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31/10/2018

Following A Volatile Decade, Harvest Being Reaped By Early Bitcoin Investors




Following A Volatile Decade, Harvest Being Reaped By Early Bitcoin Investors
Since the release of a whitepaper that detailed the need for an internet currency which could be put to use as a mode of payments without the requirement of a third party such as a bank, by Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcoin’s mysterious founder, the crupto currency has seen many upheavals in the following ten years till date.
 
The value of one biotin now is about $6,200. And compared to its highest value of nearly $20000 that it had attained in December last year, it is a fall of 70 per cent. The fall has been because of intense regulatory scrutiny throughout the world, in addition to rise and proliferation of crypto currency crime which includes hacking. However, for any person who had invested very early into the virtual currency, the current value is a substantial increase.
 
“If the price goes down, I am happy because I was able to sell some,” said Israeli entrepreneur Daniel Peled. He has been buying bitcoins since late 2013 and believes that the virtual currency can would attain another record high in a few years time. “And if it goes up, I am happy too because I am still holding some.”
 
The next “halving” of bitcoin is one of the factors that is making Peled so optimistic. It is believed that this has restricted supply of bitcoin and has resulted in an increase in demand.
 
The so called “mining” computers which validate blocks of transactions by competing to solve mathematical puzzles every 10 minutes forms the basis of bitcoin. New bitcoins are rewarded to the individual who is the first to solve the puzzle and clear the transaction. The design of the bitcoin technology was such that the rewards for miner are cut by 50 per cent every four years. The aim of this designing was to keep inflation of bitcoin in under check.
 
Peled said that 2021 could be a good year for bitcoin because the next bitcoin halving incident is scheduled to take place in 2020.
 
London-based investor Nicholas Gregory also wants to hold on to his bitcoins that he had bought in early 2014 because of the same reasons as Peled. Using a website that gave him of someone who was willing to sell bitcoins was used by Gregory to purchase the bitcoins because he was weary of exchanges. Gregory is the chief executive of blockchain firm CommerceBlock. He has not sold even one of the bitcoins he holds since buying them because of what he believes to be the intrinsic potential of the digital currency to safely store value and for its ability of money transfer over the internet.
 
There are however some investors who have become disillusioned with bitcoin and argue that the crypto currency has been held back and has not been allowed to attain its expected potential.
 
In January this year, when the price of bitcoin was around $13000, Vaughn Blake, a Los Angeles-based portfolio manager at private equity firm Echo Tree Capital, sold off his crypto currency quantitative fund. He however said that he has been a victim of hacks and phishing attempts.
 
“We all expected people would be buying coffees with it and they would use it instead of PayPal,” said London-based entrepreneur Jez San, CEO of blockchain firm Funfair Technologies. “Bitcoin is way too hard to use - it’s so user unfriendly that the man in the street just can’t use it.”
 
(Source:www.reuters.com)

Christopher J. Mitchell

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