surgery room just before 7 pm (I already had a short chat with him 30 min before the operation in which I could ask him all kinds of questions) and informed the staff of the procedure. Then the anesthesiologist put a mask with 100% oxygen over my mouth and told me I would be asleep in 20-30 seconds. Breathing was kind of hard so I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. After 30 seconds I felt I was still not asleep and opened my eyes to tell the doctor that it did not seem to work. But I was surprised to see that I was suddenly in a different room and that the clock at the end of my bed showed it was an hour later! The surgery was over already and I had not noticed anything.

I felt fine and wanted to get up, but the post operation nurse told me to stay put. I was completely awake and asked her for something to read, but that was not possible. I had to lay down for at least another 45 minutes. That was very boring, because I felt great (thanks to the IV and all the medicine in my body) and I am not used to doing nothing for 45 minutes. There was a man in the bed next to me who had also had surgery and who seemed to be doing a lot worse. I could not see him because of curtains between the beds, but I understood that they had needed a lot more medicine to bring him to sleep and he was not in good shape when he had woken up right before me.

After a very boring 45 minutes in which I asked the nurse questions about the instruments, the surgery itself (the whole operation had lasted just 35 min), and post-operation procedures, and in which I was trying to come up with improvements for patients (why not put a simple muted TV screen above the bed to at least you can watch something without moving or hang some posters on the ceiling), I was finally allowed to get up. The nurse wanted to bring in a wheelchair but I said I wanted to try to walk myself. That went fairly well, but the nurse warned me that if I would fall she may not be able to catch me. After leaving the post-operation area I was told to go to the toilet (they don’t let you go until you prove you can do that!), which was kind of weird because the whole middle part of my body was completely numb.

Then another nurse came and put me in a wheelchair. I did not see the necessity for that but wanted to go home and just obeyed. She took me to Grace’ car and with some pain I managed to get in. I thought I would sleep most of the drive back home, but I was not tired and could even tell Grace how to drive (she prefers my directions over her navigation system).

At home I decided to walk around slowly instead of lie down because I felt fine. But all of a sudden my legs felt like jello and I fell backwards on the ground. I still don’t know what happened exactly, but it was a good lesson that I may feel okay but I was not yet okay just 2 hours after the surgery.

From then on I just sat down, had a lot of clear soup and then went to bed where I read some emails, wrote a couple of text messages and tried to read a book. By 11 pm I was supposed to take new painkillers, but I felt the pain was manageable so I did not take them yet.

The night was not easy because I could only lay in one position and woke up each time I moved. I was thinking about taking painkillers at 5 AM, but in the end decided to try to get through the night without them. The result was not much sleep, but I still felt quite rested. I also had a lot of time to think about the things I experienced in the hospital and what could be improved. Especially the information flow is quite limited, if you don’t ask you just don’t hear a lot of things. Also the waiting time at the hospital before the operation was unnecessary. Why let me arrive at 3:45 pm and not start the operation until 7 PM (I was told other operations took more time than planned)? Just give me a call in advance so I could have worked 2 hours longer. A simple app could have solved this. And maybe I am different from others, but I would have liked to see pictures or video of the operation, that would be a nice memory.

It’s now 9 AM, the kids are in school and I am sitting in the living room doing emails and WeChat messages. Pain is still manageable so I still haven’t touched my painkillers. I may do so later if I want to get some sleep, but if I can handle the pain without medicine I prefer that. Actually, the pain is a lot less than I thought. Several people told me it would hurt like crazy, but it’s actually not much worse than the pain during or after a full marathon. The main difference is that after a marathon you can lie down on your bed and feel much better, here the pain is very concentrated and doesn’t really stop.

Recovery will be quite slow, it will take about 3 weeks before I can do light activities again and it will take 6 weeks for a full recovery. Biggest problem is that I can’t drive for 2 weeks (time for self-driving cars!), but I believe I should be able to beat that time if I walk around a lot instead of hang on the couch. I am in pretty decent shape, so I assume that with healthy food and drinks my body should recover a lot more quickly than the average person would. We’ll see. At least it was an interesting experience that I actually enjoyed (I realize that might sound strange), I just wish there would be a bit less pain involved.

One of the things that I enjoy most is to talk about disruptive technological trends and how they will already impact our lives 5 years from now. I use this in my investment decisions, both for start-ups and for public companies.

One of the most interesting areas for me is how quickly autonomous car technology and robotics are developing. My vision on this has evolved quite a bit since I moved to Canada in 2013, especially my view on the time line in which changes will happen (within the next 4-5 years) and the effect of robotics (more positive than I originally thought).

Robotics and autonomous cars are actually the same thing, because an autonomous car is nothing more than a robot. I have predicted for years that robots will take over most of our daily tasks and that the majority of people will lose their jobs over the next 20 years. I now believe that this will go much faster, but I also believe that this does not need to lead to mass unrest if society prepares itself well for the coming changes. This post will focus on self-driving cars, I plan to write about the effect of mass unemployment later.

Autonomous cars are a good way to explain the effects of robotics to people, because most of us use cars and can understand the changes that self-driving cars will bring. Within 5 years the first completely autonomous vehicles will hit the road (in 2013 I thought it would be in 2023, now I think it will already be by 2019-2020). Many cars already have limited self-driving features and these show how far we have come over the past years.

Last month my wife bought a new car with some of these self-driving features and it’s quite interesting to try them out. Among others her car can parallel park itself or it can back into a parking spot. It is kind of scary the first time you use it, and I even braked because I thought her new car would hit the car next to us (message from the car: “please release the brake”), but once you have done it a few times you realize the car is a much better parker than most humans.

The car also has automatic brakes in case the car in front of you suddenly slows down. When I was testing her car I drove up to a stop sign where a car was waiting in front of me of me. I saw that the car would start driving because there were no other cars at the intersection, so I drove up to him quite fast. About 15 meters before the stop sign, and right at the moment the other car started driving, Grace’ car suddenly took over the controls and started braking hard while making a beeping sound. It was very strange when it happened, but it’s actually assuring that the car forces you to drive more carefully.

For me the big take away is how quickly you get used to these features. It makes driving easier and safer, and after using them a few times it feels totally normal. I think that once cars will become more autonomous we will immediately accept it and will let the car do all the driving.

It will change the way cars look and feel. I don’t believe that fully autonomous cars will need a steering wheel and pedals. Once you have given control to your car you won’t feel the need to drive yourself anymore. That’s the mistake the big car manufacturers seem to be making, most still believe that people will want cars where you can take over from the computer if needed. It reminds me of the first cars in the late 1800’s that looked like coaches, so you could still put a horse in front of the it! Google doesn’t have this bias and its autonomous vehicle prototypes are just sit-and-go, without any controls for passengers. They redesigned the concept of a car bottom-up and that may turn out to be a very smart move.

Given how much better electric cars have become over the past 3 years (Tesla cars are among the very best vehicles on the road right now) and how quickly battery technology and solar power are developing, my prediction is that the first autonomous cars will be completely electric. No more engines with moving components that need maintenance and can break down easily, but a simple but powerful battery powered car.

This will have huge implications for the car industry, because many companies are still focused on gas- or diesel-powered engines, instead of focusing all their energy on electric technology. But not just that, once autonomous vehicles become widely available, car sharing concepts will take off and the whole automotive market will collapse. Why do you need 2-3 cars per household if these cars sit in parking lots 95% of the time?

I believe that most people won’t own cars anymore but will subscribe to an Uber-like concept in which an autonomous vehicle will show up at your door whenever you need one. The number of cars will go down dramatically and if you are the operator of a parking garage you might as well start looking for a new career. Self-driving cars will park themselves outside of city centers to recharge their batteries, or more likely, immediately drive to the next person that needs a ride.

Costs will be much lower than current taxi services, because there are no human drivers involved anymore (the majority of the costs for a taxi are salaries), because cars will become much cheaper (mass-produced luxury taxis without complicated engines will probably be produced for $15-20,000, and because of their electric engines you can drive them for more kilometers than normal cars) and because they don’t need expensive gas anymore (with better solar power and batteries the variable costs of driving will go down to almost zero).

My prediction: transportation will become almost free. Hard to imagine right now what impact that will have, but for sure it will change the way we live. People might start to live further away from downtown for example. And supermarkets may disappear because ordering online will be faster and cheaper (immediate delivery, no delivery costs, and the supermarket doesn’t need expensive real estate).

Traffic jams will disappear, not necessarily because there will be less cars on the road, but mainly because autonomous cars drive more efficiently (no sudden brakes) and will communicate with each other so that traffic lights are not necessary anymore. Check out this YouTube video to understand what will happen in intersections when you only have self-driving cars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7_lwq3BfkY This assumes that there are no human driven cars anymore, which will not happen 5 years from now, but it will be the case in 15 years. Possibly older cars will be have to retrofitted with autonomous systems or they will not be allowed to drive during rush hour or on certain roads.

Another big advantage is that there won’t be many accidents anymore. Driving is one of the most dangerous activities, but that will change once autonomous vehicles take over. Insurance companies should take this into account, if you are a car insurer your business may go away over the next couple of years.

I am very positive about the changes that will happen in the automotive industry over the next years and the additional freedom and free time it will give many of us. It will completely disrupt some industries but it will also create a lot of new opportunities. I look forward to these changes and hope to drive (or better: be driven in) an autonomous car by 2020.

Over the past days I have been closely following the ad blocking discussion. For those who did not pay too much attention to it, the issue is that Apple released iOS9 and that this version allows ad blocking apps. That means that by installing one of these apps you won’t see ads anymore.

Great, right? Well, maybe yes, because it makes the user experience better, but also maybe no, because ads are the main revenue driver for most websites on the Internet. Within a day the top paid apps in the app store were ad blocking apps, so there clearly was a big need for it.

I don’t want to go into too much detail, but it means that many websites will need a different business model if they want to survive. The current model where you are often bombarded with ads that you do not want to see or that load much more slowly than the site itself is not working. It’s the ad industries fault, because they assumed consumers could not avoid the ads. With more relevant ads, that are less annoying, load faster and don’t block part of the site, I believe people would be less inclined to download ad blockers.

I never put any ads on this blog (and never will), nor did I ever accept any paid posts, because I blog for fun and make my money in other ways. Indirectly this blog has earned me a lot more than I could have ever made with ads, however. That’s my business model, but obviously that doesn’t work for sites with high overheads.

Some websites charge monthly fees, which is a model I don’t believe in. The only paid subscription that I have is the New York Times, because their content is unique and far superior to that of most other newspaper websites. But I don’t want to pay a monthly fee for 10 to 20 blogs and media sites, so earlier this year I deleted all the ones that charge for content from my RSS reader.

I believe in a model like Blendle, where people pay for content on a per article basis. However, the model should be seamless (no ‘pay now’ button), ubiquitous (it should work on any paid website, not just a few) and you should pay less if you don’t finish reading the article. Next to that an article should be cheap, I think the Blendle articles (at on average $0.20 per article) are still too expensive.

I have talked about this for about 8 years already, but so far I have not found the business model that I am looking for. Partly because big companies like Apple (iTunes for News?) and Microsoft (Skype with its pre-paid credit would be a perfect candidate) didn’t see the market or did not want to enter it, or in the case of Google because it would hurt their main business: advertising.

But the main reason the model does not exist yet is that there was no good machine-to-machine payment tool that can automatically send and receive money. Until now that is, because yesterday 21 Inc. released the data for its upcoming “21 bitcoin computer“. This Raspberry Pi with an added black box is the first tool that can make machines talk to each other and exchange value (=bitcoin) between them. Each 21 bitcoin computer contains the full blockchain and mines bitcoin as well when you use it.

The 21 bitcoin computer is 21 Inc.’s first product, but there will be many more products to come. Their vision is that everybody will in the future own one of their devices and will automatically mine small amounts of bitcoin every day. This money can then be spent automatically on products developed with the 21 bitcoin computer.

The first use case I see for this right now is automatically paying for web content. You read an article on say The Wall Street Journal and automatically a few cents are deducted from your bitcoin wallet. You don’t need to approve it (you probably don’t even realize that you are paying) and you can never spend more than you mine, unless you add bitcoin to your wallet yourself. In case you don’t like the content and stop reading after a few seconds or if you don’t scroll to the end of the article, you’ll get a partial or full refund – all done automatically.

This will solve a big part of the current ad blocking problem, because it gives content owners a new business model. 21 Inc. could be the ad blocker of the future: turn it on and you don’t see ads, turn it off and you’ll be served ads. Anybody can monetize their own content in the future and there is a huge opportunity here for a start-up.

Although lots of people dismiss 21 Inc.’s bitcoin computer (too expensive, ugly, just a Raspberry Pi, you can’t earn money with their chip, etc.), I think they are missing the bigger picture: we finally have an Internet protocol for payments! Automatic machine-to-machine payments will lead to new business models which will change the web as we know it. It’s hard to predict the future of the Internet, but I believe automatic payments are almost as disruptive as the first webbrowser was. Changing the online ads business model will just be a first step.