It’s been a fantastic first few days in Tel Aviv. The weather is warm and the streets are very busy.

(that is the view from Mindspace looking towards the Med)

Two things never change here…the amazing hustle and the amazing street food. I will get to the food in a bit.

The entreprenuerial community is ‘lit’ witch Crypto fever. I am here because my friend Ryan Gilbert at Propel Ventures invited me last year. Walking the streets last year I said we need to have an annual ‘Fintech and Falafel’ conference here in Tel Aviv. This year it’s bigger and better.

This morning I sat with my friend Yoni Assia for a long discussion about Etoro, Bitcoin and the Blockchain. Yoni remains most bullish on the Blockchain. I am still digesting all his thoughts and hopefully I can share a video of it soon. As little as I still understand about the Blockchain, I am convinced that all assets will eventually be recorded on and moved to and from using the Blockchain. I will stick with how Yoni sees things.

Here is Yoni and I doing our thing:

It so happens that Jeff Pulver was having a ‘Crypto Nation’ conference here today and so he invited me to speak as well. Jeff and I go way back. Crazy story but Jeff LOVES me. In 2007, Fred Wilson invited me to invest $25,000 into the Twitter seed round. It turns out Jeff had been tweeting at Fred to get him an allocation. I balked at the crazy valuation of $17 million (cue therapist) and Fred offered it to Jeff. Needless to say Jeff owes me a lot of smiles and hugs.

Jeff was already a legend having started Vonage.

Now Jeff is leaning into the ‘crypto’ world and his conference was jam packed. Jeff is definitely worried about the hype and the frauds going on but he is also super bullish and I like the way he is championing the industry. I got to meet the man who helped organize the Ethereum ICO. He seems pretty happy :) :

There are so many smart fintech investors traveling with me. One of my favorites is Sheel Mohnot who travels the globe endlessly. The only person I would do a regular podcast with is Sheel. Last year in Argentina I came up with ‘The Jew and The Jain’ a podcast where we just argue about everything.

Now to the food…

I don’t love street food in general, but I love Tel Aviv street food.

Yesterday was six falafel sandwiches and one shawarma. Sickening.

At the end of the night we had a Debush Shawarma which was delicious. Here I am stuffing my face (the photo has been meme’d and edited by Stocktwits community):

I think it is a miracle that my white shirt remained spotless.

Today I was treated to an epic lunch of street food at Miznoon. Definitely the best pita and a top five sandwich in my life.

That’s all for now.