Pantera Capital’s Dan Morehead: the future’s bright for ‘serial killer’ Bitcoin

When technology is disruptive, it’s labelled a category killer. Bitcoin, however, is more of a serial killer that will go through dozens of industries, according to cryptocurrency and blockchain investor Dan Morehead, CEO of Pantera Capital.

Right now, the most compelling use cases are for cross border payments and storing wealth, he told BNN Bloomberg. 

But whilst it’s great for migrants sending money home to family members, what, asked BNN Bloomberg, is the relevance to people in the developed world? With the rise of contactless and mobile payments, there isn’t much friction when buying a coffee, for instance. Is Bitcoin just a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist?

“But there is friction when sending money from the US to the UK,” Morehead responded. “As things stand, it is literally faster to grab a suitcase of cash, go to the airport and fly to London. With Bitcoin you can send it in a matter of seconds, and pretty much for free, routing around the payment rails that are very slow and expensive.”

Within the next decade, the cryptocurrency will also have carved a niche for itself in the in-store payments space, he insisted. “Internet protocols revolutionised so many things in our lives, but they didn’t touch banking, credit cards, remittances and that’s what Bitcoin is doing,” Morehead said.

Synthetic Minds

Last month, we reported that smart contract security venture Synthetic Minds had raised $5.5 million in a round involving Pantera Capital and Khosla Ventures. This followed the launch of Pantera Capital’s third crypto fund, which pulled in $71 million from 90 investors.

Founded in 2017, the US-based startup recently graduated from the Y Combinator technology accelerator programme, during which it landed investment and launched the first version of its technology.

“Synthetic Minds was created with the objective of bringing automation to coding,” said Founder Saurabh Srivastava. “Specifically, our code analysis tools read code better than humans, and we are getting close to automation that can write code better, as well. Our long-term mission is make software creation accessible to everybody, especially non-programmers.”

“We believed in the team at Synthetic Minds and their expertise to build hard tech that will further grow adoption of smart contracts, both in the public and enterprise domains,” said Khosla Ventures Founder Vinod Khosla.

“They are uniquely positioned to enable an enterprise-grade, safe, smart contract platform. Provably correct smart contracts through programme synthesis are key steps needed for smart contracts on the blockchain and for software, in general.”