Venture capital investor Todd Chaffee has said that he’s more interested in the blockchain and is keen to avoid investing in initial coin offerings (ICOs).
Last year, Chaffee, partner at Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), led Coinbase’s $100 million financing round, with the exchange experiencing asurge in growth last year. So much so, that due to the increase in customer numbers, it surpassed $1 billion in revenue, reports Recode.
However, despite the rise in ICOs last year, which has seen billions of dollars raised for various projects in an unregulated market, Chaffee is of the opinion that the ICO sector is in a ‘real bubble situation.’
In an interview with CNBC, the venture capitalist said:
We’re careful with the cryptocurrency aspect. We’re much more interested in the infrastructure.
According to Chaffee, the blockchain is similar to the Internet in its early days. He added that companies in its portfolio such as Coinbase make up around one percent of the deals that the organisation has seen.
He added:
The top 1 percent is where it’s very clearly a fantastic company. It’s not so much should we invest, but more a question of can we invest.
Around 90 percent of businesses that the company meets ‘don’t make the cut,’ whereas, nine percent are interesting, but aren’t the right fit.
Chaffee has a lot of belief in the blockchain. He believes that in the future people will simply trust the code without requiring the need for intermediaries or private companies to make transactions. For now, though, ‘we’re a long way from that,’ he said.
Great potential can be seen with the blockchain in various sectors, and not just the finance sector. Earlier this month, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) revealed that it was using the distributed ledger to eradicate illegal fishing in the tuna industry.
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