Re Twitch

So,

we have been seriously talking about convergence of TV and games for more than 15 years now and while we always envisioned interactive movies what happened was exactly the opposite: people watching non-interactive streams of other people playing. Similar to watching sports on TV in a sense.

I think we* overestimated the desire for interactivity (after a long day being a mindless couch potato might be favorable) but most importantly we underestimated the impact of belonging to the same culture and sharing our accomplishments (which is incredibly like talking about sports with your buddies.)

In a sense Amazon just bought ESPN for nerds and there’s nothing wrong with that. (UPDATE: Seems I’m not the only one that reached this conclusion: ‘Twitch: Has Amazon Acquired the Next ESPN?‘)

It's awesome that Twitch, YC's biggest exit to date, is a result of one of its most laughed-at investments(justintv).

—
Zaid Farooqui (@zaid) August 25, 2014

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My work on cryptocurrencies

 

So,

I actually did some work in the summer of 2001 on cryptocurrencies. At the time was big on peer-to-peer protocols and saw them as the solution to move data on the edge faster and without having a single point of failure (both technical and legal). I envisioned having P2P protocols for every major application and decided to work on payments.

My idea was to have the ability to pay for something (digital or otherwise) to a party while retaining anonymity and without a central authority. At the time did not know a lot about encryption (which would become a big part of my life in later years) so was more interested in the protocol itself and missed some of the beauty and innovation of Bitcoin (even though my idea was closer to Stellar).

The name and the examples I chose to make my case were a bit controversial and after 9/11 I decided it was a good idea to mothball everything as there were bigger opportunities elsewhere but I am pleased that others kept working on the problem. The entire financial system needs to be open, extendable and more in line with the internet than being just a financial VAN.