Zillow CEO and Wikipedia Co-Founder Publicly Warm Up to Bitcoin

The reason Bitcoin refuses to “die”, is because it represents a genuine technological breakthrough in payments. The reason it hasn’t been exposed as a “ponzi scheme”, is because it isn’t one.

Earlier today, I came across a very powerful quote on Twitter by Erik Voorhees:

From my own personal experience, I have found the above sentiment to be completely true.

The more people actually look into Bitcoin, rather than simply dismiss it with superficial judgments, the more people recognize its incredible potential. A recent case in point seems to be Spencer Rascoff, CEO of online real estate database Zillow.

As Coindesk points out, last November Rascoff said on Bloomberg TV:

“I am sceptical of bitcoin. I just think there’s too much shadiness associated with the currency that’s not maintained by some sort of government or central bank. And I think it will blow up at some point, with some big scandal where someone loses 50, a 100 million dollars, and I don’t think it is going to be here in five years.”

Well, $475 million in customer funds have been lost via the Mt. Gox debacle and, despite some wild prices swings, there ultimately has been zero price impact. To borrow a phrase from Nassim Taleb, Bitcoin is the definition of anti-fragile.

It seems that time (and a conversation with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong) has changed his tune. Yesterday, the Zillow CEO Tweeted:

Meanwhile, just last week the co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, tweeted the following:

Wales subsequently posted a BTC address and the unsolicited donations started flooding in. I guess this was the Bitcoin community’s way of demonstrating its power (just as it did with the $28k recently donated to Dorian Nakamoto). By the end of today, the donations had climbed to over $11k. He tweeted:

While increased mainstream adoption by influential individuals is important, merchant adoption is equally key, and good news on this front has continued with today’s announcement by Big Fish that it will use Coinbase to accept payments in BTC.

So what’s Big Fish?

Founded in 2002, Big Fish is the world¹s largest producer of casual games, delivering fun to millions of people around the world through its digital distribution, mobile and e-commerce game platforms. To date, Big Fish has distributed more than 2 billion games to customers in 150 countries from a growing catalogue of 3,000+ unique PC games and 400+ unique mobile games. In 2013, the company’s mobile revenues were almost 50% of it overall gross revenue. “Big Fish Casino” lead the way and was the only casino game to be named on both of Apple’s 2013 top-grossing iPad and iPhone charts.  The company is headquartered in Seattle, WA, with regional offices in Oakland, CA, and Luxembourg.

The company had $266 million in gross revenues in 2013. The company also provided a brief tutorial on how to use Bitcoin to pay for its products.


The Bitcoin beat goes on.

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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4 thoughts on “Zillow CEO and Wikipedia Co-Founder Publicly Warm Up to Bitcoin”

  1. I’ve met many critics of Bitcoin who have never used it. I’ve met few critics of Bitcoin who have.

    — Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) March 11, 2014

    Sorry, but “Duh”!
    I’ve met many critics of homosexuality that have never tried it. I’ve met few critics of homosexuality who have.
    I’ve met many critics of heroin that have never tried it. I’ve met few critics of heroin who have.
    I’ve met many critics of thievery that have never tried it. I’ve met few critics who have.
    I’ve met many critics of wife swapping who have never tried it. I’ve met few critics who have.

    Reply
    • Let’s take this comment piece by piece.

      On homosexuality. Who cares what other people do in their personal lives. I find it bizarre that it is the first thing you wrote and that you lumped it in with “heroin” and “thievery.” I am a heterosexual and I never think about homosexuality one way or the other. Why are you so obsessed with it?

      On heroin. This is one of those subjects that most people who have done it and have gotten addicted will tell you stay away. The vast, vast majority. The vast, vast majority of people who use Bitcoin love it. So you have no argument there.

      On thievery. This is clearly simply idiotic. Thievery is infringing on the property of others. Clearly a crime. How is Bitcoin a crime? How does it infringe on others? It doesn’t.

      On wife swapping. Same as my homosexuality point. It’s not for me, but I’m sure the people that do it like it and good for them. Why are you so obsessed with how other people live their sexual lives? I find that very bizarre.

      I hope I’ve made my points clear.

      Best,
      Michael Krieger

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