Blockchain ain’t for everyone. And it ain’t for NBA superstar Stephen Curry.
Yesterday, the president of Curry’s new investment firm SC30, Bryant Barr, told Yahoo Finance that the former league MVP is staying away from sinking money into anything to do with blockchain, as well as CBD or gambling companies.
Instead, Curry is focusing on companies hosting Series A through C rounds that center on both the “consumer and enterprise customer,” Barr said. But when it comes to blockchain startups, Barr explained that he’s yet to see anything that “that seems practical right now.”
“I think especially when you think about blockchain from a consumer perspective, you must get the buyer or the consumer to understand what it is that they’re buying,” he said. What’s more, Curry’s right-hand man added that he’s yet to come across anything or anyone that can really explain what blockchain even is and doesn’t see the point of the technology just yet.
In other words, it’s just too complicated.
It’s an, er, interesting take, given recent news of other NBA players and even former executives getting in on the blockchain game. Brooklyn Nets point guard Spencer Dinwiddie recently made waves over his attempts at tokenizing his $34 million contract extension with his team. The NBA’s Sacramento Kings announced just days ago that the team plans to release a blockchain-based token to reward their fans for their “engagement.”
And even former NBA Commissioner David Stern is jumping on the blockchain bandwagon, as a lead investor in a new Ethereum-based platform called FanChain that gives sports fans a chance to earn crypto for their live commentary.
Nevertheless, Barr said he and Curry are looking to avoid the “high-growth enterprise space,” which for the most part, has led to both ups and downs in their investing strategies. For example, they apparently passed on both Uber and Lyft, which Barr says they don’t regret. Zoom and Pagerduty, though, those would have been nice, he said.
“In hindsight, it would have been great,” Barr said. “When we got presented with these opportunities earlier this year, we had probably made four, five investments at the time…But because we’re new, we’re trying to gain experience.”