Olaf Carlson-Wee recently launched a fund with $15 million in assets under management and backing by Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures; Laura Shin sat down with Olaf on her Unchained podcast to discuss the fund and how he discovered bitcoin back in 2011; the podcast covers how Polychain Capital invests exclusively in digital assets, not companies, and how Olaf Carlson-Wee views cryptocurrencies; they also cover Olaf being the first employee at Coinbase and how he put what he called at the time his meager life savings into bitcoin. Source
As two new banking applications come to market this week, the question that comes to mind is can all of these startups survive and disrupt the banks?; there are questions surrounding business models and how each company intends to make money in a market that is becoming more crowded each day; each of these new startups has different challenges that lie ahead, some will need to be approved for a banking license and others will need to understand the regulatory framework behind PSD2. Source
The new unit at the SEC was started in September to focus on potential illegal activities in the digital currency market; the ICO that was shut down promised returns of 1,000 percent; the SEC filed charges against Dominic Lacroix who they claim was trying to raise $15mn from thousands of investors. Source.
