[phaed]

That money would have had better upside if invested in bitcoin directly.

[jshevek]

Are you saying that the investors would get a better return on their investment if they had instead simply purchased bitcoins?

That claim seems to require the ability to know the future. Bitcoin may eventually be superseded by a superior alt coin, and disappear into history.

[sudoscript]

> That claim seems to require the ability to know the future.

One could say startup investing does too.

[jshevek]

Startup investing requires willingness to take risks with an unknown future.

[syrrim]

So does investing all your money in bitcoin.

[phaed]

Explain "superseded" to me. In the world of crypto there is no such thing.

[Torai]

I guess they prefer selling shovels in a gold rush.

[ojr]

invest in the high profit margin exchange or invest in one of the high volatility assets the exchange is selling? I would invest in both as a hedge.

[IgorPartola]

I believe during a gold rush the people who consistently come out ahead are those selling shovels.

[burger_moon]

the analogy doesn't really hold to coinbase though. Shovels are a utility for mining gold. That would correlate to GPUs and other computer hardware. In that regard perhaps the VCs should be investing in AMD or Nvidia.

[IgorPartola]

I imagine if you are a VC investing in this space, hedging between hardware, currencies, and exchanges/merchant services would probably be smart. If the market cap of BTC drops, does the market value of e.g. Intel or Coinbase drop proportionally?

[nerfhammer]

Yeesh, now I'm getting worried that if everyone just puts all of their money into speculation instead of investment its going to be really bad for the economy in the long run...