Coinbase is 'the' brand in the Bitcoin space. Their founder Brian Armstrong was amongst the first good entrepreneurs to emerge in this space. While others championed ideological or underground/illicit interests, Brian saw an opportunity to change the world for the better and build a big business out of it.

The world is a global economy. I thought, 'It's a bummer we don't have a unifying currency.' Then I saw Bitcoin had already had a crash and had the resistance to recover. The community was strong enough to push it through again. That's really exciting.

China just banned ICO fundraising. They did Silicon Valley and the U.S. a favor - now we get first dibs.

When we announced that we were going to support Bitcoin companies, we became a great lightning rod for activity and fun.

People wanted Bitcoin to live so much, they basically willed it back into existence. That showed me how passionate this community was about it.

Bitcoin and the block chain enables a whole new way to incentivize and transact, so change the world with this new tool. Create and build! Surprise us with an idea we have never seen before.

A startup is literally just a series of unfortunate events where you failed, failed, failed, and failed until you succeed.

What's really happening is that every bank in the country is experimenting with the blockchain and experimenting with bitcoin to figure out where the value is. For the first time ever, they're working hand in hand with startups. Banks are asking startups for help to build products.

Most people hoard their money - just keep it in the bank. Bitcoin will really take off when people start spending it, creating a velocity of money.

The next phase of the journey is to move from speculation to actual use cases - people getting into Bitcoin because they want to use it.