The Future Of Bitcoin Will Depend On Upcoming Startups, Regulatory Issues And China

Today at Disrupt Europe in Berlin, a few major Bitcoin actors in the European Bitcoin community took the stage to share their thoughts about the future of Bitcoin. Michael Jackson (Mangrove Capital Partners), Shakil Khan (CoinDesk) and Nejc Kodric (Bitstamp) are all bullish and have great hopes for the digital currency. Yet, a recurring thought was that the community is still very early in this journey — the average end-user has yet to start using Bitcoins. The next generation of Bitcoin startups Khan, whose personal interest in Bitcoin led him to found a BTC news website called CoinDesk to be a news source for the ecosystem, revealed he has still not been tempted to get out his wallet to make any investments in Bitcoin companies (he does, however, “own some coin”). And that’s because he’s waiting for the next wave of digital currency companies. “I have looked at probably most Bitcoin companies and I have passed on investing,” he said. “If you look at the waves of BTC companies that have been coming up, so far there have been some great ideas, and some great idealists that want to run these companies. But I’ve yet to find somebody that understood the deep technology, the opportunity about BTC but also who knows what a PNO, a balance sheet, how to run a business… There are very very few people out there who understand the whole package.” “There is regulation involved. Hope is not a strategy and most BTC companies out there right now are relying on hope. That’s not a business plan,” he added. Khan’s view is that the Bitcoin space is in the second wave of companies — the first wave having mostly been shut down (and some even facing jail time). The current crop includes the likes of BTC exchange Mt.Gox, which he argued now has its own challengers, despite Gox’s early dominance. “I’m looking more forward to the next wave of companies. There are teams of entrepreneurs with tier-A VCs, with lawyers, with regulators, sitting in rooms around the world, thinking how do we launch the next generation of digital currency companies. I think that’s where the opportunity is. We’re still very very early in this journey,” Khan added. Bitstamp’s Kodric agreed. “New services are going to pop up,” he said. “When I started [Bitstamp], it was 2011. There was only one large exchange. We ended up launching