From Toxic Assets to Digital Currency Bitcoin: Barry Silbert's Bold Bet:While others were debating whether digital currency met the textbook definition of money the blocksize, Silbert saw that bitcoin was a triple threat to established markets, because it could function as a store of value, like gold; as a method of payment for online commerce, like credit cards or PayPal; and as a global transaction network, like Western Union or MoneyGram. There are about $7 trillion worth of gold in the world today. E-commerce is a $1.6 trillion industry. According to the World Bank, a total of $583 billion in remittances flowed to nations around the world in 2014, and an estimated $600 billion in 2015. What if bitcoin were to claim even a small percentage of any of these markets, never mind all three?
"When you have a world that is printing money, the concept of a decentralized, non-government-controlled, non-company-controlled currency that has a finite supply had a certain amount of appeal to me," Silbert said. "I didn't fully appreciate the whole technical aspect [of bitcoin] at first. But economically it just kind of made sense."
--> AKA going down the rabbit hole, sounds familiar
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"If I'm going to make an investment in a high-risk opportunity like bitcoin, I'm only going to do it if it's going to move the needle for me," Silbert said of his early investment in the digital currency*.
--> Never understood people buying less then 1% of their net worth in what they immediately feel is intrinsically awesome.
To familiarize his staff with the digital currency, he was going to give each of them, out of his personal hoard, two bitcoins — one to save and one to spend.
--> Smart guy, don't just put it all in a paper wallet and sit on it. Once used (for payments) and you really starting to get it.
Yet he remains steadfast in the opinion that the industry will come around to embracing the currency. Banks' experiments with private blockchains will prove to be nothing more than "a gateway drug, ultimately, to them using the bitcoin blockchain," he said, "and then also to holding bitcoins, trading bitcoins, speculating in bitcoins."
Within five years, he predicts, bitcoin either "will be a failed experiment, and something else will have taken its place, or it will be eating the world."
--> Exiting times ahead, and I thought the last two years were already awesome. Never a dull day in Bitcoinland!
, I'm still holding few bitcoins and it is very addicting follow the various events (from a speculative point of view). 
