Presentation at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress Milano, 2015

1. Cryptocurrencies, blockchain & smart contracts:
A general introduction
Raffaele Mauro
Innovation Manager
Intesa Sanpaolo
March 2015
Milano
1

2. 2

3. 3
Technology
Finance &
Venture Capital
Policy
Innovation
Cryptofinance,
Smart Contracts &
Bitcoin

4. 4

5. 5

6. 6
Peer to peer lending Crowdfunding
Disintermediation:
from underground to mainstream

7. 7
Alt & Virtual Currencies

8. 8

9. 9

10. 10

11. 2014 -> Price drops + institutional
acceptance
Mark Andreessen – Tim Draper – Fred Wilson:
Bitcoin today is like the Internet in 1994
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13. 13

14. 14
2015: Regulatory Activism

15. 15
2013 peak
2011 “bubble”

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January 2015
Wallets 6-8 Million +300 % Since 2013
Transactions / Day 100,000
Transaction volume ($) 42,842,000
Merchants 100,000 Microsoft, Expedia, Paypal
Hashrate 307,081,470 +8,216% Since 2013
VC Investments 2014 $ 335 + 342% Since 2014
VC Investments J-15 $ 112 M > than 2013 all-year
Open source finance goes big

18. 18
Not only in the US

19. Distributed public ledger
Network of communicating nodes sharing a public transaction database
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20. 20
Cryptography & transactions
• Private key:
– Digital signature
– Allows spending
• Public key:
– Allows signature
verification
– Represents the
wallet address
• Transactions are
published in the
blockchain

21. 21
Blockchain
• Aimed at proving
transactions
• Contains all
transaction history
• Blocks record
recent
transactions +
connected linearly
• Longest chain
enables
verification / trust

22. Effects
• Decentralized, peer to peer trustless system
• Not dependent central bank/government
• Full transparency + pseudonomity
• Cryptographically secure
• Resilience to marketplace failures
• Viral growth
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23. Limits
• Rigid monetary supply => Volatility
• 51% Attack vulnerability
• Reliance on third parties
• Path dependence
• Inequality
• Transaction speed
• Other network vulnerabilities
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24. Monetary supply
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25. Mining
• Bitcoin released
algorithmically
• Miners solve
complex
computational
problems
• Mining enables
transaction
validation +
block generation
• Fixed amount of
Bitcoins every 10
mins
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26. 26
Gini coefficient > ~0.8

27. Remittances
• Half of the world population is unbanked
• Average remittance commission for African migrants > 12,5%
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28. How to get bitcoins
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29. How to easily trade €/$ with Bitcoins
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30. Secure Wallets (Italy)
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31. Exchanges (Italy)
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32. 32
Community (Italy)

33. Ecosystem
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Example: Coinbase
Raised $106.7 Million in 4 Rounds
Coinbase lets any consumer to create a Bitcoin wallet and start
buying/selling Bitcoin instantly by connecting their bank account
2012
Seed
Round
$ 600 K
2013
Series A
$ 6,1 M
2013
Series B
$ 25 M
2014
Series C
$ 75 M
Investors include New York Stock Exchange, Andreessen Horowitz, Union
Square Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurveston, Y Combinator

35. Accelerator & Investors
Generalist Specialized
Venture & Growth
Early Stage 35

36. Financial information
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40. 40

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43. 43
The Blockchain / Bitcoin 2.0 wave

44. 44

45. On the top of the blockchain
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46. Independent blockchains
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48. 48
Government, Democracy, Law

49. 49
Smart contracts
Decentralized
Applications
Decentralized
Autonomous
Organizations

50. 50
Decentralized “E-bay”

51. 51
Decentralized “DropBox”

52. 52
Decentralized Supercomputer

53. 53
Decentralized “Uber”

54. • Platform for
executing user
generated smart
contracts and
decentralized
applications
+
• Contract
programming
language
• Pre-launch in 2014
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55. 55
Scenarios for cryptofinance &
decentralized technology
Basic:
- Cryptofinance as sub-industry of Fintech innovation
Optimistic:
- Blockchain as the new payment layer of the Internet, like SMTP for
email
- Internet of Things powered by blockchain technologies
Pessimistic:
- Bubble & crash in cryptoasset (second mega-bubble)
- Bubble & crash in VC in vestments in Bitcoin startups
Utopian / Dystopian:
- Decentralized technology radically disrupts governments, organizations
and financial institutions

56. Thank you !
rmauro@post.harvard.edu

57. Raffaele Mauro, Ph.D.
Raffaele Mauro is a venture capital professional with a passion for technology, policy and
global finance. Now working as Innovation Manager at Intesa - Corporate and Investment
Banking division, he is focused on high-tech companies and investments. He is also Junior
Fellow at the Aspen Institute, advisor at the Harvard Innovation Lab, board member at
Plain Ink and member of the executive committee at the Global Shapers Hub - Milano, a
World Economic Forum community.
Raffaele spent the last years at Harvard University and was Venture Strategy advisor at
P101 Ventures. Previously he was Senior Associate at Annapurna Ventures, a venture
capital firm focused on early stage investments in web services and mobile applications,
and advised OltreVenture, the leading Italian social venture capital fund.
In the past he also collaborated with Bocconi University, Collegio di Milano, Harvard
Business Review-Italian Edition and various branches of Confindustria, developing
projects related to innovation, entrepreneurship and finance.
Raffaele earned an MPA at Harvard University, a Ph.D. at Bocconi and attended the
Singularity University Graduate Studies Program at NASA Ames. He writes for Aspenia, the
policy review of the Aspen Institute - Italy, and LIMES, the major Italian journal of
geopolitics. He is co-founder of the social think tank “Lo Spazio della Politica” and became
part of the “Young European Leaders – 40 under 40” cohort of 2011.