20 Quotes by Olaf Carlson-Wee

We are seeing entrepreneurs issuing their own blockchain-based tokens to raise money for their networks, sidestepping the traditional, exclusive world of venture capital altogether. The importance of this cannot be overstated - in this new world, there are no companies, just protocols.

If you want to buy $10 of Ethereum and poke around with smart contracts, I encourage that. But use it as a technology, not as an investment, unless you know what you're doing.

This is unproven technology, and if you don't know what you're doing, you shouldn't interact with tokens - from an investor and security perspective.

Taxes have been complicated. Every single time I spend a Bitcoin, it's a taxable event. It's like I bought and sold an asset. It counts as an investment, with a short- or long-term capital gain or loss.

There will be many types of assets codified into the blockchain, and they are all not just going to be on the bitcoin blockchain - it's going to be a number of different assets here. And the best way to invest in that is a diversified portfolio.

It doesn't always make sense to have a token on the blockchain that is both useful and represents ownership - it has to be something where there's a network effect. That's why I cite Facebook as an example of what could be disrupted more so than, say, Amazon - which is bit more centralized and is not exactly a network of users in the same way.

For the first time, entrepreneurs can monetize their own open-source and peer-to-peer network. They can crowdfund and raise money from people across the world on the Internet in crypto-currency.

VCs are used to being the gatekeepers of capital. There's this old narrative of entrepreneurs going hat in hand begging VCs for money. That absolutely is not the world we're in anymore.

It's like the American democratic system. When you vote, even if your candidate doesn't win, you accept that democracy was in action. When people participate in a Tezos network, they're accepting that the democratic vote of the other coin holders will govern the way the protocol moves.