On Sunday I did the Vancouver Marathon, which was a painful experience. I ran a couple of marathons over the past years, but this one was by far the wettest and coldest, and as a result my time was not great (3 hours 52 min for the 42.2 km). Until the halfway point things went very well, I managed to stay in the 3:30 pace group and at 21.1 km we clocked 1 hour 44 min. Around km 24 there was a hill where I slowed down a bit, but I could not get back to the group afterward. From that point onwards the run became harder and harder, and the last 10 km around Stanley Park were not fun. I was so cold and wet that my muscles started to cramp and every step hurt. Anyway, although the time could have been better I managed to finish.

After the race I walked over to my boat which was moored close to the finish line. I put the heating as high as possible and took a hot shower. Slowly my body temperature went back up and after an hour I felt okay again. I recharged my phone, had a lunch on board and took a short nap, before repacking my things to drive to the airport and catch a flight to San Francisco. Because I wasn’t sure what airline I was flying I wanted to call Grace from the car to check it for me, but I decided to just look at the screens at the airport. I wish I had called her, because now I only found out while checking in that I did not have my phone with me…

I checked FindMyiPhone on my iPad and noticed that the phone was still on the boat. It was too late to drive back and pick it up, so I went through US immigration at Vancouver airport without my phone. I never realized how important a phone is for my daily life, you take it as a given that you have one on you all the time. During the past 3 days in San Francisco I realized that I am sort of addicted to it. I keep on checking my jeans pockets for my phone for example, even though I know I don’t have it with me.

If I want to take pictures (which I normally do continuously, many of them end up on my Flickr photostream) I normally use my phone, but now I can’t do that. Luckily I have my iPad mini with me, but it’s different. Its camera is not as good and it feels more awkward to take pictures with it, but at least I can record some of the things that I see. I also normally don’t walk around town with my iPad because it does not fit in my pocket. Next to that my iPad does not have a data SIM card in it, so I need wifi to go online. So outside the hotel I can’t check my email, use Google Maps or upload pictures to Flickr, FB, Twitter or WeChat.

Without a phone you’re more focuses on the here & now, I realized I was less distracted during the Lendit 2014 conference by incoming mails or messages. That’s a positive thing and can of course also be achieved by putting the phone in do not disturb mode (I may actually do that more often). But the downside is that you miss your ‘second brain’. I am so used to quickly checking things on my phone during conversations, for example when talking about a person I like to find out how I got to know the person or what email exchanges we had. Or while talking about a certain company I normally quickly check their website or their Crunchbase profile.

When you don’t have a phone you notice much more that others do have phones and are constantly using them. While at the Lendit conference everyone around me was using their phones, and in a way I felt left out. During the breakfasts, lunches and dinners many of the people were on their phones at least part of the time. I normally would not notice that because it’s normal and I do it myself as well, but without a phone you suddenly realize this.

The good thing is that it’s quiet without a phone, because nobody can interrupt me with a phone call or a text. But I also feel a bit guilty, because I know I am missing a lot of calls and texts and people probably don’t understand why I don’t get back to them. In a way it was an interesting experience but I look forward to having my phone back in a few hours in Vancouver. I don’t think I will easily forget my phone another time when traveling!

Earlier this week I was invited to a talk by Peter Diamandis at the Vancouver Aquarium (thanks for the invite Praveen). I read a lot about Peter and his activities over the years but I had never attended one of his talks, so I was very excited to see him in real life.

In case you don’t know Peter Diamandis, he is a well-known serial entrepreneur who among others co-founded companies like the X Prize Foundation and Singularity University. He is both an engineer (MIT) and a physician (Harvard) who thrives on disruptive technologies that can change the world and outer space. And he is a great speaker!

The event was extremely inspiring to me and was probably among the best presentations that I have ever seen because of the topics he discussed. It’s one of those talks where I could imagine that one might end up quitting his/her job right after the presentation – at least when you happen to work for a large company in a job where you are not doing anything that could potentially change the world. I am lucky that in my daily business life I am able to make a difference in at least some of the investments that we do, but not nearly as much as Peter is doing.

In his talk Peter discussed 3 topics, Exponential Technologies, Incentive Competitions and Abundance. I will try not to go into too much detail, but just write down some of his statements and examples, and combine those with my own thoughts.

Exponential Technologies

The world’s biggest problems are the world’s biggest opportunities. Humans are linear thinkers but technology is exponential (=doubling year over year), which leads to disruptive stress and opportunities: 10 years from now 40% of the Forbes 500 companies will likely no longer exist!

As a VC I see new ideas every day and I see the world changing around me, but most people are so focused on their daily lives that they totally miss what’s happening out there. Especially large companies underestimate the rate of change in technology, they think that they can keep up with their R&D, but that’s a big mistake.

A good example is the digital camera. The first digital camera was developed in 1976. Between 1976 and 2014 the resolution of a digital camera increased 1000 times, the camera has become 1000 times lighter and the device is 1000 times cheaper. That means that current cameras are 1 billion times better than the first ones developed. But the exponential growth does not stop here of course, technology keeps on improving so in a few years from now resolution, size and price will be many times better than they are today. Fascinating!

The same thing you see with sensors, they are so cheap and small nowadays compared to just a few years ago, that they can be used for things that nobody thought of before. Artificial intelligence and robotics are other examples where you see exponential growth. My kids may never need to get a driver’s license because by then all cars will drive themselves. Is that boring? No, not only does it save you a lot of time (it’s like having a private driver, something I sometimes miss from China), but autonomous cars can race as well as you can see in this YouTube clip.

Artificial intelligence develops so fast that supercomputers like Watson can now easily win game shows like Jeopardy from human beings. Last month at SXSW Watson was given 35,000 cooking recipes and information about 1000 chemical flavor compounds. Based on this it created amazing recipes, for example with unusual combinations of chocolate, coffee and garlic. A normal chef would likely never try these, meaning that Watson is in a way more creative already than expert human beings. And this is just the beginning!

Peter gave 5 critical insights that he discusses with multinationals that are spot on in my opinion:
– The rate of innovation is exploding
– Innovation comes from everywhere
– If you don’t disrupt yourself, someone else will
– Competition is no longer a multinational overseas
– If you depend on innovation inside your company you are dead

So where do you source your innovation? Well, for example through incentive competitions!

Incentive Competitions

I am not sure if Peter is the inventor of incentive competitions, but for sure he is the one who made the concept big with the X Prize Foundation. It basically means that you define a challenge and give a huge prize for the person who can first solve the problem. The first and probably most well-known example is the Ansari X Prize for the first team that would be able to send a 3 person crew to space (=at least 100 km altitude) twice within 2 weeks. The winner would get $10 million. The result: 26 teams participated and together spent more than $100 million, and within 8 years a team won the prize. In total there were 10 billion media impressions worth more than $120 million because of the competition!

It turns out that giving a huge incentive can solve a lot more challenges that otherwise may be neglected, and that’s what Peter is working on with the X Prize Foundation. He focuses on big problems, for example putting people on the moon (the Google Lunar X Prize, $30 million dollar prize)or finding better ways to clean up oil spills (the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge, the winner improved the technology by a factor 6!).

Other examples of prizes that have been launched or will soon be launched are for example a prize to increase global literacy, a competition to make carbon dioxide from waste into an asset, one to predict earthquakes, and a prize to cure Alzheimer’s.

It’s amazing to hear him talk about these grand challenges. Big companies are not interested or not smart enough to solve these problems, but incentive competitions might do the job. They tap into the world’s smartest people and cost a fraction of what it would cost corporations to try to do this.

Incentive competitions can be used for both local and global problems, and for that reason Peter helped to co-found another company, HeroX. This business calls itself the world’s problem solving platform and already has quite a number of interesting ideas and challenges on it. It’s as simple as defining a goal, fund the challenge (through name sponsors for example) and others might solve the problem. I love the idea!

Abundance

The third and final theme that Peter talked about was Abundance: the future is better than you think. This is also the title of a book that he wrote (and that I bought but did not read yet), in which he argues that the progress that we make in exponential technologies will allow us to make greater gains in the next 20 years than in the past 200 years. Every basic need of all human beings on this planet can soon be met and we will live in a world of abundance.

I tend to be a bit more pessimistic about whether we can achieve this, but according to Peter that is likely because of the negative tone in the media. He says that media are drug pushers: we are fed massive amounts of negative news, because that’s what people pay more attention to. The ratio of negative to good news is 10:1 according to him.

I feel we are on a downward slope in the way we rob our planet from its natural resources and hope it’s not too late to make changes. But Peter is very optimistic and is sure that technology will solve all problems.

Energy? The sun provides 5000 times as much energy as we need, we just need to find a way to tap into it. Not enough water? We are close to new technologies that can make salt water or even highly polluted into drinking water for just 1 cent per liter. Three billion people will come online in the next 10 years and because of the Internet we will able to tap into their collective minds to find solutions for the world’s problems.

I for sure hope he is right, and given his achievements he may very well be. It’s quite something what he has done in his life so far and he keeps on working on new things. Like I said at the beginning of this post, I am very inspired by him and I hope to learn more from him at a Singularity University program later this year.

(Picture source: Reddit)

This is not investment advice, but just my personal opinion!

After China made it even harder for Bitcoin exchanges to do business the price dropped significantly today. Lots of people who don’t follow Bitcoin on a daily basis are probably afraid that this is the beginning of the end, but I completely disagree with that. This blog post gives some background on what I see happening in the market right now and where I think Bitcoin prices will go.

The past couple of days I was in New York City for the Bitcoin conference there (see here for coverage on Coindesk, day 1, day 2). It was a very different conference from the ones that I attended in Las Vegas (Dec. 2013) and Miami (Jan. 2014), because the audience were mainly people from the financial world and lawyers.

Bitcoin is growing up quickly and not everybody likes that. The Bitcoin pioneers love the cryptocurrency because they do not like the financial system and want a (semi-) anonymous currency. However, the recent months have shown that the financial system is slowly getting interested in Bitcoin and governments are starting to regulate it. That is something the early adaptors are not too happy with, but which is probably unstoppable.

A few pioneers who were at the conference were clearly not amused with what was said on stage in most of the panels and keynotes, and in a way I felt a bit sad for them. They truly believe in freedom without regulations, and they had not expected that Bitcoin would develop in the direction of a regulated asset. At least they probably got rich from the coins they mined or bought when prices were still at much lower levels.

I think regulations are a good thing if Bitcoin wants to become a global currency or a new asset class. At the Miami conference I already mentioned on stage that I think regulations are necessary in order to make Bitcoin big. Without it venture capitalists will be hesitant to invest in it and the financial institutions won’t touch it. I therefore think it’s positive that there is some more clarity on how Bitcoin will be treated and taxed by financial authorities. The downside is of course that people will need to pay taxes on their Bitcoin (capital gains tax), at least in the US.

Now that initial regulations are in place I think a new era of Bitcoin has started. The past 4 months have seen a gradual decline in Bitcoin prices, mainly due to the potential ban of Bitcoin in China, but also due to the non-stop flow of negative news about Bitcoin. A lot of the early entrepreneurs turned out to be frauds, crooks or criminals, and even some of the newer ones seem to be doing the same thing (unfortunately the CEO of the Cyprus Bitcoin bank NEO BEE seems to be the next example).

Most of the decline in price is due to the fact that speculators left the market and that the Chinese BTC holders are selling their coins. People see the news, don’t fully understand it, get scared and decide to sell their holdings. Typical behavior in a market crash.

Bitcoin has shown that it is quite resilient. After the Mt. Gox disaster many people predicted the price would go back to mid-2013 levels ($100), but that did not happen. Each time the price dropped others started buying. That happened for a while at the $400 support level, but that was broken today. Nobody knows what will happen over the next days (especially China news can give BTC another dip), but because there is a lot of smart money waiting to buy in I think it might be back above $400 sooner rather than later.

The short term is not so interesting, however. Where it gets interesting is what will happen to prices once Wall Street gets on board. After the New York conference it’s not a question anymore of whether it will happen but only of when it will happen. It seems almost inevitable to me.

And what does that mean for the long term price of Bitcoin? In my opinion it’s simple: the only way is up! It’s Economics 101, supply and demand. There are currently only 12.5 million BTC on the market, which gives BTC a market cap of around $5 billion. That is nothing, it’s about the same as the value of Youku Tudou right now. But if you compare how much the media and analysts write about Youku Tudou and how much they write about Bitcoin it is clear there is a huge discrepancy there!

Out of these 12.5 million BTC maximum 1 million coins are in the float (meaning that they are not stored in cold storage wallets by investors, but that they can be traded). If Wall Street gets in these firms will not invest just a million dollars in the currency. They may start off relatively small with maybe $20-50 million in BTC for the early firms. But what will happen if a few firms would do that?

It’s simple, if supply is more or less fixed and demand goes up, the price has to go up. I learned that an order of 1000 BTC (less than $400,000) can already move the Bitcoin price up by $10. What will happen if people try to buy 10,000 or 100,000 BTC? The price will have to go up. The float is too small and in order to convince others to sell BTC the price has to go up even further.

The exact same thing happened when China entered the Bitcoin game in October and November this year: the price went up 10 times from $120 in early October to $1200 in early December because of increased demand. In my opinion this will happen again, but then the price won’t stop at $1200.

When will this be? That’s anybody’s guess, but I would not be suprised if we will see the start of it this year already. What’s needed is a trigger, until then the price might remain quite flat. It looks like Bloomberg might add Bitcoin data to its terminals in the near future, which could be the first trigger for the financial world. Once prices start increasing they may quickly go up 5-10 times again, just like a few months ago. A price of $3000-4000 at the end of this year is therefore not unlikely if instruments to invest in BTC become available (they are not there yet).

At a cocktail party at SecondMarket’s headquarters in NYC

At the conference predictions were made about the long term fair value of Bitcoin and insiders like the Barry Silbert (CEO of SecondMarket) think that the price may go to $500,000 or even $1 million per coin if BTC becomes a new asset class. These figures are mind boggling right now, but because BTC is so scarce and truly unique it may indeed happen one day (within the next 10 years according to some well known people in the Bitcoin space). I personally don’t see that happen yet, but because of limited supply and potentially huge demand it is theoretically possible.

For me buying BTC is almost comparable to buying a call option right now: there is limited downside (you can lose your investment, but not more than that), but the potential upside is virtually unlimited. And Bitcoin has an advantage over a normall call option in that there is no expiration date!

Despite the lower prices and all the problems Bitcoin faced over the past months I remain extremely bullish on the cryptocurency. The New York conference convinced me even more of the fact that more regulation will be a very positive thing and could lead to a price explosion.

Rockefeller Center, NYC

There are still risks that Bitcoin could be ‘banned’, but the more regulators and governments learn about Bitcoin the smaller that chance is. There is also a chance that other altcoins could take over, but because of the network effect I don’t really see that happening either. A fatal flaw in the Bitcoin protocol is still possible of course, but it’s more and more unlikely and the community has shown that they can solve these problems if they occur.

We live in interesting times and I will keep following Bitcoin news closely over the next couple of months!

The Find My iPhone app

When we were staying in the Legoland Hotel 2 weeks ago I could not find my iPad mini. I looked everywhere for it, but it seemed I had lost it somehow. I knew I had used it the night before in our hotel close to Disneyland, but I was quite sure that I had not left it in the room. I used to travel so much that I have a standard routine of checking my hotel rooms before checking out and I normally don’t forget anything.

Luckily I had the Find My iPhone app installed on my laptop, so I ran it to see where my iPad was. Turns out it was still in the Hyatt Regency next to Disneyland. I had not idea how I could have missed it and I questioned Scott whether he had hidden it somewhere. He had done that once with my iPhone: I thought I lost it in Whistler but he had hidden it in his playroom and had totally forgotten about it.

I remembered using the iPad before going to sleep the night before. I normally read the New York Times from the next day (that’s the advantage of living in the Pacific Coast time zone) and that’s what I did there as well. But I could not remember what I had done with it after that.

Hyatt Regency Orange County

I called the Hyatt Regency to check whether they had found the iPad, but they said the cleaning staff had not seen it and there was no iPad at lost and found either. I normally tip the cleaners well (also when leaving the hotel), so I hoped that they would hand in an iPad that they would find.

With the Find My iPhone app you can play an alarm on the iPad, but because it was quite late already I decided not to do that. New guests had checked into our suite already and I did not want to wake them up or scare them late at night.

The next morning we called hotel security again and they sent someone to the room. There were no guests present in the room, but the security person did not want to enter. He listened at the door while we played a sound on the iPad, but he said he did not hear anything. My app, however, showed that the iPad was still in the hotel and very likely still in our room (the app is quite accurate with the location).

I decided to forget about it, but when the kids were in bed at night I started to play the sound again remotely. From about 8 pm to 10 pm I played the iPad alarm every 15 minutes, but nobody seemed to hear the device. I put a text on the iPad screen as well, offering a $100 reward to the person who would find it (in case the cleaners had found it and had hidden it this may be an incentive to hand it in).

The next day we drove to Palm Springs. I could see on my iPhone that my iPad’s battery was draining quickly, it was below 10% during the drive and less than 5% after we arrived in Palm Springs. I had sort of given up on the iPad and wanted to remotely wipe all data and apps from the device before it would be completely empty. But right before I did that I decided to let the alarm sound one more time.

Three minutes later my wife’s phone range and guess what: someone had heard the sound and found the iPad! A woman from Florida had checked into our former room and heard a sound coming from the room safe. Turns out that the iPad had ended up against the back wall of the safe, and I had not seen it while emptying it. The safe had been closed the day before, so security could not hear the sound.

My iPad was found!!!

I was very happy, especially because I had almost given up on the device. I offered the finder the $100 reward, but she said she was not interested in that and was just happy that I had my iPad back.

By sheer luck my parents had just landed in Los Angeles and would drive by close to Disneyland the day after, so I gave them a quick call. They did not mind to make a short detour and picked up the iPad for me the next day.

When I installed Find My iPhone a while ago I didn’t really think the app would be very useful, nor that I would ever need it. But it turned out to be the most ‘valuable’ app that I have, because without it I would have lost my iPad.

I was thinking about changing my iPhone and iPads to Android devices because of Apple’s rejection of all Bitcoin wallets (I hate Apple because of this and think they made a huge mistake), but after this experience I have become a bit more reluctant to change. Does Android have apps like this? I assume they do, but do they work as well as Apple’s own app? I have tried to switch to Android several times already over the past years (and some of these attempts are recorded on this blog), but so far I always went back to Apple.

Interestingly, after losing my iPad mini and finding it back I started using it more frequently. When you don’t have something you suddenly realize the value of it. I mainly used it for the New York Times and occasionally for Twitter, Facebook or to try out a new game. But now I also put NextIssue on there (Netflix for magazines) and I synced my Spotify playlists with it. Last night I was on a flight from Vancouver to New York and spent half the flight reading magazines on my iPad while listening to Spotify!

If you have iOS devices and don’t have Find My iPhone installed, do it right away. It’s free and it just works!

Laguna Beach, CA

Last year we stayed home during Spring Break, but this year we decided to take the kids to a warmer destination. We decided on California, because it’s in the same time zone as Vancouver and the flights are relatively short.

Scott’s favorite part of the park was Cars Land

We flew to Los Angeles where we started our holiday with a visit to Disneyland California. The kids had been to Disneyland Hong Kong a few times, but this was their first time to the park in Anaheim. Disneyland California is quite similar to HK, but the kids loved it anyway. We bought tickets for both Disneyland and the California Adventure park next door, and we visited both parks.

I personally like the California Adventure better than Disneyland. I had been there a few years ago with my sister during a road trip in California, and since then the park had grown a bit and now also includes Cars Land (from Scott’s favorite Disney movie Cars & Cars 2).

Scott and Elaine with Mater

What surprised me is how many obese persons there were in the park. Not just overweight, but really obese, in the sense that many of them needed an electric scooter to get around the park. So many people were using these things that it almost became normal to ride on one. Good for them I guess, but it’s kind of shocking to me. This kind of obesity is still a typical American thing (mainly thanks to the food and sedentary lifestyles), but I see a trend towards it in Europe and in China (especially with spoiled kids in one-child families) as well.

Because we booked quite late we could not get decent rooms in the Disney Resort anymore, but the Hyatt Regency where we stayed turned out to be a good alternative. Most people stay there for Disneyland, and the suite we booked had a bunk bed for the kids in their bedroom. They loved it, but it was a bit hard to get them to sleep the first night. The kids also loved the outdoor pool, so even after a full day in the resort they still insisted to go for a swim with me.

Legoland California Hotel, Carlsbad CA

After Disneyland we drove along the coast on Highway 1 to Carlsbad for a visit to Legoland. There we stayed in the Legoland Hotel, which was a big hit with the kids. Not only was every room full of great Lego models, but there were Lego bricks to play with in the room and the kids had their own TV next to their bunk bed. Our room had a medieval castle theme, and the decoration was very well done. We had a room next to the pool, so the first thing Scott wanted to do upon arrival was to swim. If you plan to go to Legoland with kids you should consider to stay in the hotel, it’s next to the park’s entrance and your kids will be very happy.

Entrance of Legoland California

Legoland itself is very different from Disneyland. It’s a great park for young kids, but for parents it’s less interesting. Everything feels a bit less well maintained, especially after just spending time at Disney where everything is perfect. The attractions are not as good, but the park entrance fees are also a lot lower than Disney. For young kids it doesn’t matter, however, and Scott and Elaine had a great time.

With Scott in one of the Legoland rides

After the 2 parks we drove to Palm Springs where we stayed in a villa with a nice pool. Palm Springs is one of those places that you either love or hate. 10 years ago I probably would not even think of going there, but right now I love it. The climate is great, 350 days of sunshine and it’s always warm (except maybe at night during the winter months). While we were there temperatures averaged about 28 Celsius during daytime, which I find very pleasant.

Palm Springs, CA

My parents also joined us in Palm Springs and it was nice to have them around. The main thing we did during the few days there was relax at the pool, play with the kids and have dinners in good restaurants. Palm Springs and Palm Desert have some very good restaurants, actually better than the restaurant scene in Vancouver (which is already not too bad). When the kids were in bed my dad an I often had a nice bottle of wine at the outdoor fire place in the back garden.

After running with my dad

We compensated the food and wine with some running. I found a nice 11 km route around the airport where there were hardly any traffic lights or side streets. My dad an I ran it a few times and one morning even ran the loop twice. Because Palm Springs is almost completely flat running was quite easy there, very different from the hilly courses that I normally run back home in Vancouver.

Grace went shopping a few times with my mom. There is a great designer outlet close to Palm Springs and El Paseo in Palm Desert can compete with Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Lots of high end brands of course, but also a lot of nice galleries. We didn’t buy any art this time because Scott and Elaine are not big fans of galleries, but maybe we’ll do so in the future. The cars on El Paseo are great as well, there were more Rolls Royce and Bentley Convertibles there than I had ever seen before in one day!

My temporary office in Palm Springs

I also did a bit of work, and created my own office in the shade in a corner of the backyard. From there I had a good view of the pool where the kids were normally playing, but they would not interrupt me too often.

Malibu Beach at sunset

We flew back home again from Los Angeles and spent the last night there. In the late afternoon we walked around Marina del Rey and Venice Beach and later had dinner in Malibu, which has some nice restaurants and obviously great ocean views. It was a nice end of a great holiday!

More pictures of our holiday here in a set on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chijs/sets/72157643198799293/

Bitcoin is far from dead in China and that was proven by the fact the Bitcoin exchange OKCoin just announced that they raised $10 million in a Series A round. I wrote an article on Coindesk about this, that I copy/paste below. The original article is here.

OKCoin, the exchange claiming to be China’s largest by trading volume, has announced a $10m Series A funding round.

The investment round was led by Ceyuan, one of China’s earliest venture capital firms, followed by Mandra Capital, VenturesLab and numerous high-profile angel investors.

Despite the nation’s recent crackdown on cryptocurrencies, it seems Chinese venture capitalists are still bullish on bitcoin exchanges and the currency itself.

Bitcoin in China

Back in November 2013, the focus of the bitcoin community was on China – the world’s hub for bitcoin trading. At that time, BTC China was the biggest exchange in the world, having managed to raise a $5m Series A funding round from Lightspeed Venture Partners (Snapchat, Nest). There were even rumours that a bigger round was in the works for the young company.

However, things change quickly. After the Chinese government began regulating bitcoin in December, trade volume plummeted and the world’s top exchange was no longer Chinese.

Local exchanges came up with creative solutions for customers to continue to buy and sell bitcoin, and players like Huobi and OKCoin claimed to pass BTC China in their daily trade volume, although these figures have been the subject of much dispute.

OKCoin has grown rapidly over the past few weeks and is now the biggest Chinese exchange, according to its CEO Star Xu. He claims the exchange’s current daily trade volume is approximately 50,000 bitcoins per day.

Interestingly, on top of that, the exchange allegedly trades 5 million litecoins per day. The company claims that at its peak it reached over 300,000 bitcoin and 13 million litecoin trades.

Future growth

Mr Feng Bo, founder and partner at Ceyuan, commented that he has a tremendous amount of confidence in the future of bitcoin and the continued growth of OKCoin:

“We are delighted to invest in the pioneer of China’s bitcoin exchanges; given the company’s leadership under Star Xu and his team, we know there is much more good news ahead.”

Ceyuan is a well-known fund with investments in successful Chinese companies like Qihoo 360 (NASDAQ: QIHU), Light in the Box (NASDAQ: LITB), UC Web andVANCL – among others.

Interestingly, Silicon Valley investor Tim Draper was involved in the round, as a partner of VenturesLab. He and his son Adam remain active in bitcoin-related investments, mainly via Adam’s Boost.vc incubator where Tim is a mentor. Tim also invested in OKCoin’s angel round.

OKCoin overseas

The investment in OKCoin will be used to expand the team, fund product research and development, further security enhancements, but also to expand OKCoin’s operations beyond China.

This a different strategy from the other Chinese exchanges and it may prove to be a smart move, given the current regulations in the state.

Mark Mai, VentureLab’s China partner, stated that as the regulatory environment in regions such as Singapore, the US and Hong Kong becomes clearer, it will open up opportunities for OKCoin to operate in geographies where it can offer maximized safety and protection for OKCoin clients.

Mai said that the growth of virtual currency is inevitable, and that many countries are coming to terms with the fact that they have to regulate these currencies, because their citizens are using them regardless.

He added that OKCoin welcomes oversight because he believes it will help the company to serve its customers better, allowing them to open up regulated bank and trading accounts so it can engage in third-party clearance and settlement.

All eyes will be on OKCoin’s global expansion in these uncertain times. Will the exchange make it as a large player outside China? Only time will tell.

A new cryptocurrency was created in February, the Auroracoin. It is comparable to Bitcoin (actually it’s based on Litecoin, but that would be too technical for this blog post) and on March 25 every citizen of Iceland will get 31.8 Auroracoins. For free. Just by using their ID number.

That in itself is an interesting experiment, because what will happen when everybody gets a small amount of a crypto currency? Will people start using it and create a second economy or will it not take off? When I first heard about it last month I did not really believe it would work but I still followed the coin a bit.

When Auroracoin was launched the value was very small, so 31 coins did not have a lot of value. But then something unexpected happened: people outside Iceland started to buy the currency before it was even distributed to the citizens of Iceland and the price shot up. Last Friday it was worth about $7 I think, so the total value of the 31 coins would be about $220. At that amount of money it would be likely that most people would claim their coins and maybe start using them.

But what happened over the weekend is unbelievable. The coin’s price exploded, and from $7 on Friday it is now worth over $66 per coin! (Update: while writing this post the price went up to $80 per coin!!!) That means that each person in Iceland will suddenly get over $2000 at the current market value. What might happen now, is that most people will sell the coins the moment they receive them and so the price will plummet. And of course traditional media will pick up the story saying that a Bitcoin experiment showed that people do not want to use Bitcoin.

Or something else might happen: maybe, just maybe, the hackers who created Auroracoin are just some very smart guys who created a hype to get rich quickly. The total value of the coins that they created last month is now worth over $700 million. Today over $17 million was traded, so they have a huge incentive to just forget about the whole experiment and slowly start selling their coins. They could earn a few million dollars per day over the next 22 days (until the coin should be launched on March 25). Not bad for a few weeks of work.

I am not saying that this will happen, but after the Mt. Gox disaster last week nothing surprises me anymore. It turns out that the name of the person that created the coin does not exist in reality. That does not mean that this is a scam, because Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s creator is also a pseudonym. Coincidentally Sathoshi holds about 1 million Bitcoins which as today’s market prices is alos worth about $700 million!

Let’s just say there is a big incentive for the creators not to distribute the coins and make themselves rich beyond belief. If they decided to do so, probably nobody would even be able to sue them. The perfect financial crime!

We will find out on March 25 whether the so-called Iceland airdrop will really take place. I personally think it will happen (I still believe that most people are intrinsically good), but I would not be surprised if the whole idea turns out to be a big scam.

Today Youku Tudou released its Q4 2013 results and the online video site is now officially profitable! It’s almost 10 years ago since I entered this sector, at that time I had not expected that it would take so long to reach this milestone. Although I have not been involved in the company for quite some time it’s still a nice feeling to see that the company is doing so well.

I dialed in on the earnings call a few hours ago and was impressed with how the company is doing and with their expectations and plans for 2014. The share price immediately reacted, during regular hours it went up by 3% and after the results were published by another 8.5%. Let’s see what will happen when Wall Street opens on Friday!

I am quite happy with this and from the pictures on Weibo I can see that the people at Youku Tudou are also celebrating this result in their office.