Why investor Steve Baxter’s changed his tune on the blockchain, but warns current hype levels are “dangerous”
Last year, prominent Australian investor and Shark Tank judge Steve Baxter told StartupSmart in an interview he believed the blockchain was “overhyped”, and he had no blockchain-focused startups in his portfolio, nor was he “in a hurry to find any”.
Since then, blockchain startups and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum have seen an astounding boom in both popularity, recognition, and price, with multiple success stories locally and abroad. Asked if he’s changed his tune just over six months later, Baxter told StartupSmart this week he now owns “a bit” of second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum and appreciates the tech more.
“I bought $500 bucks of Ethereum to get a sense of how it works, get some visibility,” he says.
“I understand the tech at a decent level now, and I have a lot of respect for how the tech works.”
However, the underlying technology aside, Baxter says he’s disappointed to see how some founders and companies are applying it to “shit it shouldn’t get applied to”, and compared the current hype around blockchain to that of the late 90s dot-com bubble.
“Back then we had e-commerce, then i-commerce, and then m-commerce [mobile commerce]. Everything comes in stages and everyone jumps onto new buzzwords,” he says.
“I look at people and teams and problems. The current blockchain situation is as dangerous as tulips were back in the middle ages.”
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