Garry, an early investor in Coinbase: The whole story of the 6000 times return of the review.

The listing of Coinbase has become a milestone event in the industry, and its huge market value has also brought rich returns to early investors, such as its early investor Garry Tan. Garry Tan is the founder of Initialized Capital, an investment institution, and ranked 35th in the "2021 Forbes Global Best Venture Capitalist List". He joined YC as a partner in early 2011 and guided the YC team in product design. On the eve of Coinbase's establishment, Garry participated in its seed round of financing, and has achieved a return of more than 6,000 times. Recently, Garry released his review of this investment. Chain Catcher edited and translated the article without affecting the original meaning, hoping to inspire you. By | Compiled by Garry Tan | Alyson I funded Coinbase in 2012 and this is how I got a 6000x ROI. Eight years ago, I met a founder who invested $300,000 in his company, and those shares are now worth more than $2.4 billion. That company is Coinbase, and investors have valued it at more than $100 billion. This is by far the best investment I've ever made. CoinCorner plans to cooperate with Seed Group to launch a dedicated Bitcoin trading platform in the UAE: On September 21st, CoinCorner announced that it has reached a cooperation with Seed Group, and the two plan to cooperate to create a Bitcoin trading platform for UAE residents to participate in. Seed Group will create a framework for CoinCorner to secure the required official approvals. [2022/9/21 7:11:29] When you see the news, who knows what its future direction will be? In March 2012, Brian Armstrong sent me 0.05 Bitcoin in the name of his startup BitBank. His idea is simple: create a simple, open place for people to buy and hold bitcoin. During this period of time, many startups are working hard, and their ideas are all the same. What really changed was the rebranding of BitBank to Coinbase. This email started it all When I got 0.05 bitcoin in 2012, the total market capitalization of bitcoin was less than $1 billion. Today, Bitcoin's market capitalization exceeds $1 trillion. At the time, those bitcoins were worth 23 cents; today, they're worth roughly $2,500. Bling Closes Seed Round, Coinbase Ventures Leads: Mobile game developer Bling, whose suite of mobile games allows users to earn small amounts of bitcoin, announced Friday that it closed a seed round led by Coinbase Ventures. Bling's platform currently includes six games, as well as a software development kit (SDK), which it will begin offering to other mobile game developers, which includes a bitcoin rewards system, fraud detection and user value detection. Bling's Bitcoin reward system uses Coinbase as the cashout mechanism, and users must create a Coinbase wallet before receiving any Bitcoin rewards. (Coindesk) [2021/7/2 0:23:47] Shortly after I received the 0.05 bitcoins, Brian sent me an email, he has made a prototype of the product and put it on the Internet, He's been coding like crazy for the past few weeks. He also asked me, “Any suggestions for finding a co-founder, is there anyone in your community who would be interested in this?” It’s funny looking back because anyone who joined then is a billionaire today . Here's what I wrote back: "The hardest part about finding a partner is that you may already know the right people, but they're doing something else. You have to show these people why it's better than anything else they're doing now." Things are more meaningful. The essence of this problem is to pass on your belief in this market and product to other people. You already know that you will have many partners in the future, but you don’t know each other yet.” CoinSwap founder: long-term Look at Musk's social media activity that may draw more attention to cryptocurrencies: CoinSwap founder Erik Nurm says Elon Musk's ability to push cryptocurrency markets with tweets poses a danger to ordinary investors , but in the long run, the buzz surrounding the Tesla CEO’s social media activity could draw more attention to cryptocurrencies. Nurm noted that Musk became inclined to tweet about Bitcoin ( BTC ), Dogecoin ( DOGE ) and other crypto shortly after the Tesla CEO was banned from tweeting about his own company by the SEC. Currency tweets. (cointelegraph) [2021/6/15 23:37:53] At that time, I received thousands of YC applications for the summer of 2012. I remember Brian trying countless times in the application review system - finally connecting Coinbase and Y Combinator with the click of a mouse. Honestly, I'm really grateful that I was a small part of Coinbase's pivotal moment, even though Brian wasn't a co-founder at the time. In 2012, Bitcoin was still a very fringe concept. Brian is an independent founder who dares to pioneer in new fields. At the time, no one believed in Bitcoin. I first found out about Bitcoin on Hacker News. The following is the first mention of it on the website in 2009, and these comments summed up most people’s thoughts at that time: 58COIN delivery contract 24H market 9:00 Broadcast: As of 9:00, according to 58COIN delivery contract market: BTC contract current quotation $18,797.61, a discount of $33.09 compared to the spot price, with a 24h rise or fall of -3.65%. The trading volume was 406,189,800 lots, the turnover was 15,290,070,400 US dollars, and the total number of current positions was 1,639,100 lots, a change of -117,400 lots from the previous trading day. The EOS contract is currently quoted at US$3.05, a discount of US$0.0046 compared to the spot price, with a 24h increase or decrease of -6.80%. The trading volume was 7.7787 million hands, the turnover was 48.8166 million US dollars, and the current total position was 3.169 million hands, a change of -111,900 hands from the previous trading day. The ETH contract is currently quoted at US$592.02, a discount of US$1.21 compared to the spot price, with a 24h increase or decrease of -2.05%. The trading volume was 47.1716 million lots, the turnover was 1384.9801 million US dollars, and the current total position was 1.8201 million lots, a change of -87,300 lots from the previous trading day. [2020/12/2 22:49:25] From "unlikely", "cool", "might work" to "I just don't get it" Here's why Brian is so impressive. Bitcoin is much more well-known today, but back then, very few people knew anything about it, let alone believed it would be useful to society. South Korea’s Coin Zest Exchange will hold the first cryptocurrency exchange creative contest: South Korea’s Coin Zest Exchange will hold South Korea’s first cryptocurrency exchange creative contest. comics category. [2018/3/12] Just as it is hard for founders to believe, it is even harder for investors to believe that most people will say no. But I didn't, and this investment was probably one of the best decisions I ever made. Here's why I give yes when most people say no: First, I've had some problems. I know how tough and scary the experience of buying bitcoin in the early days can be. After I read about this on Hacker News, the first site I tried to buy it on was Mt.Gox. It was a bad experience, and while Bitcoin grabbed my attention, it was the poor design and poor user experience that made me feel like something was wrong. I know it's impossible for Bitcoin to have a future. The second point is that I have enough foresight about Bitcoin. I firmly believe that fiat currencies have the potential to fail. In 2005, I was an engineer developing software for Peter Thiel's hedge fund, Clarion Capital Management. One of the books they read for their employees was "The Dollar Crisis" by Richard Duncan. That book introduced me to the crazy events of 1971, the year Nixon took America off the gold standard, and people could no longer trade dollars for gold. The dollar, which was already the reserve currency of every other central bank, suddenly became a fiat currency that could be printed at will. 25% of the dollars in circulation today were printed in the last year. So when Bitcoin came along, as Louis Pasteur once said, "Chance favors the prepared mind." I felt very lucky that I was ready. Third, Brian is a developer. Personally, my preference is to invest in developers. For Brian, being able to build the first version of Coinbase and maintain it himself has been very powerful. With a physical bank, you can protect your physical currency with a physical wallet. When the Internet has money, you can use software engineering and security systems to protect it. I know Brian is an engineer and head of anti-fraud at Airbnb, which is billions of dollars in its infancy. And anti-fraud at Airbnb is their key department, and I know Brian is busy dealing with the torture of hackers every day. It's rare for a developer to stay in that state of work and show us what the world of the future will look like. That's what Brian is all about. Then in 2013, when I was checking out their seed round for the first time, and helping them with their early product-market fit research, during a break at work, Brian came in and said a strange thing had been happening all week , they ran out of working capital at SVB and sold out of Bitcoin at 9am. I told him it was time to raise a Series A round and start making presentations. This is one of the most important things we do for startups: help them scale capital. Here is one of the emails that helped them raise this round: 2013.3.3 Hi Investors: I would like to add Coinbase to your list of investments to support their Series A round. They are the most trusted Bitcoin payment platform in the world and the only exchange with a direct relationship with an FDIC-insured U.S. bank, transacting tens of thousands of dollars a day. On any given day, they account for 15% of the total trading volume on mtgox.com, the world’s largest bitcoin exchange. They are not constrained by demand, but by capital, and each time they expand their capital they hit the cap set by their bank (a quadruple increase last month). They also benefit from being the only compliant website that lets people buy bitcoin. They are at the forefront of legalizing this new cryptocurrency, recently enabling Reddit (a top 50 website) to accept payments. Some of the biggest and brightest hedge funds on Wall Street, like "redacted," are using Coinbase to take long positions in Bitcoin as a financial instrument. I think they have the potential to fundamentally reshape two of the largest payment methods in the world: 1. Credit Cards - the internet that prides itself on eliminating middlemen relies on credit card infrastructure, with over 2.5% of every transaction going through credit cards ongoing. ACH transactions are so slow that Bitcoin is poised to become the preferred transfer currency because Bitcoin transactions cost nothing to transfer money, nor do they need to pay the 1% fee to convert it to USD. 2. Overseas remittance - Bitcoin is actually an international currency. Just like subverting traditional credit card transactions, Bitcoin will also subvert cross-border remittances. Nowadays, more and more people are using Bitcoin for cross-border remittances, such as the Philippines People will use bitcoins on oDesk to receive payment for commissioned work and send it back home. All bitcoins in the world today are worth about $300 million, a 400% increase from last year. Given the nascent state of the above two use cases, and Coinbase being at the forefront of the market, I think this is one of the most disruptive opportunities I've seen. Brian is a brilliant software engineer who previously managed the anti-fraud team at Airbnb. Brian was the perfect fit for this space because Coinbase is a bank that doesn't have gun protection, this bank only accepts protection from engineers. They deal with a lot of hackers every day, and I believe in them so much that I hope you will provide the opportunity to talk to them. Finally, I will summarize my experience in investing in Coinbase: First, go against the trend. Can you find something that seems fringe but is essentially right? Use history, psychology, first principles and other thinking to support your seemingly crazy ideas from the bottom up, and tell yourself why it will sweep the world? Sooner or later, every such idea will have a day of realization, but only if it has a truly convincing tone. Second, be a builder. The more you can do, the closer you are to opportunity. More people will want to sponsor you, join you, or use your product or service. Do these things yourself to the best of your ability. Third, it is clear that founders being able to send a compelling email is powerful and useful. Remember when Brian sent me 0.05 bitcoin, it was only worth 23 cents, but he really gave me free money. It got my attention and showed me that Brian was serious about doing something meaningful. In the end, I was very lucky to get that email, I met Brian, and I had the opportunity to fund this company. For that I am very grateful.

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