@bentossell

Coinbase: Very long on this company. I have a number of close friends at the company and am continuously amazed at how hard people there work. They are growing at an insane rate. I would not be surprised if they end up bigger than Facebook.

Rare bits: Again, I may be biased because I am friends with the founders, but I think Rarebits is on the right side of a trend, i.e. the rise of digital collectibles on chain. Growing a marketplace business is very hard (chicken and egg problem exists in many cases) but tremendously powerful when you get it right. Many of the biggest companies out there are marketplaces.

Cointracker: I've been really impressed with the product so far. I've tested a number of tax products and I think their UX is the most pleasing / intuitive. I'm also a big believer in team-first, and the fact that the founders responded to me over email within 5 minutes, at 6pm on a Friday no less, is likely a positive signal for them.

@soonaorlater I actually believe Cryptokitties are a widely misunderstood phenomenon. I believe gaming and non-fungible blockchain-based assets will be some of the first consumer applications that really hit mainstream. It's also incredibly cool that something like 25% of their user base are people who had never held ETH before - so it's a great onramp for non crypto-natives. I discuss this more in depth on Laura Shin's podcast Unchained, which you can listen to here: http://unchainedpodcast.co/unconfirmed-ep008-arianna-simpson-of-autonomous-partners-on-privacy-cryptokitties-and-crypto-regulation

@dstuecken Infrastructure! Sounds boring, but until we solve things like security, scalability, and more, it'll be very hard to have a rich ecosystem.

@dstuecken @AriannaSimpson Yep, totally! As a tech-guy I am also very excited about this 😊

@samkurtis I'm an investor in about 40 non-crypto companies, so a lot to list! Let's focus on consumer healthcare: Simple Contacts (https://www.simplecontacts.com/), Lively (https://livelyme.com/), and Stork Club (https://joinstorkclub.com/) are a few of my favorites.

@samkurtis @AriannaSimpson Thanks. What about the public listed companies?

@jonathanmarcus Hah -- unfortunately network is indeed the answer! I have a few investors with whom I frequently share deals, who have good deal flow and with whom I share a general view of the world. I am also in a number of Telegram groups -- only one has truly proven valuable so far though.

@AriannaSimpson Thanks for the color!

@KHaaayes I have been spending a lot of time thinking about and exploring the universe of exchanges. Right now, I think the most interesting DEX project is 0x, because it enables a rich ecosystem of financial applications beyond just exchanges. When you talk to traders at major hedge funds who have quietly spun up crypto trading desks, I think we are far off from them moving over to DEXs. This is partly due to performance issues (which will eventually be solved) and partly due to compliance / regulatory issues (unclear how this piece shakes out). So the happy medium may be the ability to trade non-custodially on a centralized exchange. I'm advising a company called Commonwealth Crypto which is doing really cool work in this area.

@ErlichLisztman I'm a big fan of Blockstack - cofounders Ryan and Muneeb are longtime friends and visionaries, in my opinion. I will forever be grateful to Ryan because he was the first person to tell me about bitcoin, many years ago! As for the product itself, I think they are super sharp and ahead of the trend -- it's becoming increasingly clear that we ought to have more control over our data. Candidly, my biggest concern is just that I'm not sure how much the average user cares about that, relative to cost or usability, for instance.

@karticrakhra I think this is infinitely more complicated than most people realize, and it's going to be at least a decade before we have good models for how to effectively govern decentralized projects. I definitely don't have the answers yet!

@samkurtis Thank you! I think the biggest piece of advice I have for new grads on investing is just to get started. As with most things, you learn by doing, so the sooner you start, the more you'll know later on. I would also say that most young people are too conservative. In your early 20s, you shouldn't be mostly in bonds or mutual funds - become more conservative as you get older, but when you're young, especially if you have a good education and no dependents, you can afford to take on a little more risk.

@KHaaayes For the time being, I am skeptical of most stablecoins. I think many teams are wildly underestimating how difficult it will be to maintain a stable price, and the fact that many bad actors will have a massive financial incentive to break the peg. I think it's more likely that most payments end up being done in something like a digital dollar. The idea of a tax nightmare is really dependent on the regulation that's in place at that time. For instance, there was a proposal to make any transaction under $400 exempt from tax reporting; something like this would be a huge help. So we'll really have to see how regulation evolves before we know how painful things will be.

@sarthakgh I actually think a lot of the reason people don't pay for software products is the friction that is required in signing up and entering cc info. If we can reduce this friction, I think more people will be willing to pay (I know i would be).

@sarthakgh No, I don't necessarily think this is a given. I think the crypto ecosystem has not historically put beautiful or intuitive user experiences first, but that's more a function of the folks building products, than any inherent shortcomings in how decentralized products need to be designed.

@intjr I'm always a fan of increasing diversity. I do think there's a tendency toward groupthink (much more so on the part of investors than of founders) but depending on your investment strategy, that might not be a bad thing, especially if you are doing something like momentum trading. My focus is always on finding the areas that are overlooked, and because I'm very long-term oriented, I can afford to look wrong for a long time.

@KHaaayes This is an interesting point to consider - I haven't fully reached a conclusion on what I think happens here. I think the smart projects figure out a way to make it more appealing to hold or use the token than any alternative, and that can work well. Will Warren of 0x talks about some changes they made to incentivize this here -- great episode, worth a listen: http://unchainedpodcast.co/will-warren-of-0x-on-why-decentralized-exchanges-are-the-future

@Dogetoshi Crypto is at the intersection of a number of fields that have historically been male-dominated: finance, computer science, cryptography, economics etc. That said, there ARE many awesome women doing great work in the field. Find and support them! And encourage others to get involved.

@eriktorenberg I'm a big fan of privacy coins. I think there's a strong need / desire for financial privacy, and at this point it's clear that bitcoin doesn't quite cut it in that respect. The idea of having a Swiss bank account in your pocket is very appealing... I shared a few other thoughts on the topic a few months back: https://www.coindesk.com/privacy-blockchain-headed/

@AriannaSimpson what do you think the future of security should look like when there's a swiss bank in everyone's pocket?