Y Combinator: Investing Through Blockchain?
ICOs — or initial coin offerings — are emerging as a route for startups to raise money from a wide pool of investors through cryptocurrency networks. Now, one of the biggest and best-known accelerators in the world is mulling a way to use cryptocurrency networks and the blockchain to help get more people involved in backing their cohorts, according to its president.
“We are interested in how companies like Y Combinator can use the blockchain to democratize access to investing,” said Sam Altman, who leads the accelerator, onstage at Disrupt yesterday. “We should try to figure that out.”
Our sources tell us YC is actually a little further along than that. Like a growing number of venture groups that are jumping into the digital currency world, the group is actively sussing out how it might use cryptocurrency to expand the investment pool. There are still legal and other details that are being examined, the sources say.
Speaking at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Altman actually painted a mixed picture of the role of ICOs in the tech world today. It wasn’t all good.
Altman highlighted how there are still a lot of questions to be resolved about how they work — including whether they are transparent, and legal, and effective. Counterbalanced with that is a very strong current of hype.
