Thank you, for taking a chance on an experiment that we call Bitcoins. When I arrived in my full bitcoin mode to this forum over 1 1/2 years ago, I noticed something about the community if you had a successful site, later or not you become a victim of your own success. Meaning that either you couldn't scale due to funds or you just had no business experience therefore no clue how to take a business from zero to the next level. I know that most sites were helped from community members, but when VCs who deal with this everyday can really guide a lot better you know that businesses are going to explode, no disrespect to the community members here. Today we are getting that experience that was so critical into the businesses we enjoy and so we can enjoy for long time.
So just thank you to all the VCs and all the companies, because whenever I read a story VC gives out funding to a bitcoin company, it gives me that fire inside of me to just keep building, to keep hacking, and to just keep experimenting. I just can't wait to see what happens in the next 6,655,204 Blocks.
I'll second this notion.
It's great to see what the ecosystem has become. I recall how depressing all the hacks, scams, and lack of professionalism in the space in general was in 2011. I always figured that'd change, that the tech would draw more talent and money ultimately, but to be honest, I didn't think we'd be seeing 8-figure VC deals a mere 2yrs later. Things have progressed rapidly.
The consolidation we saw in 2012 and early 2013 was great. Started seeing more people with solid backgrounds getting excited about bitcoin and entering the space. It was obvious toward the second half of last year that things could snowball quickly.
And now I'm excited to see what well-funded entities like Coinbase and Circle will do. Right now they're targeting better experiences in existing segments of the ecosystem (acquiring and trading bitcoin, exchanges, merchant services, APIs), which are much needed, but I think the next wave of bitcoin adoption and innovation will be driven by next-gen blockchain apps (see Naval Ravikant's "The Internet of Money":
http://startupboy.com/2013/11/07/bitcoin-the-internet-of-money/ ). I'm sure there are an increasing number of devs, entrepreneurs, and VCs looking at what's next. Good times.
