[zwtaylor]

I hope you're right, there _must_ be other components to their business model to warrant $116m in investment capital. At face value this all appears beyond foolish, though I'm rooting for them to make me eat my words down the road.

"21 Inc., formerly 21e6, announced it had raised US$116m in venture capital, the largest investment yet accumulated by a startup in the digital currency industry. 21 Inc.'s lead backers include American Andreessen Horowitz and RRE Venture, Chinese Yuan Capital, as well as strategic investor and chipmaker Qualcomm Inc."

http://cointelegraph.com/news/113668/bitcoin-startup-21-inc-...

[jboggan]

I'd wager a decent fraction of their $116m is being held in Bitcoin. If Bitcoin could magically go to mass adoption that would stimulate a price in the range of $10-50k/BTC. Holding a few million $ of Bitcoin now and "doing stuff" that makes the Bitcoin more valuable has a higher expectation than trying to build sustainable business model around the Bitcoin ecosystem.