Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond

by Chris Burniske

As Ben Evans wrote in his report, “Almost all the returns are now private. Old world tech giants returned plenty in public markets—new ones have not.” By old world tech giants, he’s referring to companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, and even Amazon, all of which have provided much more value creation for public markets than private markets. Meanwhile, with companies like LinkedIn, Yelp, Facebook, and Twitter, the clear majority of returns have gone to private investors. For example, while Microsoft grew private money 20,000 percent, it grew public money 60,000 percent. Compare that to Facebook, which grew private money 80,000 percent, and public money under 1,000 percent. As Ben Evans put in his slides, “For Facebook to match Microsoft’s public market returns, it would need to be worth $45 trillion,” which is two and half times the GDP of the United States.6