Bitcoin Forum

With Mike Hearn's Lighthouse and things like Swarm coming, are we going to see mass funding of promising companies that might change Bitcoin for the better?

Outside of Bitcoin, in Silicon Valley startup incubators like Ycombinator have been attracting some of the smartest young minds to try their hand at starting the next dropbox or heroku. The immediate financial incentives are incredibly small considering the options that a young coder in Silicon Valley has(it changes, but it's probably not more than 20k upfront to each company).

So my question is if we're going to see some of that spill over into the Bitcoin world now that we have some infrastructure being developed that will hopefully enable the free flow of capital to those who deserve it.

I've followed Bitcoin for many years now and Bitcoin 'investments' in general have been wrought with scams and incompetence. Will it be different now?

golden age yes, but with alot scams  :P

There are many bitcoin startups in the past, but mostly in the gambling sector. Now we are going to see more serious ones, hopefully some will revolutionise the bitcoin ecosystem. We had the dotcom boom, this is the bitcoin boom.

So, we're approaching the mid-90s ('96ish) in terms of the community taking off so w/i a few years it should be the roaring 20s all over again. :D

Aren't we already there? Seeing so much VC capital flow these days....

Hopefully that will be the case. It will be interesting to see what happens. That's for sure.

In an unregulated atmosphere u cant eradicate SCAM ever. If u cant live with... go back to FIAT. Govt. will take action against FIAT scams.

governments will take action against BTC scams too.... just give it time.

Then they'll tax it too... just give it time ;)

they already do where i am from. can't escape capital gains in the USA... :'(

If u report uR gain, even Afghanistan will tax u !!!

Second or Third golden age with less scams than the first and second had XD

GLBSE Era ---> Mtgox Era??? --> Actual corporations era.

Of course ! but the answer to that question depends on what you consider as "golden age" :

From Bitcoin getting know worldwide and reaching 2k-3k each,

or becoming mainstream here and mars and paying an expensive Bitcoin about 1-3 million dollars each...

Just look at the flow of VC $ into the ecosystem
Coindesk's state of bitcoin that they published a couple of days ago highlights this in some detail
Golden age definitely around the corner

It seems like we are possibly entering that golden age right now. We certainly are not at mass adoption yet but possibly the "smart money" is getting involved. Bitcoin just needs to watch out for some sort of huge blowup which would derail the whole thing, like a 51 attack or US somehow trying to ban BTC.

Smart money is definitely getting involved. We're certainly seeing the type of VC/angel investment activity that signifies it. It's still a very high risk time, so more conventional, institutional money is still waiting on the sidelines for more clear regulation, and possibly adoption.

The % increases from previous years are huge, but the overall numbers are still small compared to something like the original dot com boom.

Woah, if the GLBSE era was a golden age then I think we have a different ideas of what constitutes a golden age. :P

But yeah, hopefully less scams this time around. Hopefully the community will be a little more diligent.

Absolutely. The trajectory of Bitcoin startups is just as logarithmic as Bitcoin itself. And things have just got started. 2014 is the first year bit retailers have started using it. Now it's up to the Bitcoin users to make sure it pays off.

I do fear a bubble however. Many of the startups are me-too's, just like the IT bubble of the 90s where people did the most idiotic things and got VC money anyway. The question is which of the Bitcoin companies that are our Amazon and Google's?

No we certainly are not. This is just the beginning.  ;)

What is interesting is the potential for regular people to get a piece of the action.

The public isn't allowed to invest in venture capital since you need to be an 'accredited investor'.

Current framework and environment still favor scam. And scammers still can get away without consequences.

But that's how the system is built. By default its purpose is to provide irreversible transactions behind a layer of anonymity and obscurity. Unless you're planning on changing this, you're not going to change the current environment that enables scams to occur. The best you can do is educate people on how to store their coins properly rather than the current unsafe practices.

Pretty sure existing and newly established businesses have already looked into accepting Bitcoin. many are probably jumping into it and earning quite a bit of profit just because they started accepting. Bitcoiners show their appreciation and buy some things from them (overstock etc).
Hopefully within a year or so there will be more new businesses accepting Bitcoin.

What if in this new generation people require real identities and real verification? If that's the case then any scams will be reported to the local authorities I would assume.

i feel the same, but now WE are early in the game and not at the end...

Im sure we will see golden age, but cant predict when, there are many variables that cant be predicted.

10 to 20 years from now (end of 2014) bitcoin and dogecoin will be golden age.

I think we will see a couple dozen big companies start in the next few years, and of those a few will go on to be enormous and the rest will fade away.  It is really hard to predict right now just what will be the cool thing that Bitcoin does so much better. 

This is what i was gonna say!

like with the internet and the dotcom bubble  ;)

People have been scamming others for hundreds of years, this isn't something exclusive to Bitcoin and it's just as stupid as claiming that Bitcoin enabled terrorists and drug dealers, the only difference is everybody is noticing it more because it's a relatively small market right now.