Recent announcements by PayPal and Asian bank DBS signals that the institutional players are making big forays into crypto. But there is still a big caveat about the PayPal offering.American rock band Ok Go masters the optical illusionsMy stylist, Cinta, was sitting next to me at the front of the conference. She couldn’t resist the endless foo foo re-touching of my hair. She was just nervous as she is the next scheduled speaker — the owner of San Francisco’s renowned Cinta Salon.It’s April 2000 and the Viral Marketing Conference is a SF Bay Area who’s who of movers and shakers in the dotcom space. Besides Cinta, other notable speakers included Steve Jurvetson of VC firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Craig Newmark of Craigslist. Even Apple’s ex-CEO couldn’t make the cut. All the star-powered people want to speak at my conference, said Jennifer Kaplan, the VP of Biz Dev at Gazooba, as she shuffled his index card into the trash pile.My then girlfriend and future ex-wife picks up a card from the maybe pile and looks at it. She asks, “Peter Thiel, CEO of PayPal. Have you heard of PayPal? What do you think, you fat fuck?” You’ll have to pardon Jennifer’s French after she watches an episode of The Sopranos.Peter, as it turns out, had the most interesting presentation. He challenged the very notion of money and its means of transmission and creation. After the conference, we had a reception at Circadia. Peter had an even bigger vision of what money could be. A form that is easier to store and to transfer.A form of money that did not entail the government, or fiat. In other words, there is no reason why money has to be tied or issued by a government. The governments are not the value producers. Quite…